Our New Adventure

 We started a new adventure last week! Homeschool Preschool!!! 

My parents homeschooled me 1-12 grade. Josh and I have planned to homeschool our kids since before we had them. I had a great experience being homeschooled. (Thanks mom and dad!) If you have any questions for me, I'm always ready and open to talking about being homeschooled.

Now you are asking, why did we decide to start doing preschool with Gus already??? Gus loves whenever I sit down and do crafts or coloring with him. He also has always liked when we read to him. He likes lots of attention, and he seems to get bored easily. We thought that he would enjoy doing more activities. I had seen lots of different activities for toddlers on Pinterest, but I don't have time to plan a daily activity for him.

I came across a curriculum on a blog that looked like the perfect fit. It is called Hands On Homeschooling. I looked at the website and at the examples they have there, and we really though this would be something Gus would enjoy. We decided to go ahead and get the 3 year old curriculum since it isn't long until Gus turns 3 and he knew most of the 2 year old stuff already.

Now you are asking why we started now??? With the busy holidays???? About to have a third baby???? We wanted to get a routine going before the new baby got here. The kids seem to do better when we have more of a schedule anyway, so adding something to make our lives just a little more ordered seemed like a good idea.

I sat down with the book which has everything laid out really nicely! It tells you exactly what to do on what day, etc. I don't have to do much planning. I went through the month of December, made a list of supplies, and then went ahead and bought stuff for the whole month.

The weekend before we started, I made sure I had all the pages I needed copied for the week.

Now the week we started was a very busy week. We stayed in on Sunday because of the weather, so we did some of the school stuff on Sunday. That is the great thing about homeschooling- you are in charge of your schedule.

We did not do every activity for the week, but we did most of it. Gus loves doing the activities!! He asks to do more! After I did all of the stuff for curriculum, some days Gus wanted to do more. I am using activities that I find on Pinterest for when Gus wants more to do. I have created a board called Preschool Year 1 of ideas.

We have a calendar, and each day we change the date. I put Gus's projects on the board as well. I keep the Bible that we read his Bible story from each week on the kitchen table so we can talk about it each day so he really gets to know the story well. I have the Bible verse for the month on the board to remind us to say it together. We have a chore chart on the fridge.

 

 

There will be days when we do lots of stuff, and I know there will be days when we don't do anything! And that's ok. I try to write down what I do get done each day. I wanted to share our experience doing homeschool preschool so that hopefully it can be encouragement for you if you decide to do it! I know I have quite a few readers with little kids- if you are doing stuff with your kids, please share! I am always looking for new ideas. I am going to try to write regularly about we are doing so you can go on this journey with us! And please ask any questions if you have them!

I have loved starting in December. It has been so fun to really focus on learning the Christmas story. It makes me feel good as a parent to watch my son learn and grow. If all Gus learn from this month is the Christmas story- no letters, numbers, etc, I will feel like we have succeeded. Just spending 20 minutes to an hour doing this stuff has been great. I have not forced Gus to do any of the activities. If he doesn't feel like it, we wait and do things later. I am excited to see what our future holds!