We will soon be wrapping up our first year of homeschooling! This past year I provided a casual, play-based preschool experience for my oldest daughter. As promised, I’m going to let you know what materials worked for us and provide some reflections on our experience.
First, I’ll share the things that worked for us. I’ll then share the things I’d do differently. Finally, I’ll provide a quick preview of what we’ll be doing next year.
What worked well
- Year-round schedule. Most folks (both homeschoolers and those attending public and private schools) wrapped up their school years over a month ago. We’re just now finishing ours because we’ve taken a year-round approach to our scheduling. Instead of doing school for nine consecutive months of the year, we’ve been at it in short spurts since last September. We do school for six weeks, then take two weeks off. We’ve repeated this pattern (with an extra week off for Thanksgiving and a couple of weeks off for Christmas) since we began. It’s been great! It prevents us from getting burned out and it gives us the freedom to spend time traveling and visiting with family at times other than “summer vacation.”
- Casual, play-based approach. Because my oldest girl was just in preschool (i.e., she’s young) and preschool wasn’t necessary for her, we took a very casual approach to preschool. We only spent about 30 minutes per day on preschool activities and many of these activities were fun (such as “playing” with pattern blocks or completing matching activities with the bambinoLUK).
- Most of the materials. I won’t list all of the materials we used (you can see a list here), but I will make note of a few that we loved. Overall, the materials complemented each other well and provided a pretty thorough preschool experience. The following were particularly beneficial to us:
- bambinoLUK
- Usborne Lift-the-Flap Picture Atlas
- Pattern blocks
- Calendar set
- Using the local library. I try to get the girls to the library each week to get new books to read. We read assorted books all day long, but I was able to place specific books on hold to supplement the things we were doing in preschool. For example, when we’d read about a continent in the Lift-the-Flap Atlas, I’d get additional books about that continent from the library. These books reiterated and expounded upon some of the information in the atlas, making it more interesting for my preschooler and easier for her to remember.
What I’d change
- Lesson planning approach. I sat down for about an hour each weekend to complete my lesson plans for the coming week. This got the job done, but I was often rushed and/or distracted. In the future, I need to have time for lesson planning blocked off on my calendar. My husband will have to keep our kiddos occupied during this time so I can focus solely on lesson planning.
- The Kumon Thinking Skills books. We didn’t use these books as much as I thought we would. Some of the pages in the books were super easy for my preschooler, while other pages were too advanced for her. Very few were right at her skill level. I could have found a lot of similar worksheets online or in other books for a lower price.
- Using free materials available online. There are quite a few moms and teachers who share resources (activity ideas, worksheets, posters, etc.) online for free. I wish I would have taken more time to look for these because those I did find were so valuable. I supplemented our materials with them and they helped us get a change of pace. They also allowed us to do some seasonal activities and activities that commemorated holidays. I used several resources from the following websites:
- The equipment and supplies I had on hand. Throughout the year, I discovered that there were several items it would be nice to have. I ended up getting a couple of these, and I’ll get the others before we begin our next school year.
- Self-laminating sheets
- Paper cutter
- Colored printer paper
- Dot stickers
- World map
Plans for next year
I’ll begin using kindergarten materials with my preschooler next school year. I’ll be doing this with a customized Timberdoodle Curriculum Kit. We won’t be starting in September, though. I’m due with Baby #3 in September, so we’ll be a little busy! Right now, I’m not planning on doing much until January. I love that homeschooling gives us this flexibility!
Final thoughts
We had a great year! I’m glad we went ahead and did preschool. My preschooler loved it. In fact, she would ask on many Saturdays and Sundays if we could do school. I enjoyed seeing her knowledge and skills grow as the weeks passed. I’ve also benefited from learning all of the things that I wrote about in this post. This knowledge will benefit me as we eventually have three school-age kids who are completing more serious academic work.
How did your school year go? What went well? What would you do differently?
