Visual Homeschool Pre-K Schedule

As I was planning our Pre-K year, I wanted to find a way to help us organize our days. Since my son is only 3, I want most of his time to be unstructured play. Any school work we do together should be fun and low pressure. A rigid schedule just wouldn't work for that. Instead, I came up with this visual schedule.

The left side has the things he still needs to do and the right side is for things he has finished. I printed little icons for all of the things we will do regularly, as well as a few blank ones for things I come up with on the spot. I used Velcro dots to make it easy for him. I also only included room for six things. I am expecting us to do fewer on most days, but that provides us a max. 

I may start out at only one or two things to get him used to the idea of having to get something done. I'm hoping this will transition well into other types of goals and task lists as he gets older.

Print a Visual School Work Schedule Here

 

School Organizing - Workboxes and Cards

As we head into the 2014-2015 school year, I have to admit, I'm more than a little apprehensive.  I will be a first year teacher with two preps at a time (HOORAY for getting paid to work instead of paying grad school tuition rates!!!!).  I am not quite sure how I'll balance that work load, cleaning, cooking, as well as planning and executing Xander's school.  Not to mention I'd love some time to have fun and maybe even have a personal life.

To help keep us both on track, I've decided we're going to try a combination of a workbox system and task cards.

First I printed up a bunch of cards with the various subjects I want to include this year (I haven't shared these just because the images are straight from Google).  The categories I included are listed below since some aren't pictured.

Design Challenge

Writing/Motor

Math

Literacy

Puzzle

Art

Game

Science

Spelling

Spanish

Visual Spatial

I did a little rearranging and this is what the new work area looks like.  The shelves are part of the TROFAST system from IKEA.  Above the shelves is a marker board I got inexpensively from Target to hold our All About Spelling materials.  Xander is currently using these magnetic letters instead of the little letter tiles that came with the program, but I'm sure we'll eventually switch back.

 I stuck most of the category cards on the bins using Blu-Tack.  The rest of the cards are in the little green basket on the shelves.  Those are things like a game or spelling that don't really fit into the bins. The idea is that he'll do "X" number of cards a day, depending on how many activities I have planned for the week.  He can pick the cards and the order, and then when we complete an activity, we move the card into the little blue basket. Math and Spelling both have two cards in hopes that we'll do them each twice a week.  My hope is about half an hour of "work" about five days a week.  If we don't get to all of the cards, the world won't end, it is just our goal.  Having the cards also makes it easier for me to set up.  I can visually see what types of activities I have and what ones I still need to gather together.

We did a trial run and it seemed to work pretty well.  I hope that it will continue to work for us as our schedules get tighter and we get into a routine.

I'd love to hear how you organize you preschool/kindergarten things to make your weeks run smoother!

School Room Updates

When we moved into my dad's after my divorce so that I could finish grad school, he was gracious enough to give us the master bedroom.  While it is a big space, it has to serve as my bedroom, my office, and our school room.  Therefore, I'm always looking for ways to use the space better.  That is why I am so excited about my Christmas present this year!

I got a BESTA cabinet from IKEA (ok, I know I'm weird for being excited about it, but I'm a full time grad student with no income, so purchases like this are huge for me!).  I used money my mom gave me for Christmas, my boyfriend's family picked it up on a trip to Chicago, and my boyfriend assembled it for me!  I felt like one very lucky girl!

Before

Xander's desk area is next to my shelves.  The shelving unit on the left held a lot of our art supplies, some of his toys, and some of my things.  The shelves with bins were where I put his activities for each week.

After

His desk stayed in place, but two of the shelves with bins got replaced by the cabinet.  One moved to the basement and one moved over on the right wall, next to his dresser.  The room is a little cramped, but that's to be expected when it has to serve so many functions!

 Inside

 Since many of our school items were scattered between my storage bins, my clothes closet, and the basement, I felt like I was always neglecting many of our activities.  I am so excited to have everything in pretty much one location!  There is still so much space in it too (although I know I'll eventually fill it)!  I LOVE having everything so organized.  And yes, I did make laminated labels for everything!

A Look Inside

 Top Left: 

Light box tools, flashcards, 3 Part Cards, and little containers for work boxes.

 Middle Left:

Art supplies, including crayons, markers, paint, paintbrushes, glue.  It also has our foam stamps, stampers, Do-a-Dot markers, and special crayons and markers.

 Bottom Left:

Top shelf is the bottom one from the previous picture.  The bottom just has our Play Dough Fun Box and stickers.

 Top Right:

Toob animals, letter construction tools (HWWT and foam pieces) and letter, word and math manipulatives. 

 Right Middle:

Math and fine motor manipulatives

 Bottom Right:

Games!  I hadn't planned on putting these in here, but did because I had plenty of space!

No I'll need to figure out what to do with all the space left over in my closet and in the basement!

Organizing for a New Year

I decided to start the new year off right by getting myself organized for Xander's letter weeks.  Last semester I mostly printed and collected materials for each letter as I went.  Many times it ended up happening after we were already supposed to have started.

Here's what it ended up looking like!  I got out a file folder for each remaining letter and then divided the materials for each folder.

Here's what went into each folder:

Kumon Write and Wipe Flashcards Uppercase

Kumon Write and Wipe Flashcards Lowercase

Foam Block Letter Templates

Alphabet Play Dough Mats

Mommy and Me ABC Letter Mazes

Lacing Pages from Mommy and Me ABC series to be used for art projects.

Build a Letter Templates from Tired Need Sleep

Q Tip Painting Pages from 1+1+1=1

Letter Tracing Worksheets from 1+1+1=1

Dot Letters from Confessions of a Homeschooler

Alphabet pattern blocks templates from Conessions of a Homeschooler

***I'm working on finishing the Cut and Paste Phonics Hunt Pages and will post when I'm done!  I also skipped putting in the science notebook pages from the Alphabet in Simple Science, since I print those front to back***

 It looked kind of crazy when it was all out on my bed, but so much neater when I put it into my bin!  All of the letter materials are in the front, and all of our workbooks (complete list here) are in the back.

How are you getting yourself organized for the new year?

Preschool Organizing

Last week I posted about our new Preschool Curriculum.  Honestly, now that we have new subjects, the amount of materials and activities is just a little overwhelming from an organizational standpoint.  I was definitely used to the routine we had for the Mommy and Me ABC units!  Anyway, here is what I came up with to make it go a little more smoothly!

I made a shelf dedicated to preschool activities and materials.  I have a container for each of the following subjects.:

Math and Patterns

Puzzles

Spanish

Logic and Thinking Skills

Reading/Phonics/Spelling

I also have some games, our site words mats, and our alphabet puzzles, which did not fit into the box.

I also broke up each activity.  Presenting Xander with a box of spelling puzzles like this would be too overwhelming.  He just wouldn't do it.

There was no way I was gong to sort through for all of the corresponding pieces every week. So I took an afternoon and went through all of our materials.  We have a lot of different types of puzzles and activities, so it took a while.  I found all of the pieces that went with each puzzle.  Then I put them in baggies in groups of 2-5, depending on the difficulty of the activity.  

Having individual bags made the boxes a lot less intimidating!

For some activities, dividing into individual baggies didn't make much sense.  For things like our Block Buddies, I just added a baggie for the cards that have been completed.  I'll take a new card and the corresponding pieces each time we plan to use the activity.

To store 3 Part Cards that we haven't used yet, I simply put each set into an envelope marked with the category name.

Then I put each pre-sorted activity into its container by subject.  Now instead of going through each individual box, I just grab one or two activities from each subject bin every week.  At the end of the week, all of the completed activities will go into the Done box (to be sorted at some point in the future).

This is the Reading/Phonics bin.  It has word/picture matching puzzles, spelling puzzles, rhyming puzzles, Beginner Spelling Cards, 3 Letter Word Cards, digraph puzzles, sight words blocks, and various printed word family activities.

 Here is the Logic/Thinking Skills bin.  It has our block buddies, nuts and bolts, sequencing puzzles, building block templates, construction sort and match, and flashcards.

Here are the Spanish and Puzzle boxes.

This is the Math/Patterning box.  It has number pegs, Oreo Matchin' Middles, addition puzzles, counting bears, a few patterning sets, a geoboard, and a folder with printed pattern cards.

For workbooks and printable materials I use regular boring fiile folders.  I tear out the pages of the workbooks as we use them, then put them in the back of the folder.

I'm still using the weekly goals checklist to make sure I cover each subject.  I also recently added the movie list.

Intentional Movie Watching

We are so blessed to have collected a wide assortment of educational DVDs.  We don't have cable, so I can feel good about the screen time Xander does get.  However, he tends to get stuck in modes where he watches the same movie again and again and again...  I have decided I want to be a little more intentional about what he watches.

I gathered all of our DVDs to take inventory (and weed out the ones he has outgrown).  He had fun "helping."

Here is what I came up with.  I will choose 5 movies I want Xander to watch each week.  The first movie he watches for a day needs to be from the list.  If he watches anything else, then he can choose from his other movies or from Netflix.  Two of the movies each week will be an episode of Magic School Bus, first in English, then in Spanish.  The other choices will just be other movies we have in hopes of varying the content he receives.  Other than watching Magic School Bus in English before Spanish, I really don't care the order.

I printed up this little list and laminated it.  It now lives by the DVD player, where I also put the discs for the week.  

 To make sure I rotate, I scanned the disc list for Magic School Bus and typed up the list of our other movies.  I'll put a check next to each one as we watch it.

2013 Tot School Schedule

Recently I posted an update to my goals for Tot School.  Having these overarching goals is a great guide for me, but I also needed a more specific breakdown of how I would accomplish these goals. This semester is going to be even more intense for me than the last (honestly, freaking out a bit), so I really wanted to make sure nothing gets lost in the shuffle.

I will still be using the Mommy & Me ABC units I created for Xander's Tot School.  They provide a theme and structure to the weeks, as well as help with letter and case recognition, phonics introduction, matching, reading, fine motor, etc.  We will be doing one to two weeks per letter, depending on how many activities I have planned.  (I am always looking for new activities to keep Xander challenged, so if you can think of any I should add to the remaining letters, I would love to hear your ideas for adding to the units!)  

I will also be including other activities to help develop various skills.  I hope to do some of these activities daily, while others may only happen every once in a while.  I hope to eventually make a checklist, and will post it for you when I do!

Reading

Little Reader

3 Part Cards 

Sight Words Games

Your Child Can Read DVDs
Reading lots and lots of books together!

Math

Little Math

Flashcards from Mommy & Me ABCs

Manipulative Play (still avoiding counting)
Puzzles

Fine Motor

Tracing

Coloring & Painting

Cutting & Gluing
Sensory Bins - scooping, pouring, spooning, etc
Clipping

Lacing

Toys:  Latch Boards, Drill Set, stacking blocks, building train tracks, etc.

Spanish

Kid Start Spanish

Little Reader (I NEED to make some lessons!)

Playing with Grandma

Music

Note Flashcards

Note recognition with piano/xylophone

Trebellina

Your Baby Can Discover

Tot School Goals - 2013 Reflections

Last spring I wrote a post about my goals for doing Tot School with my son.  All of those goals still hold true, but I thought it was time I reflect on where we are and where we want to go this year.

#1  Develop a Love of Learning
I am so happy to say that Xander truly does love learning.  He drinks in information, whether I am trying to teach him or not.  He is fascinated by new things and loves new vocabulary units.  I love knowing that not matter how hard I try, I will never be able to teach him new things as fast as he wants to learn them.  I hope to continue to foster this love of knowledge by making learning fun for him, not taxing or tedious.  

#2 Develop a Love of Reading & Familiarity with Words
Thus far, mission accomplished!  Xander LOVES books and reading.  He is somewhat selective about the books, but will sit and have me read to him for hours.  He also loves to sit and read to himself.  His vocabulary far exceeds what I would have expected for his age and he is reading more than I could have hoped.  Even our doctors have commented on how articulate he is for his age, which is especially surprising given that he has had chronic fluid in his ears for the last year.  He can read a few hundred words, although I'm not sure the exact number because he is always reading me words I didn't think he knew.  (I really wish he would read for the camera!!)  We are still doing the whole word method, and I plan to continue for the foreseeable future.  However, I think he is starting to figure out some of the phonics on his own.  I hope to get him really comfortable with the sight words this year to improve his reading fluency.  I would love for him to end the year reading full sentences rather than just reading the individual words of a sentence.

We will definitely continue using Little Reader, the program to which I attribute most of his reading skills.  I will continue making him personalized lessons, time permitting, of course.  I also plan to continue using the 3 Part Cards to reinforce the words I teach him.  Now that he is a little older and capable of more, I would like to incorporate more word/reading games.

This picture just had to go with this post!  I love how on Christmas morning, when he was literally surrounded by new toys, he stopped to read his new books.  (Proud mama!)

#3  Develop Fine Motor Skills

Honestly, I have no idea where Xander is relative to the "norm" for fine motor skills.  He can color and do a little bit of tracing, but not very well.  I know I need to make an effort to improve these skills, because they are our limiting factor.  It seems like a whole world of preschool-type activities and workbooks open up to us once he is able to try writing.  However, he just turned 2.  I realize we have a while before his motor skills catch up to some of his cognitive ones.  It isn't a race, so we will get there when we get there.  :)

Play Dough Fun Box

Xander has been interested in play dough for a while, but lately he has been wanting to play with it a lot more.  I had had all our tools and doughs in a bin.  However, we keep accumulating new tools and colors, so I needed something better and came up with this box.

I bought a two tier Snapware box from Wal-Mart.  The top has a bunch of our tools.  I have included the dough stampers, alphabet cookie cutters, and animal cookie cutters from the Mommy and Me ABC units we have already completed.  I will continue to rotate those tools in as we complete more.  I also have a little Snapware container with large google eyes and some colored plastic gems.

The bottom tier has our play dough (when I took the picture, I had cleaned out all of our homemade play dough).

There is plenty of room for our dough stamping pages (free in the Mommy and Me Printables) above the containers of dough.  They are designed to be used with the dough stampers.  It is nice to have everything in one place!

Mommy and Me - Organizing and Prep

With a full grad school course load, inconvenient class times, and over an hour commute, I knew time management was going to be an important issue for me this semester.  Tot School was something that could easily get lost in the shuffle, but I really didn't want to let that happen.  I love that precious one on one time with my baby and he loves the stimulation (over stimulation has never been an issue for this kid, in fact, most of the time I can't keep up with him).  To keep myself on track and organized, this is the system I came up with.

First of all, I slowly gathered all of our alphabet materials into one big box.  I have been searching garage sales all summer and adding as I go.  A few things didn't fit, or had their own boxes, but for the most part, everything is in here.  It has things like cookie cutters, letter matching puzzles, mini letter books, stamps, foam letters, fabric letters, magnets, a memory game, etc.

Then I bought four containers from the dollar store to store on some shelves in the basement.  They don't look big in the picture, but they are actually a decent size.  I labeled them A-D with Post-It notes.  Then I went through the tedious task of sorting through everything in the big box above and pulling out everything for these four letters.  It took a good forty five minutes, but since I am planning on spending two weeks on each letter, I only have to change out the boxes every two months.

Since we are doing an animal for each letter, I also collected everything we have relating to that animal.  All the little figures, toys, and crafts went in the boxes, books and puzzles went below.  It is so nice to have each pile ready to go, but it also lets me easily see what letters we have plenty of books and activities for, and which ones are still lacking.

To take the organization to a slightly obsessive level, I also have this little box of note cards.  Since I would like to do at least six tray activities a week and two weeks per letter, 26 letters makes for an awful lot of activities for me to remember and organize.  I tried an Evernote list, but it just wasn't visual enough for me, so I ended up with these note cards.  One card has generic tot school activities that could be used for multiple letters/animals.  The rest of the cards are for individual letters.  They have the animal name at the top and 6 lines for different tray activities (2 activities per line = 12 activities).  At the bottom left, I have a place to tally the number of books we have for that particular letter/animal.  At the bottom right I recorded the number of puzzles, if any, we had that corresponded.  I don't have all of the cards done, and none is filled out all the way, but it does give me a place to jot down tray ideas as they come to me or I find a craft/activity at the store.  I can also go back and easily see what activities I have for a particular letter, without having to dig through the box!

In addition to all of these tools and activities, I have the printables for each letter.  I have been trying to print/laminate a few weeks ahead, so that no letter can sneak up on me.  I put them all into a pouch and store them with the letter box.  I am sure there will be some tweaks to this system as the year goes on, but I am hoping it will keep me organized enough to stay on top of our tot school lessons.

Book Organizing

Last week I wrote about organizing our school area.  Well that same organizing urge also made me want to attack our books.  

I started with four boxes of books.  I have been collecting books for Xander since before he was born.  I have had some great luck at garage sales and consignment shops and gotten some great deals.  Anyway, I kept most of them packed from when we moved, except books on one shelf in the living room and another couple of shelves in our room.

As you can see, I had done a half hearted attempt at organizing in one of the boxes (mostly into holidays), but it was far from being functional.

So I started sorting....

and sorting.  I finally got them into what I considered workable categories.  Some categories that didn't have enough books had to share a bin.  I only ended up with two bins labeled "stories" for books that didn't really fit well anywhere else.

Each category got a box (these from IKEA, I already need more).  I printed some cute little labels and am very happy with the result!  The middle shelf has a lot of our leveled readers, our phonics readers, our Preschool Prep readers, and our Your Baby Can books.

In order to help me remember which of our books we have already read for our book challenge, I took all of the books we have read out and put them back in the big boxes.  What is left ion the shelf are the books we have not read.  I decided that as we complete a category, I will put a page marker on the box and put the books we have already read back in.  Maybe not the most efficient way to do it, but it will work for this year.