Last year Makenna did a joy school preschool with four other kids, while Max just did some crafty projects at home with me. This year Makenna’s school friends all started kindergarten or “real” preschool, so I decided to do my own homeschool preschool with my kids. I used to do it with Makenna when she was younger (and, hello!, I used to teach elementary AND I worked at a preschool), so I thought it would work out well for us.
Makenna and Max are on TOTALLY different levels when it comes to school, so we are doing two different programs with them. Both programs come from Confessions of a Homeschooler. Max is doing the Letter of the Week curriculum, while Makenna is doing the K4 curriculum (which is basically kindergarten for 4 year olds). I originally thought I would take turns with their school—Max on Monday, Makenna on Wednesday, etc.—but that didn’t work well, so now I am doing both of them at the same time.
We started back to school last Tuesday. The kids were so excited to start school that they didn’t sleep well on Monday and were up at 6am on Tuesday! I have to admit I was pretty excited too, but it made it hard to teach school when I was tired and feeling sick from all this morning sickness business. But school we did!
Like I said, I originally started out just doing school with one kid at a time. That lasted all of one day… but on Tuesday Max had school by himself. What did Makenna do?
She spent her time playing educational games on my iPad. However, she ended up getting pretty bored after a few minutes so that’s why I decided that would just not work! But that’s what we did the first day.
Max did pretty okay the first day. I tried to make his activities more active and fun and like playtime. However, he complained quite a bit about everything and rushed through it all. This boy is just not a fan of school work! Here are some pictures of him “hard” at “work.”
This was his favorite activity. I put numbers out on the floor and would yell a number and he had to find the number (he counted apples on the trees to find the correct number) and run it back to me as fast as he could. He hated the counting, but loved the running.
We finished the day by doing a group project—decorating binder covers for their ABC books.
The first day ended and I was pretty disappointed with it all. Makenna was bored. Max didn’t want to do school and rushed through everything. Even after repeatedly discussing the letter A, he was still calling it other letters and couldn’t tell me its sound. I felt sick and pretty miserable and was getting a migraine. I wasn’t sure if I could do it anymore!
However, day 2 went much better and set up a precedent for our school schedule. We now start each school day with our group time. We go over the calendar, seasons, weather, and a few songs. Then the kids each go to their individual tables and start their school work. Makenna’s school work is harder and more time intensive, but Max’s ends up taking just as long because he complains so much about doing it. Whoever finishes their work first (which has been Makenna so far because Max is so upset about having to do anything) gets to play games on the ipad until both are finished. We finish our day with books and then another group activity (play dough, craft, wii game, etc.). School has been lasting from a hour and a half to two hours, depending on how long they want to continue doing their group activity.
After a full week of school, I think we have things mostly figured out. The schedule seems to be working out well. I have decided to do school on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. On Tuesday we will do story time at the library and start going back to our Play and Learns in the afternoon. So I am all set with our scheduling. Makenna is doing great with school. She loves the activities and is so smart and really is a “joy to teach” (as comments from teachers on report cards always say!). Max, well, he is a struggle. We will keep working with him, and hopefully he will start learning something soon, ha ha. : )
