What's in a Preschool Day?

So, just what do you do with a 3 year old at home? Here's a glimpse into what one day looks like. (and this is a good day, I left out the temper tantrums....)

We start with the Pledge of Allegiance, then we go right into Bible. We do this all together, so this picture was staged after I realized I needed it. I have such an obliging daughter!

Bible is a memory verse a week (which gets confusing to a 3 year old, just today she told me, "In the beginning, God created the castles in the earth. John 3:16". We'll get there....) Then we cover 2-3 questions of doctrine and a quick Bible story. Once a week we do an activity to go along with the story, and sometimes we watch a video of the story I just taught. And on Friday, they stand up one by one and recite the memory verse (I help K), then they each get a piece of candy at 9:00 in the morning. Everyone pretty much loves Fridays around here.

Right after Bible, I go right into helping K with her work for the day. She is very excited to get to work and loves to get my attention right away. Her first box today is a simple handwriting sheet with our letter of the week. I show her the proper way to form the letter (which she'll remember someday, I'm pretty sure...) and I tell her the sound the letter makes and have her repeat it to me.

This is playdough letters. For our letter of the week, I roll playdough for her, and she lines it up and pushes it down on the outlines. I have these sheets for every letter, and they're laminated, and on different days we use them for different things. Right now the favorites are Bendy Stix and Playdough!

Then we move on to the book, How to Build an A. This is a super cute book that comes with foam pieces to form all of the letters. I was going to do Handwriting Without Tears, but this was a similar concept and much more economical.

Then we work on counting. This is an old Tootsie Roll container and I cut a slot in the top. A Gerber's Puffs container works for this as well as any other container with a plastic lid or a little piggy bank would also work great. I put a different number of pennies in each time, then she has to put them in one by one and count them as she goes, then tell me how many there are. I then have the number for that day on a piece of paper in the container all ready, so then we open it up and see what the number looks like. Another favorite for number recognition is to give her a phone and tell her which numbers to push.

After all that, she gets a break and goes to play. I missed getting a picture of that, because that's when I spend time with the rest of the kids. At 10:30, we all break for snack, and that's when I do the reading for the day. She has her own shelf of books that I have planned out what story to read each day (otherwise I'd totally skip it!). I bought the Sonlight Preschool 3/4 books for this year to be sure that I read her good quality literature at her level. Although this is a lot of money to spend on a preschooler, I would be paying that much in 2 months at a preschool program, plus my kindergartner and 2nd grader love to listen in on her stories, too!

After snack, we all go to calendar time. We put today's date on the calendar, then sing "The Days of the Week Song" (to Oh My Darlin' Clementine; Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. There are seven days, there are seven days, there are seven days in a week. Repeat.). Then we sing "Months of the Year" (to Ten Little Indians; January, February, Ma-arch, April. May, June, Ju-ly and August. September, October, November, December. Twelve months in a year. Repeat.) Then "Weather Watcher" (to Frere Jacques; Weather Watcher, Weather Watcher, What Do You See? What Do You See? Tell me what the weather's like. Tell me what the weather's like. Won't you please? Won't you please?)

Then, we count. We count to 100 by ones for K. For the other kids, we also count by 10's, 5's, 2's and 3's. So that's where her day ends. Then I try to find something to interest her on her own while I finish up school with the other kids. I had to add one last picture of her from Friday:

Every Friday, we read the book "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" and put a letter on a coconut tree in our school room. She's in charge of putting the letters up. I'm not saying she is bad....I'm just saying, this is where she put the letters!

And one last picture that I couldn't resist, because I seriously spend SO MUCH time getting hands-on learning ready for my kindergartner, so this picture is to remind me that it really is worth all the effort. Look at that concentration! It takes a lot of work to keep this guy focused, but we're doing it!

So, there you have it. A Tuesday in the Life of our Preschooler!