I’ve been wanting to share more about our homeschool journey here on the blog but since it is all still very new to us and my time is the opposite of unlimited (sounded fancier than saying limited ;),) I haven’t gotten around to it until now. I took these photos in July as you can see by the warm weather clothing and the more damning dates on my homeschool planner. I thought about backdating the blog post (I do that often to keep birthday and holiday posts in their respective timeline) but felt like it was okay to let the time sit with this one.
The Peaceful Preschool is a curriculum designed for the preschool years. It goes through the alphabet and dedicates one week (four days) for each letter. Today I am going to walk you through a typical lesson for one of those days: Letter I, Day 1.
Read Aloud
It always starts with a read aloud. Often you are reading picture books (I look ahead and reserve them at our local library) but there are other times where you read a story in the Bible or a poem printed in the curriculum. Today we read Ice Cream Summer. I always have the girls point out the letter of the week when they see it in the book – especially on the cover. And typically say something like “I” is for Ice Cream! What else is “I” for?
Phonics
The next section in the curriculum is phonics. Today we used glitter glue to trace our flash cards for our uppercase and lowercase “I.” We set them aside to dry and use them later in the week/ months for letter recognition and practice.
Counting Skills
Today for our math and number skills, we made ice cream out of felt and played ice cream shop. We counted scoops, recognized numbers on the coins, and paid the shop keeper for our ice cream creations. Playing shop is one of the girl’s favorite make-believe games and it is perfect for their growing minds! They easily included math as part of their play and we all had fun – even their thieving baby brother 😉
Fine Motor Skills
Our fine motor skill activity for the day was to make a map of our neighborhood. I printed off google maps of our neighborhood and used a marker to show the main roads around us. I then had the girls trace the lines by taping the paper to the window. We added in some important landmarks in our neighborhood like the ice cream shop, Grandpa & Grandma’s house, our house, the park, and the library!
Large Motor Skills
Our large motor skills activity was to play catch with balls. The girls just got these new bouncy balls from Walmart so we used them for catch. Because of the size, they were a bit harder to catch and throw but that made it more fun and was good practice too!
Practical Life Skills
The practical life skill activity for today was to make ice cream sundaes. We didn’t do that, instead we went to our favorite local ice cream shop Josh & John’s after naptime to order kids cones. I had the girls order and pay so they were still able to work on some life skills!
Art Skills
Last in the curriculum is an art activity. Art is my kids favorite section so we typically do it right after reading our book! Today’s art activity was to use construction paper to make ice cream cones. In the book, the characters have lots of ice cream scoops, so both girls wanted to load up their cones! As hard as it is for me sometimes as a Pinterest mom, I try to let them do their own projects. You can see from the photo that they both wrote an upper and lower case “I” as well as the number 8. Millie was supposed to write 4 because she had four scoops, but she told me that she liked the number 8 more 😉 We add this art to their letter book we’ve been working on that will go thorough the whole alphabet with this curriculum
And that is a typical day! We don’t do everything in this order or all at once. As you can see by the 3+ outfit changes that Hilde & Millie did throughout the day, all of this was spread out over a typical homeschool day. We ate meals and put Thorin down for naps throughout the day. Many times, like when we played Ice Cream Shop or Catch, they didn’t even know we were doing “school.” Sometimes I merge two days into one or skip things on the curriculum I don’t think we need to do. I love how flexible, simple, and structured this curriculum is! It works out so well for this season in our lives! I’ll be starting the Kindergarten program in the new year once we finish this one. I haven’t decided yet if Millie will just tag along with us and I will adjust for her, or if we will go back and pull from this curriculum again! We will see when we get there! If you want to check out any Peaceful Press products for yourself, use code PEACEFULYEAR to save 10%
