This blog is going to follow my daughter's progress, my lesson plans, and the great memories we will have doing it together, I am hoping anyway. I begin the first day, rather the first early morning, by staying up until 4:00 a.m. planning our first week's schedule of three hours a day, three days a week on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 9:00a.m until noon. Above all, I am a perfectionist and I want to make sure my daughter experiences this "school time" to the fullest!...That is, if I don't try and push her too hard.
First I decide I have to start with a weekly theme. I am choosing A. Why not? It's A for Autumn, Apples, Acorns, and Animals. I pick two colors and two shapes to tie in- red for apples and barns, and brown for trees, acorns, and squirrels. I pick circles and triangles since they mirror the shapes of apples and acorns.
Next, I want some science, how about trees? This could be a topic for the next three months possibly. I will do the parts of a tree, what animals live in a tree...and with the season of autumn about to do it's show, I can see plenty of nature walks talking about leaves.
I have to do everything with very little or no money, so I spend the most time in my preparation hunting around the house and our basement storage for "visual stimulation". We have an easel with dry erase board on one side and chalk on the other. I pick the dining room for my classroom. By pushing the table to a wall, I am able to get floor space, and I pull some pillows off the bed for her to sit on for "Circle Time". I will need to set up the easel every day with magnetic numbers 1 - 10, letter of the week, a "W" for weather, and basic geometric magnets to create the week's shapes. I use crayons and pencils to draw my own poster for the week, that I then clip to the chalkboard side of the easel. The poster will work as an overview and review. This easel, I see, is going to be the most important visual aid.
So for this week's poster, I draw a tree, an apple, an acorn, some farm animals, and my chosen colors, plus symbols for different activities such as a hand for craft time, a sun for outdoor trips, a car for field trips, and music notes for music time.
For all the activities, I want to make sure that I am doing repetition along with some everyday rituals - she needs to have a set routine, and so do I! It really is a lot of work for what seems like simple stuff. The first day goes well, even getting ready is exciting as Alex picks out a very colorful dress to wear on her first day.
She is just as excited as I am. Here is my schedule with notes:1. School Bell ( I find an old cow bell, God only knows why my husband has this)
2. Prepare - hangs up school bag on the cupboard doorknob, puts out folder and school book on the dining room table, then goes to "Circle Time".
3. Circle Time -
Greeting (the cutest thing is Alex referring to me as "Teacher", she does it very seriously)
Prayer (this is a nice perk that comes with teaching at home since you cannot do this otherwise!) I hope to eventually pick one that is easy for us both to recite with some hand motions.
Show and Tell I am going to give her homework that ties in with whatever we are learning, I will highlight any "homework" in red.
How are you feeling today? (I bought my daughter a small blank book with a decorative cover that has a picture framed into it. Each page will be for one day, so I divide the page with sections labeled How I Feel, My Favorite Part of School Today, What I Learned Today, and Sticker of the Day. I think I will call it her "ME Book
For "How are You Feeling Today?" in her Me Book, she traces my circle for the face, and then draws the eyes, nose, and mouth herself. Eventually she is going to draw her own circle. The mouth is the fun part - she decides if she is happy, sad, mad, or crabby. I keep a magnetic face on the easel for her to look at to help her draw and decide what mood. Today she is happy.
Month & Date. I use A Child's Year by Joan Walsh Anglund which is also one of my favorite illustrators. Each page is a different month and Alex picks the month by watching me flip the pages until she recognizes by pictures of the season or the word itself as I say the months for each page. For today, I introduce the book and describe September as the month we start school. For the date I will buy a calendar and have her sticker each day off, but for today I tell her the day and she repeats it and puts the date in the form of cut-out numbers onto the magetic board. We follow this with our days of the week song. I will do this song every day.
Weather I use a capital "W" on our magnetic board and cut-out shapes of a happy-faced sun, a cloud with rain drops on one side, and a sad-faced sun with a cloud glued partly over it. She loves doing this! After she looks outside and decides what type of day, she hangs the shape on the board, with our "W" magnet. Today it is rainy and cool. She is not sure about the sad-faced sun, and asks me over and over why the sun is so sad. I try to explain it's because the cloud is taking over. I am second-guessing putting the darn smiling faces on the sun since it is confusing her. We talk about the weather getting colder along with what kind of clothing she now will need to start wearing. Her homework is to bring in one item of clothing to wear in colder weather. This will be for Show and Tell.
Exercise Today I use Sesame Street's Elmocize. I pull out a large stuffed Elmo and put it on the floor in our living room. I play about 10 minutes of this DVD and I can't believe how she is really moving, I am getting into it right along with her so that we are both panting and worn out, now it's time to sit!
4. Activity Time 1 - I divide up her "subjects" between two activity times, her subjects being letters, colors, shapes, numbers, and reading. Always separate the writing and letters from the counting and numbers! For today, we start with apples by reading Dr Seuss' Ten Apples Up on Top, followed by an apple to hold and describe (red, hard, round, crunchy, juicy). She even bites into the apple, and this surprises me since she is such a picky eater. We continue on with singing the alphabet, using the book Chickaboom for visual aid. Workbook pages and handwriting I am keeping short. I know how my older son despises dittos, some kids just don't do handouts, and I am finding that the creative teacher is few and far between. But the workbook handouts that I have purchased are a lot of fun of course for this age level. There are plenty at the dollar stores, plus I like Curriculum (available *web insert here*). The web has tons of ideas and printables - some that I like are...*web insert here*. Today we do workbook pages on the color red, tracing circles, and writing left to right lines, followed by hand-writing the letter A. At the end of activity time, I give her homework - bring something red to class for Show and Tell. Activity time is short with plenty of variety. I know she has a short attention span and too much at once just shuts her right down as I learned over the summer. But I am happy to say she does not complain once - instead she talks very enthusiastically over each workbook page I give her.
5. Craft Time Today she cuts out an apple, and glues an "A" stem. After she draws a small circle on her apple, she glues a green worm on that I have already cut out for her. She then glues her apple to the tree on the poster. She has a very hard time with the scissors, but she can at least cut lines and I am proud of her determination. I want to make sure we use scissors a lot.
6. Snack Break I am going to try and use the snack with whatever theme, today I do applesauce, repeating like a broken record that this is from an apple (as if she doesn't get it by the number of times I have said it now!).
7. Outdoors I first read The Apple Pie Tree, and then we talk about the parts of a tree. To go along with our science theme of trees. Today we go outside on the trails for an acorn hunt
4. Activity Time 1 - I divide up her "subjects" between two activity times, her subjects being letters, colors, shapes, numbers, and reading. Always separate the writing and letters from the counting and numbers! For today, we start with apples by reading Dr Seuss' Ten Apples Up on Top, followed by an apple to hold and describe (red, hard, round, crunchy, juicy). She even bites into the apple, and this surprises me since she is such a picky eater. We continue on with singing the alphabet, using the book Chickaboom for visual aid. Workbook pages and handwriting I am keeping short. I know how my older son despises dittos, some kids just don't do handouts, and I am finding that the creative teacher is few and far between. But the workbook handouts that I have purchased are a lot of fun of course for this age level. There are plenty at the dollar stores, plus I like Curriculum (available *web insert here*). The web has tons of ideas and printables - some that I like are...*web insert here*. Today we do workbook pages on the color red, tracing circles, and writing left to right lines, followed by hand-writing the letter A. At the end of activity time, I give her homework - bring something red to class for Show and Tell. Activity time is short with plenty of variety. I know she has a short attention span and too much at once just shuts her right down as I learned over the summer. But I am happy to say she does not complain once - instead she talks very enthusiastically over each workbook page I give her.
5. Craft Time Today she cuts out an apple, and glues an "A" stem. After she draws a small circle on her apple, she glues a green worm on that I have already cut out for her. She then glues her apple to the tree on the poster. She has a very hard time with the scissors, but she can at least cut lines and I am proud of her determination. I want to make sure we use scissors a lot.
6. Snack Break I am going to try and use the snack with whatever theme, today I do applesauce, repeating like a broken record that this is from an apple (as if she doesn't get it by the number of times I have said it now!).
7. Outdoors I first read The Apple Pie Tree, and then we talk about the parts of a tree. To go along with our science theme of trees. Today we go outside on the trails for an acorn hunt
with song. After she finds ten or so acorns, we stop and sing the following London Bridges tune with actions "See the acorns falling down, falling down, falling down...Pick the acorns off the ground...Throw the acorns to the sky, to the sky...then all fall down." Alex is my "nature girl" and it doesn't matter what we are doing out there anyway, the girl lives for outside time and her smile is always the biggest and brightest outdoors. What can I say, she takes after her mother. 
8. Activity 2 Time I think I am going to reserve the second activity time for numbers and counting. We discuss the acorn some more to tie in with our shape of the week, the triangle. Our workbook pages include tracing triangles. We bounce between the pillows and sitting at the dining room table and chairs which is okay because it's keeping her busy. We sing the number song, this will be an everyday activity. We count by singing 1 to 10 to the tune of Do RE Me. We do the count song one more time but backwards. She is really confused by this, and tells me the numbers "don't go that way". Cute. Alex enjoys this. She does counting and recognition workbook pages. We play an acorn counting game that I made up - cut up strips of red paper, put different amounts of acorns on each one, cut out squares with numbers 1 through 10. She has to count the correct number and put the correct number to each strip. This is a hit. I think Alex really likes numbers. She repeats how fun the acorn game is over and over, calling me "Teacher". I realize that this moment in time is so precious.
9. Sticker Time, Review, and Me Book This is Alex's time to sticker all of her work. She spends a lot of time on this. She looks at everything again and I can tell it makes her feel rewarded. We then finish our day by reviewing our poster, ending with her answering the other questions in her ME Book. She spends a lot of time thinking about this before she answers. Today she answers that her favorite part of the day is counting numbers. For the next section, What I Learned Today - she says "that apples come from a tree", so I write what she tells me in her book, a nice momento. She then picks one last reward "sticker of the day" for her ME book, and I tell her it is for a great day and all her hard work. She beams, as I give her two more things for homework - to find a picture for the front of her ME book, and bring one farm animal to tell about.
10. Homework I try to include review and introduction for the next day plus any workbook pages that we didn't have time for. It seems like a lot but it's not that hard, and besides, it will keep her busy tomorrow on her day off school.
11. Closing Prayer
12. School Bell Rings - "Get outta here, I am Mom now!" I tell her!
Pheww...it really is a lot of work and time, but I find that it is worth all the fun - I am excited for Wednesday.
9. Sticker Time, Review, and Me Book This is Alex's time to sticker all of her work. She spends a lot of time on this. She looks at everything again and I can tell it makes her feel rewarded. We then finish our day by reviewing our poster, ending with her answering the other questions in her ME Book. She spends a lot of time thinking about this before she answers. Today she answers that her favorite part of the day is counting numbers. For the next section, What I Learned Today - she says "that apples come from a tree", so I write what she tells me in her book, a nice momento. She then picks one last reward "sticker of the day" for her ME book, and I tell her it is for a great day and all her hard work. She beams, as I give her two more things for homework - to find a picture for the front of her ME book, and bring one farm animal to tell about.
10. Homework I try to include review and introduction for the next day plus any workbook pages that we didn't have time for. It seems like a lot but it's not that hard, and besides, it will keep her busy tomorrow on her day off school.
11. Closing Prayer
12. School Bell Rings - "Get outta here, I am Mom now!" I tell her!
Pheww...it really is a lot of work and time, but I find that it is worth all the fun - I am excited for Wednesday.
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