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The Boy is finally old enough. It’s time. We started PreK in earnest back in September. At first this Summer I started with dedicated reading aloud time from chapter books. Once he was bringing me books and begging for more chapters, more stories, I added some structured bedtime activities to keep him engaged.
My husband stays at home and holds down the homestead while I’m at work during the day. They do plenty of unschooling during the daytime. Lots of play, lots of real life. In the evening, after dinner, is when we do more school like activities.
I let him choose. “Do you want to do worksheets or bedtime math before your story?” He loves Bedtime Math but he also enjoys coloring, cutting/pasting, and tracing.
Moffat Girls’ Preschool Packet
No Prep Worksheets
The worksheets we’re using right now are The Moffat Girls’ NO PREP Preschool Packet Bundle.
I love this packet.
- There are monthly themes based on the season and holidays,
- The variety in type of activities is great,
- Many things are covered,
- Letter of the week friendly,
- and most importantly, The Boy wants to do them!
Learn To Read Activity Book
A good phonics primer
We bought this and it’s going to be good, I can tell, but I’m holding off a bit. He’s still going with alphabet, phonics, and a few sight words. He does great when it’s just phonics but the second the book introduced combining the sounds he lost all interest. It’s just PreK so no stress! We’ll get there.
Academic planner
Keeping Track of Everything
I want to make sure it’s clear that I’m not being very hyper with our preK program other than to make sure we do something each day. I want to get in the habit of logging/journaling our activities related to The Boy’s education so I got an adademic planner. It’s very casual. I write down what we did. I’m not planning day by day but instead using this as a journal.
Bedtime Math
Quick and fun
The Boy loves bedtime math. He will ask for it by name. I think more of that has to do with we paired this book with a tub of 100 animal shaped math manipulatives. Either way, he enjoys the very simple math games we’ve made up along the way.
Animal Manipulatives
They hurt worse than a LEGO
These are the manipulatives I picked out. Not much to it. Several types of animals in all the different colors. You can do your sorting by animal, color or just grab a handful, make some piles and rows then get to counting. Watch out for these getting away from you in the carpet or on the floor. They’re more painful than stepping on a LEGO.
Magnetic Letters & Numbers
It has everything you need
There are a lot of pieces to this one and it’s just great. I ended up taking baggies and separating the uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and symbols. It makes it much easier to find what you’re looking for. At this age it’s mostly so I can expose him to the symbols that the phonics and numbers represent. I’m not expecting him to spell or solve an equation by looking at 3 + 3.
Blackboard
Good sized and magnetic
This is magnetic so in addition to using this with chalk for drawing and tracing we use magnets on it too. I use this with bedtime math and the manipulatives. I read the story and problem, “spell” out what’s happening with the magnets, and we use the counting animals to count one at a time. I just said I don’t expect him to look at 3+2 and tell me it’s five but…
As I was taking this photo The Boy ran up, looked at it, and proudly announced “That’s five!”
It also makes a half decent lap desk when you just don’t want to leave the couch to do your pages.
Three Little Piggies
Concentration, patience, perseverance
We have a lot of fun with this game for very brief moments. I know this is supposed to teach spatial something logic whatever but this is an exercise in patience, concentration, and not giving up. His attention span is good for one or two rounds then we’re off to something else. During those 2 rounds I encourage him to try and stay on task. There are 2 modes, daytime and nighttime, and 4 levels of difficulty. My son is not able to follow through with setting up the game on his own so this is not a solo game for us (yet).
