Last March, one of the moms who was doing Thane's 3-year old preschool with us asked, "So, can we do preschool next year too?"
The other preschool moms chimed in, "Yeah? Can we?!"
Honestly, I was a little surprised. We're usually on our own for 4-year old preschool, because it seems like almost everyone puts their kids in "real" preschool at that point. Once I got over my surprise that all the kids would be coming back, I became super excited. You know there's nothing I like better than planning, right?!
I talked to the other moms, researched, and thought a lot about how a 4-year old co-op might look. We decided to meet two days a week, but I was hesitant to commit to having both those days being structured, academically focused settings; In my opinion, it's more important that 4-year olds have time to play, explore new ideas, and learn skills.
I think we came up with a great compromise. Tuesdays are our "academic" classes. Each mom teaches 3 consecutive weeks in the fall, and 2-3 consecutive weeks in the spring (34 total weeks, divided by 6 moms). Instead of doing letters of the week (as we did last year), this time around we're doing themes. Each mom chose two themes to teach, one for the fall and one for the spring. Each theme also has a semi-corresponding nursery rhyme (not that we spend a significant amount of time on those, though).
Theme
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Nursery Rhyme
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All About Me
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Jack & Jill
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Bodies
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Where is Thumbkin?
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Aesop’s Fables
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Jack Be Nimble
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Farm/Harvest
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Peter, Peter
Pumpkin Eater
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Arctic/Antarctic
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Pease Porridge Hot
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Ocean
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3 Men in a Tub
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Food
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Humpty Dumpty
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Music
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Old King Cole
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Community Helpers
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Wee Willie Winkie
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Insects/Gardening
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Mary, Mary Quite
Contrary
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Birds
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Sing a Song of
Sixpence
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Space
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Grand Old Duke of
York
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| Bryce (left) and Thane (right) |
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| dramatic play |
The kids are also really loving it, because each week they build on their previous learning and have time to ask and answer tons of questions. And what 4-year old doesn't have a million questions!?
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| Of course he painted in black! |
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| Our preschool girls |
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| Our preschool boys |
In the interest of over sharing, here's a rough outline of our Tuesday classes (we try to keep opening circle fairly consistent, but the order/inclusion of the other elements are up the the individual teacher):
Opening Circle:
- Opening prayer
- Welcome song or songs ("Here we are together," "Thane's wearing a red shirt...," "Run Around the Circle," etc.)
- Pledge of Allegiance
- Calendar ("Days of the Week" song and "Months of the Year" song)
- Weather chart & graph
- Shape Monster
- Nursery Rhyme practice/activity
- Theme introduction
Crafts
Games
Gross Motor Activities
Snack
Story Time
Dramatic Play ("plan and play," because the kids "plan" ahead of time what they'll do while playing by drawing a picture of their plan and dictating a sentence to the teacher or assistant).
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On our second preschool day (Thursdays), we scheduled all our parties (7 over the course of the year), field trips (8 over the course of the year), and our "Activity" classes. Activity classes are just that - fun things for our kids to do together. Again, each mom chose a topic/skill of special interest, and is in charge of teaching just 3 activity classes over the whole year (7 kids/moms on Thursdays). Here are the chosen activities: soccer, theater, games, science, art, crafts, and cooking.
We started off the year with soccer. I love it! Thane gets a chance to play and learn, and I don't have to pay to sign him up for an official team. It's just the right amount for his young self.
Would you believe that Thane's surprisingly athletic?
Perhaps his determined, competitive self will find an outlet in sports.
A few more details... Thursday activity classes also start with opening circle that looks very similar to the Tuesday academic classes. We also bought boomwhackers for our preschool to be used if/when there is extra time on Thursdays.
Each mom is in charge of hosting/planning one party (Back to School, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine's Day, Easter, and End of the School Year). Each mom is also in charge of planning one field trip.
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Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention what we're doing on our own for preschool. The simplest thing is probably my favorite... I put 26 sheets of blank paper in a folder and, in highlighter, wrote a letter on each page. We spend a day or two on each letter. We talk about what sound the letter makes, then Thane draws pictures of those things. Sometimes I do talk him through how certain things might look (for example, on his goat, we talked about first drawing a head, then ears, etc.). I love this because it works on his fine motor skills TONS, as well as reinforces letter sounds.
I also picked up a generic preschool workbook (I think at Goodwill, even!) and he does a few pages in that every day. Hmmm... I just checked and he's on page 197, so I suppose he does more than a few pages, eh? Honestly, Thane is such a joy to do school with right now. He's always eager to do his work and never fusses or complains.
Finally, we just started back up with Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. We got to lesson 20 over the summer, but he wasn't quite ready to move past that, and since we're in no hurry, I wasn't going to push it! Now I think he's more than ready to start again. In the last couple days he's been independently reading and building simple three letter words. I was shocked!
When Thane finishes his school work, he gets 30 minutes of screen time playing on Reading Eggs. Bryce also gets 30 minutes of computer time playing Reading Eggspress when he finishes his school work.
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I think that's everything, but I'm including this video just because Thane is hi-larious! Sorry the beginning is lame, Blogger won't let me post the shortened version for some frustrating reason.
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