Gearing Up For Preschool

While we claim to homeschool year round, we readily admit to taking it easy, academically speaking, through the summer. A math lesson or two per week, and lots of reading and music practice (our older 4 children play violin), but nothing real heavy or structured happens for some weeks while the kids are busy outside playing in water, or sand, or both, or staying cool in the basement, listening to books on tape, crawling through forts, or pretending to camp indoors. Sometimes learning just happens, even at the breakfast table. I love that about homeschooling! (Though, you know, you certainly don’t have to be a homeschooling family to encourage learning at the breakfast table, or any other time the opportunity might arise!)

I spent some time earlier this week creating some new printables to use with our youngers as we get back into the academic swing of things, and I’m pretty excited to get playing with them.

With the 8 & 6 yr olds well on their way in their reading, it’s time to get working more intentionallywith the 4 & 2 yr olds! 4 yr old Mercy knows her ABC’s, and is getting better at remembering the sound each letter makes.  She still doesn’t really get the concept of blending the sounds together to read words, but I’m not worried about it yet. She’ll get lots of reinforcement this year, especially as we work with the 2 yr old on learning his letters and sounds. He’ll be 3 in October, so this is a great time to be working more and more educational play into his play. This little guy plays a lot, and plays hard. He’s all boisterous boy, and it’ll be fun to watch him play school more as the weeks go by. He’s excited about it, so hopefully we can cash in on that enthusiasm and strike while the eager-to-learn iron is hot!

We’ll be having letter themed weeks in our homeschool preschool, with as many activities as I can manage to pull together each week, until we’ve gone through the entire alphabet- though not in alphabetical order. Alphabetical order will come with signing the ABC’s about 1,001 times, but we’ll be introducing the consonants first, and then the vowels, starting with their shorts sounds (a makes an a, as in apple, then a makes an a, is in acorn).

I’ll be sharing different Ordinary Homeschooling Preschool Printables each week on the Preschool Printables page, so check back often if you’re in the need of some simple and free preschool printables!