Preschool

I’m not going to lie – I’ve never done this before. I’ve never taught preschool. I’ve for sure never written a curriculum. And I’m doing this whole mom thing for the first time too.

Also, I didn’t want to do this. I wanted my daughter to learn things from someone other than her parents (mostly because I wanted her to learn that mom and dad actually know what we’re talking about once in a while). I was hoping that someone else would reinforce the things she was learning at home.

I also didn’t want to commit to a schedule while I’m still trying to figure out twin babies too (yeah, they’re 9 months old and I cannot seem to get them on a schedule!).

We checked out some other preschools in the area. They are EXPENSIVE. Or full. 

This kid though – she’s way too smart for me to do nothing. I would be holding her back and not helping her realize her potential. I can’t do that either.

I grudgingly gave in and started trying to figure out what to do. What do I teach her? How do I teach her? What kind of schedule do we need to be on?

Lucy loves to read books. Or, rather, have books read to her. She will let me read to her until my voice gives out. In my mind, that meant that I needed to teach her to read, and the first logical step towards reading is to learn letters and their associated sounds. I started digging.

When I was in college back in the late 90’s, I worked as a reading and writing tutor for 7th and 8th graders. The goal of the program was to help those kids who weren’t reading at an 8th grade level get to that level. It was one-on-one time spent practicing phonics, reading level-appropriate books, writing short stories and essays, and helping them with other homework as time would permit.

One of the things I remembered about that program was that it didn’t teach the alphabet in the traditional order. There were certain letters it taught before others. I’d helped four kids get through the program and I’d seen how it helped improve their abilities, comprehension, and overall confidence. I know it works.

Because of that experience, I’d kept most of my materials. I dug them up and started reading through them again.

Pinterest is FULL of ideas regarding preschool and how to teach and what to teach and all that. I found outlines, crafts, instructions, curriculums, all kinds of stuff, but none of it seemed just right for us. There were lots of good pieces but not one complete (free) program that I felt was right for us.

I decided that I wanted to use the materials from the tutoring program, adjusted to meet the needs of my soon-to-be-three-year-old and her four-year-old cousin. That meant that I had some work to do. I had to come up with my own curriculum and outlines and then I’d have to figure out what kinds of activities and such we could do that would keep the kids interested long enough to sit still for a bit, but not so long that they came to hate it.

I took pieces from the tutoring program and pieces that I found online and came up with the curriculum that I’ll be posting throughout the school year. I’ll include notes about what worked and what didn’t, and how things went. If I end up teaching again next year, I will be making improvements and updates.

I hope this helps someone else the same way that all of the other pages I’ve come across have helped me.

Good Luck!