When we sent Goose off for her first day of first grade in August, it hit me that Belly is starting kindergarten next year! I know that we still have eleven months, but they are going to fly by and I want to do everything that I can to make sure she feels confident walking into school. Up until now, all of her learning has been informal and indirect, which has been wonderful for developing interpersonal skills. Recently, though, she began showing interest in a preschool homeschool routine and I was more than ready to put my teacher hat back on!
I won’t be sharing any specific lessons or activities in this post, but I will explain our goals and give you an outline of our routine.
Learning Goals
Our learning goals are the measurable objectives that I am intentionally teaching Belly. These are skills or pieces of knowledge that I can easily assess and think will be helpful for her to master before kindergarten. I use these goals to guide and shape our routine.
Although we explore plenty of science, social studies, and art throughout our day, our preschool homeschool routine focuses on English Language Arts and Math. In my opinion as an educator, these are the foundation of academic learning and will make acquiring knowledge in other subjects easier.
In English Language Arts, we’ll be concentrating on:
- Letter-sound correspondence
- Writing all letters of the alphabet
- Identifying initial and final sounds in words
- Rhyming short words
- Recognizing basic sight words
In Math, we’re primarily working on:
- Counting to 100
- Reading and writing numbers 0-30
- Cardinality
- Greater than, less than, and equal to
- Patterns
If you want to look beyond academic expectations, I have an existing post that covers other important preschool skills. There, I address the nonacademic aspects of learning, like fine motor practice, social and emotional awareness, and creativity and imagination. These skills are just as necessary for success and I am conscious about incorporating them into our daily learning.
I also have an additional post that features contributions from a few kindergarten teachers that I had the pleasure of working with. They share their advice for how to prepare kids for kindergarten.
Preschool Homeschool Routine
Our designated learning time is 45-60 minutes, Monday through Friday. Since this is all one-on-one, that is the perfect amount of time for Belly to stay engaged. We go at her pace and if she becomes disinterested or needs a break, we stop. I never want her to develop negative feelings about learning so nothing is forced. If she isn’t a willing participant, we’ll move on to something else.
I have to emphasize the significance of consistency and repetition when teaching young children. Our preschool homeschool routine entails short segments of daily practice because you want to give little ones plenty of opportunities to absorb the information being taught.
Here’s how our daily routine looks:
- Storytime
- Calendar
- Date
- Weather
- Schedule for the Day
- Recite the Alphabet
- Practice Letters of the Week (2)
- Alphabet Enrichment Activity
- Count to 100
- Number Enrichment Activity
- Write Her Name
The letter and number activities vary by day and usually include wooden puzzles, games, crafts, and songs. I’ll introduce paper worksheets to her later on so that she can practice before starting school, but hands-on play and movement are her preferred modalities of learning.
Outside of our preschool homeschool routine, Belly has plenty of unstructured, free play time. We build, bake, cook, make crafts, run around outside, and so much more!
If you need ideas for your little one, I regularly share learning activities over on my Instagram page so make sure you follow me there. A few of our favorites are stamp tables, this sorting game, and Post-It matching!
When will your children start kindergarten? Have you started preparing them?
Talk to you soon!
