‘Faux’mschooling- week 1 September

I am pinning some of the stuff I’m using/will use on Pinterest, so check out my boards: Fauxmschooling and Printables

Let’s face it, pre-school seems to mostly be about learning to get along and giving the kids something to do for a couple of hours a day, along with learning some things like: colors, shapes, alphabet.

What if your kid learns all the academic stuff at 2? What if your public preschool rejects you because your kid is too smart? Yeah…

So I’m doing some ** ‘faux’mschooling, aka faux homeschooling. I’m not keeping really good records (you would check out the boards above and that’s about it, ya’ll) but I’ll try and give some food for thought. I sat down and made a list of things that were either from my head, or were on the list of ‘things you should know after Kindergarten’… we’re aiming high at this point, because we hope that they’ll do a transitional year for her and bump her to first grade. It’s got precedent in our school district–but we need help with things like ‘keeping your butt in a seat for more than 10 seconds’ and ‘keeping your mouth shut for 10 seconds’… I know, she’s only 4– nearly 5, but at this point, the year is going to fly by and so I’m hoping to get a few things accomplished, one of them being that she has less crabbiness because she’s not as bored. I’m not strictly adhering to a schedule, I’m printing out some things and having her do them. That’s it.

So the first week? Yeah it could have gone better. Day one was while daddy was home from work– not the best, because she would bother him when I really wanted her to do something on her own– you know, like they do in school. Day 2 was better, Day 3 was kind of cruddy (who takes an hour of arguing to write TEN words on a piece of paper? my kid), and Days 4 and 5 were kind of a crapshoot. So really we got in about ONE good day of learning how to sit still and not complain. For the first week? I’ll count it as a win.

So what did we do?

First we talked about what day it was, the month and season of the year, and the weather. (Dude it’s on every show I’ve ever seen about pre-school, so that’s what we did).

Next we did spelling words, and we’ll try and test them this week and see if she can even DO that, because she might not be able to, but I wanted her to get some WORD WRITING in, because if she gets bumped to 1st grade, she’ll need to be up to par… I did 10 and a challenge word: a, I, an, am, at, and, the, you, are, we, NICE. I told her that she could pick some words for next week. But the above are important, right? I figured she needed those before cat, etc… so she wrote those out..

Then I had her do a ‘group words’ sort of thing. For her it was like a puzzle? She pointed out a flaw in my methodology and I fixed it for her and she happily did this 2 or 3 times: http://pinterest.com/pin/192036371584283310/   Basically I wrote out categories: ingredients, tools to help you cook, etc. and cut the sorting words apart and voila, instant game you can play over and over again! I was really surprised at how well she did with it the first time.

READING TIME: I told her to find her favorite spot in the house and she could read anything she wanted. I set a half hour timer and let her go…during that time I played with the toddler, ALONE! I highly recommend reading time (to your child or your child on his/her own, every single day)…

Art time: This can be absolutely anything, from a craft you have planned out to a color book or worksheet or free drawing. Whatever suits your mood. Kids love this!

Recess: Duh. But this is basically where we broke after the first day.

Day 2:

Weather, etc.

Numbers 1-10: http://pinterest.com/pin/192036371584250277/

Rhyme time (worksheet, and then additional requests to rhyme words together): http://pinterest.com/pin/192036371584250295/

Scissor skills: http://pinterest.com/pin/192036371583737395/

Color words: This is where I used google as a friend and searching for ‘color words red’ and then made up my own document. Crimson, salmon, coral, vermillion, you get the idea. Then I wrote at the bottom to draw and color some red things… trying to make the connection between learning about something, and putting it to use…

We also did art time and she colored the horse picture–she complained that it didn’t use all the letters–there are 3 or 4 here: http://pinterest.com/pin/192036371583782608/

Day 3:

Fight about spelling words took an hour. Wow.

Worksheet on connecting the dots and coloring (many seasonal ones-we did scarecrow): http://www.schoolfamily.com/print-and-use-tools/category/121-connect-the-dots-worksheets

LIBRARY TIME (being read to at the local library, and reading to the librarian)

READING AT HOME

Day 4:

Color by Numbers (many seasonal, we did autumn): http://www.schoolfamily.com/print-and-use-tools/category/129-color-by-numbers-worksheets

———————

That’s basically how our week went. I have some other things printed out and ready to go for this week, I’m trying to hit on a number of topics while doing things she’d normally be doing in school (playing, reading/alphabet/writing/colors, etc) and some new things, like I’ve printed out a couple of world maps to talk about where we live, etc.

We did some other things like playing with blocks and some other sorting games, but I’m not sure which day, but either way, she had a good time while she was actually engaged and left it at that…

Have you done homeschooling or ‘faux’mschooling? Did a specific plan or just following a general pattern work best for you? Following your kid’s interests?

** I made up the word ‘faux’mschooling. I am doing a loose play off of Montessori and just fun stuff we’d do at home anyway… All the above materials were free at the time that I used them, and if you find a broken link, please let me know and I’ll attempt to fix it! I’m not gaining anything off of this, just sharing a little bit with you!