Need some homeschool/preschool ideas...

Traci Reed

Traci Reed

Well-known member
More than just the crafty stuff. I'm talking like themey activities. I've heard of Muffin Tin Monday, are there other cool things like this?

Karsten is super advanced for his age and we're looking into alternative things for Kindergarten. We REALLY want to put him in a local Charter School, which has a wait list a mile long. We will get priority if we do their Charter Homeschool program, so I'm considering it for next year.
 
Letter a Week is a good online resource that is free.

There are also a variety of preschool "programs" you can get from Sonlight, Winterpromise, or My Father's World (and probably many more - those are the ones I'm most familiar with).

Another great option is Five in a Row.
 
My sister does Sonlight..thankfully the charter program is completely done for me, I'm just looking for additional "fun" activities :) Gonna go check those out!
 
Traci - you can even just do unit studies based around Letter of the Week or a story book (Before Five in a Row) and not go the expensive of an outright program.

We spent most of our time finding a book we loved, doing some math based around it, science based around it and art based around it and if we could fit it in, some mapwork (getting out the globe to look where it happened, pointing out the kind of terrain, etc. etc). It took a little planning on my end, but we just incorporated it through our day and used it as play time.

There are tons of unit study sites out there from Prek-K teachers that you can look at and gear it to the level you need to be at.

We kept it simple, no pressure, and played a lot of games to help make things stick, and lots and lots of reading of all sorts of living books (books about a subject and stories about a subject in lieu of 'textbooks' which is what we do a lot of still).
 
Ahh - as I'm writing you updated. So you already have a curriculum, you just want to enhance it? Then I'd see if you can get at least a copy of the teacher's manual to see what they are having you do and embellish it with arts/science/math activities that are more than the textbooky things. Do you know what program they are using?
 
It's an expeditionary charter school so they do a whole year base on one subject. Like this year they did "My Big Beautiful Planet" so all of their curriculum was based on the earth and the solar system. All the math, everything. I think it's such a cool idea. They would take field trips to land fills (ewww) and learn about recycling and do the math on how long it takes for a plastic bottle to decompose, etc. Such a cool way to learn!
 
 
A few more... and I'm just copying & pasting. I haven't looked at any of these.

I've actually used this one in my public classroom: http://www.lapbooklessons.com/GardenLapbook.html

www.Timberdoodle.com has lots of neat stuff!
www.lovetolearn.net
http://www.highlightskids.com/default.asp

http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index....on_id=9&PHPSES
http://www.homeschoolblogger.com
http://www.wmei.com/chronicles/
http://www.lisawhelchel.com/index.htm
http://homeschooltracker.com/
http://www.homeschoolfun.com/
http://www.crosssearch.com/Education...and_Resources/
http://heartofwisdom.com/
http://www.notebooking.org/timeline/
http://donnayoung.org/
http://www.historyplace.com/
http://homeschoolscience.com/
http://homeschoolinthewoods.com/

http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/F...468/index.html

http://www.mssscrafts.com/

http://www.homeschoolchristian.com/

http://www.preksmarties.com/

http://www.hslibrarybuilder.com/

http://www.homeschoolfunzone.com/

http://www.easyfunschool.com/

http://www.booksamaritan.com/
Book Samaritan will send you free text books for your homeschoolers w/ no proof of income or anything needed, they even pay for shipping.

www.thephonicspage.org/index.html

www.coolmath.com

www.sheppardsoftware.com/Geography.html

www.funschi.com

www.jamestownjourney.com

http://www.kidport.com/default.htm

http://dorioakes.bravehost.com/index.html
 
LOLOL Kristin - but that's how we all start! Just link by link by link. There are some awesome sites there - we use quite a few.

Traci - the curriculum sounds a lot like how we homeschool. It's awesome fun :)
 
Woooot! These are great resources! I'll be using a few of these baby's at my house too!!

My only suggestion, Traci, is that when you pick a theme, do it for longer than a week (we do ours for a month). A week goes by too quickly and can be overwhelming for them to take in so much in such a short amount of time. I don't know, every child is different.

Our theme for the month of May is "Farms". We planted seeds in little see-through cups and are watching them grow. Once they're big enough, we'll transplant them to the garden. We also live out in the country, so we've got cows and horses all around us.
We'll read "farm" and "animal" type books this month and learn "farm" songs.

Next month is "Ocean". :)
 
Here's a few for thematic units...not sure if this is what you are looking for. I used these sits A LOT when I taught!!

http://kinderkorner.com

http://www.littlegiraffes.com/handprintcalendar.html (I did something similar with my kinderkids and the parents LOVED it....it was a very special project that I plan to do with my own kids in a few years...one of my students was killed in a car accident half way through the school year and I was able to give the parents their little boy's handprints up to that point...they were forever thankful)

another great resource
http://www.thevirtualvine.com

I used this one for ideas..there are different units
http://www.kidzone.ws/

I hope you are able to get some ideas from these. I have many more!! I taught for 9 years before becoming a SAHM!!
 
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I'll be keeping an eye on this thread for sure! We've pulled our 3 year old from her pre-school/daycare program, and I will be starting with homeschool in June! I'm still in planning stages right now.
 
Tracy what's the link to your curriculum? That sounds awesome!

I'm watching this thread, too... that was a LOT of links!! Which forum are those links from?
 
it's not "my" curriculum so I don't have a link :( It's the charter's curriculum that we'll teach at home. Thankfully, they send out weekly packets and we don't have to decide the curriculum.
 
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