Pre-Preschooling

I began homeschooling Bernadette last September. She only turned two in October, but I decided to start early for three reasons.

First, since we plan on homeschooling our children, I wanted to start getting myself used to it. Homeschooling requires a certain amount of self discipline. It also requires good time management. I am not very good at it yet, so I am glad I started before it really matters. I am still learning to juggle school with housework and other things and I hope to keep learning and getting better at it. The only pre-made curriculum I have found recommended for 2 year olds is the book Slow and Steady Get Me Ready by June Oberlander. This book is helpful for ideas for different activities to do with your baby through 5 year old. I decided to come up with my own curriculum which I will talk about below.

Second, I wanted Bernadette to get used to the idea of "school" and to get her excited about it. I have so far been successful in this. I always try to make it fun in some way and she often requests to "do school today."

Third, I wanted to have some special time with just me and Bernadette. When we began doing school, Clare was about 3 months old. That is not a very fun age for a 2 year old to deal with. I wanted to make sure Bernadette and I still had special time even though much of my time was devoted to nursing, rocking and soothing my dairy intolerant baby. So, we did school during Clare's nap time and it was a huge success.

I started in September with a goals list. Jeremy and I discussed reasonable goals for Bernadette to learn throughout the year. Some of these goals included; learning capital letters, lower case letters, numbers 1-10, counting, learning Bible stories and prayers.

The first section of curriculum I tackled was learning capital letters and the Creation story. We decided to teach her the capital letters and lowercase letters separate because by this time she had already picked up on at least 5 of the capital letters on her own. To teach her the capital letters, each day (3 days a week) we learned 2 capital letters. For one letter, we would do a craft associated with that letter. For example, for the letter A, we made angels. For the second letter of the day, we read about and colored a picture of a saint. For example, for B, we did St. Bernadette. (The coloring pages came from this coloring book.) Bernadette really enjoyed doing the crafts, and I learned more about her strengths and interests.

To teach her the Creation story, my husband and I made pieces for a flannel board story. At the end of every school day, I read her an abbreviated Creation story and she put the pieces up.

I would also ask her some of the easiest questions from the Baltimore Catechism such as "Who created the world?" I realize that she is to young to understand what some things mean, but I also know that it is always good to exercise their memories and why not do it with Church teachings?

After we finished with the capital letters, we moved on to numbers 1-5. She learned to count things up to five as well as learning to read the numbers. We did this through various activities, such as counting beans and putting together picture puzzles. I had learned early on that Bernadette is infatuated with the glue stick, so I came up with an activity to practice her counting and test what she had learned. I cut up paper into 2 x 2 squares and put 1-5 stickers on them. I taped a piece of paper to the wall with the numbers 1-5 written on the top and columns divided underneath. The drill was she had to count the stickers on the 2 x 2 cards and then glue them under the correct number. That activity was a favorite of both of us.

During the time of learning numbers, we also learned about Noah and the Flood. I used her Little People Noah's Ark set to tell the story and borrowed 3 Lego people to be his sons. She liked it so much, she often wanted me to tell this story at times other than school. We also continued with questions from the Baltimore Catechism.

That is where we left off at the end of last semester. This semester we are going to start with lowercase letters. I am currently working on a curriculum based off of picture books. I will explain more at another time.