Teacher's Eye View

For my fellow homeschoolers reading the blog, I thought I'd give you a quick tour of how I am operating thus far...

First, the school bell in this house does not ring until I have coffee in hand - this morning things got a little fancy :o)

We start off the morning with the calendar. Hunter counts the days that are already turned over, and then figures out which number comes next. After turning over today's date, he sings the 'days of the week' song. Then, we move over to the red pocket chart and Hunter figures out 'yesterday was', 'today is', and 'tomorrow will be'.

After Calendar, we sit down at Hunter's table and read a short story out of our Devotions for Preschoolers book. This book is really cute, and offers quick stories pertaining to prayer, kindess, family, etc.

From there we move to Language Arts - Right now I use our Brainquest Pre-K workbook to introduce the printing of whatever letter we are working on that day. After that, Hunter just practices the letter on printing paper 6 or 7 times. If time allows, Hunter reads from his sight words book.

After L.A. we move on to math, again using the Brainquest Pre-K workbook. In addition, we use the spectrum math kindergarten workbook.

Those two subjects take us about 0ne hour, so by then we are ready for a break. We break for about 30 minutes, giving me a little bit of time to straighten up, do some laundry, or check facebook :o) Hunter is usually begging me to get back to school after just a few minutes.

We come back from break to do science (and starting in September, social studies). I am taking my science and social studies topics from What Your Preschooler Needs to Know.

Depending on how much time is left, I fill in with either a file folder game, or a phonics game (I have acquired several good ones from Lakeshore Learning Materials)

Some supplies I recommend and have found extrememly useful/benicifial thus far include:

A shelf designated for your school supplies

Art Supplies

Math Manipulatives

A Planbook - or if you are a little bit crazy, two planbooks (I use the brown one for longterm, theme planning, and the blue one for short term planning - this allows me to adjust plans according to Hunter's progress)

An Interactive Calendar (this one is from Lakeshore)

A Cool Pointer for interacting with above calendar (dollar spot @ target!)

An adorable, chunky pencil

A Space Designated for school time, and Pocket Charts (these have an infinite number of uses, and I found my small ones in the dollar spot at target!)

And Finally:

A loving, encouraging, and super supportive husband! (seen here eating mushrooms at the Gilroy Garlic Festival)

An adorable, enthusiastic, eager preschooler