Luke's First Week of Preschool

My baby is in Preschool.  Sniff.  This is one of those times when I am so glad we decided to homeschool, because I'm not sure I could handle sending him off to school already.  I'm pretty sure it would physically pain me.  In fact, I'd probably keep him home another year.  Or two.

But that's irrelevant.  I get to keep all my little ducklings here with me, and that makes my heart happy. 

Most of the time anyway.

We started school about a month ago but I'm just now getting the pics online.  I found that although
planning for preschool is sooooo much fun, it also takes time.  At first I was spending more time planning for my little guy than the other three put together.  Of course, part of that is because I found Pinterest and all of the preschool materials and ideas linked up over there.  Swoon.....

I'm using the Raising Rock Stars preschool materials from 1+1+1=1.  It's a good, solid letter curriculum with Bible verses and activities for each week.  And it's completely FREE.  She does have something that you can pay a little bit for and it has all the printables for the year in one file.  I would have done that just for convenience, but before she had it ready I had already printed out almost everything.  You can still get the printables for free if you download them individually.  You can also pay for access to the "member's only" section which has powerpoint presentations for each week and some other fun stuff.

  I copied her sample board which holds the items that we do every morning.

I found this cork board at Target.  I love the black frame and it's a great size.

My sweetie!  He really enjoys tracing things, so I put some of his papers in page protectors so he can use dry erase markers over and over.

Those "pinchy things" as we call them are the bomb!  My Kindergartener uses them too and her handwriting has vastly improved.  You can buy them at Amazon.   

I also found Totally Tots, which has ideas for making animals and other things out of letters.  We made a lion out of a capital L (I forgot to take a picture), and we made a lollipop out of a lowercase l.

My child also LOVES to cut with scissors.  I had no idea!  So I try to give him something to cut out every day.  Each week, his memory verse is printed in strips that he gets to cut out and tape together.

Yes, apparently this day we were still in our pajamas.  Oh well.  Also, I had never actually taught any of my children how to use scissors.  I'm not sure why, except that I guess they learned when they went to preschool and we weren't homeschooling then.  Cutting is a complicated little task!  It took him a little while to get it down, but now he does a great job.

And I have a little clip of Luke saying his first memory verse.  It was a really long one so I was shocked when he had it memorized by day three.

The Raising Rock Stars curriculum is a great base, and we add some other things to it.  

I so adore all the printables at Preschool Printables!  She has lesson packs with just enough materials for a full week of activities.  I try to find a pack that goes with the letter we are working on.  For instance, we are working on the letter F this week so I downloaded her Fireman pack.  She has tracing pages for numbers and letter, "circle the picture that's different" pages, puzzles, size sequencing, etc.  Seriously, this lady is amazing and all of her stuff is free too!

We also did some hands-on activities, but I'll put those in a separate post.  I'm off to check out some more printables.  I'm constantly amazed at all the fine people who put such great stuff on the internet for others to use for free.  You are all truly appreciated.  Thanks!