Last year when I was trying to figure out how to jump into homeschooling my three year old, I stumbled across Webbing Into Literacy. This program was designed for Head Start teachers in rural communities, but I found it perfect for our homeschooling needs. The site has both a rhyme a week section and a book a week section. We didn’t use the book a week instruction but we had a great time with rhyme a week. The program uses classic nursery rhymes and pre reading activities to teach phonological awareness. There are 28 rhymes with weekly lessons and the pattern is the same each week: Monday introduce the rhyme, Tuesday act it out, Wednesday introduce rhyming words, Thursday play the riddle rhyme game [...] Read more »

I can’t believe that our first year of preschool homeschool is over – it absolutely flew by. Our last week was actually spread over a couple of weeks as we were even less scheduled than usual (or not scheduled at all) while my parents were visiting. More important than any school work was reconnecting with MomMom and PopPop and the girls had a wonderful time doing that. This post contains affiliate links. Literacy and Language Arts: It’s probably not surprising that the girls were showered with gifts both from their Gruffalo birthday party and from their grandparents. My parents were visiting from the States and my husband’s parents came in from Botswana for the party so there are lots of new things to play with [...] Read more »

It’s been a little quiet in this space but that is because we have been very busy enjoying a visit from my parents. Mom Mom and Pop Pop arrived a little over a week ago and we have been having a great time catching up with them. It is so nice to see how easily the Littles reconnected with their grandparents even though it has been well over a year since they saw them last. Homeschool has been on a bit of a go slow but we’ve still managed to get in a few fun activities in. Literacy and Language Arts: We made word family wheels for Boo (and for Kooks too just because). I got the idea from Mrs. T’s First Grade Class. It’s [...] Read more »

Happy Earth Day! We celebrated Earth Day a little early but you can see our Earth Day lesson plans here and find seven Earth Day ideas for kids here. I hope you are having a wonderful day and that the weather wherever you are is nice enough to spend some time outside. I am having a hard time believing that we only have two weeks left before we finish our first year of preschool homeschool. This post contains affiliate links. Literacy and Language Arts: We worked on blending again this week with another game from Reading Rockets. I put some pictures from our alphabet card set on the table and said a word slowly, as if I were sounding it out. Boo then had to find the picture that [...] Read more »

It was an exciting week in Preschool Homeschool with lots of fun and a special reading milestone. This post contains affiliate links. Literacy and Language Arts: Boo read her first whole book this week! It was amazing! Okay, the book contains exactly four words (I, am, top & cat) but she read them all over and over and over again in different orders and combinations in an eight page book. The Progressive Phonics program we are using has books that we read together, I read the black words and she reads the red words. We try to read one of those books each day and, while you can print them out, we read them on the computer to save paper. I also have the Oxford [...] Read more »

  If you celebrate Easter, I hope it was a wonderful one! We incorporated an Easter theme into our homeschool last week. It was so much fun to build up the excitement and count the sleeps until the bunny came to hide the eggs. So, after the fact, here are our Easter Lesson Plans. This post contains affiliate links.  Literacy and Language Arts: Last week we took a break from literacy activities outside of Webbing Into Literacy and Progressive Phonics, but we did find a cute Spanish/English Easter coloring page at Spanglish Baby (created by Bebe Bilingual) which gave us a little extra Spanish practice. We are continuing to use the Little Pim Spanish DVDs and this was another way to bring some Spanish into our day [...] Read more »

I can’t believe we have completed week 30 of our Preschool Homeschool! My goal was 36 weeks so we will soon be finishing our first year. That just seems crazy! It’s amazing to look back on some of my early homeschool posts and see how much the girls have learned. Literacy and Language Arts: Boo is working her way through Progressive Phonics – we are still on the Alphabetti books that teach letter sounds but also include three letter words that Boo has to sound out and read using those letters. It’s a good place for us to be because, although Boo is pretty confident with her letter sounds, hearing the actual word after sounding it out is tricky. She will say the letter sounds [...] Read more »

I’m a little behind in posting this but last week was a good week for us. My husband’s car had been in the shop for major repairs and it was finally finished last week. I hadn’t been out of the reserve for five weeks and I had only left the house for two game drives during that time. To say I was going stir crazy would have been an understatement but we went to town on Saturday and had a great day out with the girls which cured my cabin fever for a while. Our preschool homeschool activities also helped us to keep our sanity during the weeks we were cooped up. Literacy and Language Arts: This week, while Kooks was napping, Boo and I [...] Read more »

I was a nervous mother to my babies. I remember fretting so much in their first year and breathing a huge sigh of relief at their first birthdays. I felt like if I’d managed to keep them alive during that first year when they looked so fragile and couldn’t tell me exactly what they needed that we would be ok. Mud Hut Mama turned one on Saturday and I felt a similar kind of relief. There have been some big frustrations over the past year and times that I thought I’d broken this blog but overall writing here has brought me a lot of joy and has connected me to so many of you who I never would have met otherwise. I’m hoping that blogging [...] Read more »