Preschool for my Troublemaker

For Alastor, almost 3 years old 

He's still a little young to pick up the Sonlight P4/5 curriculum we used with Gilgamesh last year, which was intended for 4- to 5-year-olds. 

At this stage, he needs to be doing something because if we don't include him, he'll be a little terror until he gets attention. Naturally. So we'll be using this:

Letter of the Week Preschool Curriculum by Confessions of a Homeschooler

I'm looking forward to this because there's a ton of pre-writing and very basic math (counting, graphing) that will be good practice for Alastor without overwhelming him with structured learning. It's really a lot of puzzles and play. 

To get us started on the right foot next Monday, we've already put up our Chicka Chicka Boom Boom letter tree:

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom letter tree

We'll be adding each letter as we "study" it. I think I'll make extra copies of the cute animal pictures, too, so we'll put up an ant hill for A, a butterfly for B, a caterpillar for C, and a dinosaur for D, etc. The knights will both love the ceremony of adding a letter to the tree and an animal to the scenery on the door. 

We'll reread this a lot:

On goodreads

FYI, the creator of this curriculum also has a K4 pre-Kindergarten program if you have a four-year-old just on the cusp of being ready for kindergarten. 

Aside from Letter of the Week and reading library books together, Alastor will no doubt hear some of the read-alouds we'll be doing with Gilgamesh, like Homer Price (a personal favorite), Charlotte's Web, and The Little House in the Big Woods. 

In addition, I plan to do a sort of workbox system with Alastor, using pictures of activities he does anyway. My hope is that the action of moving the Velcro picture from his Schedule to his All-Done Envelope on the side of the bookcase will give him a sense of accomplishment and keep him from getting bored with all the toys in the house at once. 

As for the baby? Petrus is still on a cycle of sleep, eat, smile, cry, sleep. I plan on holding him while teaching, but hope to do most of the hands-on stuff during his sleeping times.

It's going to be a challenging year for all of us. I don't think I even know what I'm getting into, homeschooling with three boys five and under. My faith will survive. That much I know! :)

Anybody else homeschooling preschool this year?