I work from home about 15 hours a week and out of the house 10-15 hours per week. I have been asked a few times from some awesome working moms how I manage my time between homeschooling, working, and looking so fabulous. Let me tell you this: I have no organizational skills and I have a hard time completing projects and I manage to do it so you can totally do it too! I will attempt to keep my mind focused long enough to break down my routine for you. Wish me luck.
I typically do a structured school time 3 days a week. I utilize every opportunity I can to teach in context but actually sit and do lessons 3 days. I rarely do it the same day each week. The cool thing about homeschooling a preschooler is that you can do school on Saturdays and they have no clue that it is unusual. I love 4 year olds.
CIRCLE TIME
We do "calendar time" 1st each day. I bought a Melissa and Doug magnetic calendar at the thrift store that looks like this:
It is pretty awesome. Everyday we go over:
1. Month, day, #, and year we are on
2. All of the months
3. Yesterday and tomorrow
4. What holidays are coming up
5. The weather
6. We count all the days in the month. I swear before we started doing this he could barely count to 10, now he can count further than I can (not saying much)
After Calendar we do some sight words, currently we are working on: Who, What, You, Where, When, and Two. I just use them like flash cards and run through them a few times.
We learn our fun topic of the day, right now it is spiders, last week it was space. I let him pick so we do a lot of weather related stuff and animals. This varies, some days we read about it, some days we watch a video, or talk about it.
Writing follows (his least favorite). I have tried to make this fun, really I have. We have tried writing in shaving cream, with chalk, upside down, and with his pee (joking) but the kid just doesn't love writing. So we do your basic worksheet and just try to get it done. I found all my workbooks at the Dollar Store, he seems to hate them just as much as the expensive ones. Some people don't agree with me using worksheets, they might say I am stifling him, or reining in his spirit or some shit. Really, I am just lazy and learning to write is hard without a ton of practice. So we practice. He will probably be in therapy for years because of it.
Math follows writing. Right now we are learning about money which has been super fun. We play store often and sometimes we play gambling go-fish. I know I know, I setting him up to be this guy:
A gambling addict that is in therapy with repressed memories of being forced to write "Gs" over and over and over while his mother chain smoked and guzzled wine in the background.
I digress
Often times in math we practice simple addition and subtraction, 1:1 correspondence, patterns or sequence.
We do science experiments often or a craft (usually some glitter and glue is involved, I suck at crafts) or just make some sort of mess to end circle time.
We rock out to different styles of music daily and discuss art. We read simple books together at nap time. He has worked his way through 12 books so far nearly by himself. The pride he feels when he reads a page by himself makes me feel all warm inside.
The entire "circle time" takes about 1/2 and hour.
I know it will take longer as he gets older but I feel confident that I will be able to stumble blindly through it. As far as the social aspect that everyone is so worried about he is enrolled in dance class, and swimming class. Sometimes I even take him to the store to see what other people look like. ;) I feel confident he will be out of my basement by the time he is 35.
I would love to hear what your routine looks like.
I just have to add that his brother spends most of his time destroying the preschool room or nursing. He is learning a lot too.
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