Getting Ready for Homeschool!

I am so excited about doing homeschool preschool with Zoey. She is excited too. She looks at the shelves where all of the activities and supplies are set up and says, "For preschool."

Next week begins homeschool for us. I love the flexible schedule. This week is a major prep week for us. Zoey is having a birthday party for all of her friends (and ours) in the area on Saturday. Which she is also very excited about. Then preschool will begin the next Monday. I have a lot to get done.

Zoey drawing on the table we will use for homeschooling most of the time.

There are still many details I have to prepare for our homeschool, but I have the major look down. I have a shelf (a re-purposed baker's rack) that holds the majority of our school supplies including our workbooks and some crafts. She has a pencil box for pencils and one for crayons. We also have buckets for markers, glue/scissors and stamps. All of the other crafts supplies, including paints, are tucked away in the buckets. I have my workbooks and lesson plans at the ready as well as lots of extra paper and construction paper for spontaneous creations.

The table set up of our homeschool station. Everything at our fingertips!

I am still working on getting the morning planner set up, but I do have the weather board up. I will add a calender and a countdown at least. It will be where we start our day to discuss what we are going to do that day. I also have a large whiteboard that will be part of this activity that I have to add hangers to so I can add it as well.

A baker's rack transformed into a house for school
supplies. All our crafts are in the buckets.

The biggest project I need to work on, besides continuing my lesson plans past the first week or two, is setting up the crafts before the lesson. I know most traditional teachers have to do this step to accommodate many children in a class. I'm sure most homeschooling parents also have this set up easily. For some reason, this is one of my weak points. I have all the materials prepared and even the worksheets, but getting the necessary crafts set aside ahead of time is something I am going to have to focus on.

The weather chart to begin our morning planner.
The rest will be added this week.

Our homeschool preschool includes all of these wonderfully made plans and projects. But I believe one of the most important things we can teach our children is about how we live. Our "schooling" won't just be at a table. I plan to adventure outside, encourage Zoey to cook, clean and play with me. We also add a lot of multimedia to our day, including educational TV and even video games. These are wonderful ways to learn that Zoey already loves. We will also add a biblical portion to our homeschooling. We will read and study stories from the bible and learn how to include those lessons into life.

Learning goes beyond the school room and includes all of life and play.

I am very excited for our homeschool preschool. I can't wait to begin and see what all we can accomplish this year. Zoey is also very excited. She is the reason I began this endeavor in the first place. She has a true love for learning. I wanted to harness that in a focused as well as play environment. I hope to keep that love of learning alive forever really. I still have that itch to learn and grow, which is why I am so excited about homeschool as well. It will be a wonderful adventure for both of us!