Simple Preschool and Kindergarten

 

When my oldest child was in the preschool and then kindergarten phase, I had lovely activities and exercises that we did each day.  Even with two or three children, I was able to manage crafts and nature walks and alphabet work and seasonal observances and number play.  But once I had one doing formal school, and once I had three other littles in various stages, I found it difficult to juggle all the balls and make that beautiful preschool environment happen consistently.

I found that I needed to be a bit more organized, which still being careful not to make "preschool" or "kindergarten" into a formal, scripted endeavor.  Our kids in this age still need mostly unstructured time to play in the way that fits their current developmental needs.

I gathered all my resources that I had used with the older siblings or acquired since then, and all my ideas for what I would like to do with the younger ones, and I made a list.  I listed all the things I would like to occasionally accomplish, and sorted those into categories.  I put the list in a dry erase sleeve, and on days we had time to fit in something, we selected from those lists.  We only did one item from each category in a day, and we crossed off the item when we did it so that we wouldn't choose that activity again until we cleared the list (usually once a week but sometimes less often).  That's it!

Sample Simple Preschool