Trying to Round Out Our Preschool Experience

We are doing great with my current plan for preschool right now.  Lydia loves learning and once we get started with a subject, we often spend 45 minutes or more on it because she wants to keep going.  As I've mentioned, right now we're doing reading, math, and memorization.  I got to thinking about my teaching style and our preschool as it is, and it occurred to me that I'm not a project-doer.  I have never loved doing crafts more than 2 or 3 times a year.  It is just not something I am naturally attracted to.  But when I thought about what preschool should be like, I realized that I want my daughters to be able to do fun stuff like that.

After talking to my husband about it, he agreed.  Most of our memories from early schooling are of fun projects we did, and he especially doesn't want our kids to miss out on those types of experiences.  As a result, I think I'm going to try to follow a preschool curriculum, complete with books, crafts, and fieldtrips.  I could do this on my own, but I think that because I don't really want to do it, it probably wouldn't happen if I had to piece it together.



The curriculum I'm planning on following is the free preschool one over at Wee Folk Art.  It is a waldorfy, seasons-based curriculum, but it appears to be very gentle and the crafts appeal to me.  We are right in time to start the Harvest Time one, too.  My plan is to do week one starting next week.  I already have the books for it from the library even!  I'm not going to do the art appreciation or poems because I already have my own plan for those, but everything else is fair game.  I think I might even attempt the quilt!

Another thing I'm adding in is art appreciation and starting up music appreciation again.  I'm still happy to follow Ambleside Online's classical music appreciation.  This term they are studying Debussy.  I made a playlist of the recommended songs and will be playing it every day while the girls are playing.  For fine art, they are studying Renoir.  I've ordered prints of the 6 paintings and am going to put them on the wall in the playroom so the girls will see them often.  We'll also talk about the paintings' names every day and maybe a little about the individual paintings too.

I'm sure I'll go into detail more as we progress through all this, but this is my new plan!