A Song for Everything: A Little Home-School Pre-School for Resa

This year while my oldest three kids attend brick-and-mortar schools I will be doing a little homeschoolin to get Resa Rie ready for next year, when she will attend Kindergarten.

Now, most real homeschoolers I know don't do preschool, successfully covering pre-k curriculum in the first weeks of Kindergarten or just introducing their children to the concepts through life. When my oldest, L, was 4 we opted to homeschool her, too, but I was pregnant and naps quickly became more important. However, being a girl, the oldest, and the only grandchild meant that she still learned her letters, numbers, the days of the week, and a few other things - and that was mostly from books and conversations, not PBS Kids! When she went straight to Kindergarten she was fine. We knew that Ben would benefit from attending Pre-K4 and we were right - it was a good investment and really helped him do well in Kindergarten. JF, of course has been in preschool for three years, as that was how he received speech therapy.

Resa, though, is in a different place than her siblings before her and so we will do actual homeschool with her. But when I say that please know it will be super casual and laid back. 

She already can identify all the shapes, colors, numbers 1-10, and about 1/4 of the alphabet. She also sorta knows how to write her name and how to say most of her prayers. We'll need to solidify the Hail Mary, Our Father, and Glory Be, though.

My other goals - which we have a whole entire year to accomplish - are to teach Resa:

- the days of the week (we got a song for that)

- the months of the year (we got a song for that one, too)

- how to identify the letters of the alphabet

- how to write the letters of the alphabet

- how to write numbers 1-10

- how to count to 20 on her own, 100 with me

- her address (another song)

- my phone number (yet another song)

- how to writer her first and at least sorta write her last name

Days of the week song: the days of the week sung to O My Darlin'. It works in Spanish, too.

Months of the year song: Singing the months through to the tune of Ten Little Indians with "these are the months of the year. Good job!" at the end. 

The address song is our address to the tune of Ten Little Indians (the second half). So, for example and not my real address:
Two-Fifteen Oak Tree Avenue / Chicago Illinois!

My phone number is sung to Knick-Knack Paddy Whack. Is that what the song even called? Anyways, again not my real phone number:
123-456-7891 with a knick-knack paddy whack give my mom a call / her name is Bonnie.
It works. My older kids don't want to sing it to people but they have used it to remember my number so grown ups can call me. #winning

Other resources - books I'll be using:
Catholic Icing's Preschool Curriculum

Various Usborne Wipe Clean books

This summer we had a pretty good run for going to the library and reading books. I'm hoping to continue that with Resa and spend some time reading classics with her. I think I'll make a list of A-Z books (like A for Alexander and the Horrible...Day - sorta like what Haley did here) and loosely try to follow that through the weeks. We'll see. I call myself a fake homeschooler (unlike the "real" homeschoolers I referenced) because my standards are loose and low and none of it quite feels legit, yaknowwhatI'msayin?

And I have changed up my shelves a bit to make things a bit more schoolish. We'll see how long this lasts but yay for mason jars, toys my kids were given, and Target dollar bins!

I figure two days a week for 30 minutes will be great. We'll probably start after Labor Day - once the big kids have settled in school and our home is off to its new rhythm. Honestly, I am really glad for this time with Resa. She is so peaceful and sweet, the middle child with no health issues or anything else to call attention to her, and so it's easy to let her be. It'll be good to intentionally sit down with her and work with her. One more year for her to be with me and be my little baby girl.

That got sappy so we'll wrap this up. If you have a favorite book for my list or another resource you'd love to tell me about please share!