Time for School

I've been wanting to start doing a little at home mini preschool for Lily for a while now. It's hard to know where to start. I came up with a bunch of topics or themes to focus on and then started thinking of activities I could do to relate to the themes. I got a lot of good ideas from a packet my mom e-mailed me called Kindergarten Here I Come! And I figured I could order some books online from my library in advance for each week's theme. I could find songs online and make visual aids to go along with them as well as games or puzzles for Lily to do. Some of you probably think I'm crazy because Lily is only 2 years old, but trust me - I know this is something she'd totally go for! Lately she's been asking me: "What else can we do today, Mommy?" all throughout the day. She just gets tired of playing by herself, and I get tired playing with her or have other things I need to do and I don't want her zoning out in front of the TV all the time. So I think this will be a good way to direct my play with her so I don't get bored and fall asleep, and teach Lily some fun things about this incredible world we live in! 

So - I am motivated! I came up with pages of ideas, and found a bunch of book recommendations to look into, but I still haven't started school. I think my problem is I would secretly prefer to have all the curriculum and materials planned and ready to go before I begin. And I am wondering how best to plan and store all that stuff because we just don't have a lot of extra space. I know I should just prepare some and get started and keep preparing along as we go, there are just some days I know I won't have time or energy and I want to keep it moving. I overwhelm myself... I also want to have fun teaching tools that don't cost a lot of money, so I will probably be making a lot of stuff myself. We took a little trip to the Learning Store the other day. If I had space and money it would be so easy to come up with all the things I needed in one big shopping spree! They have some fun stuff in that place, but it's also pretty pricey...for example, a box of large beads with shoelaces to string them onto - $20. A good skill to learn - fine motor and all, but really -- how long do you expect a child to be interested in that, and how much do those materials really cost? I don't know, it just didn't seem worth it to me. I'd rather get some plain wooden beads somewhere for cheap, use our fine motor skills to paint them pretty and string them on some extra pair of shoelaces we have around the house. Does anyone know where I can get some big beads for a good price?

I looked through the whole store mainly for ideas. I got a few craft items I knew we'd need and that were just as cheap there as anywhere, and wrote down things I wanted to check the prices on elsewhere. I want to make a flannel board and do stories and songs on it with Lily. Lily loves to sing songs with hand motions, and has a really good attention span for decent length stories. I just know she'll love to be part of making picture songs and stories. Has anyone ever made a flannel board before? I think I have some material that will be great, I'm just wondering if you can laminate paper cut outs and then glue some flannel to the back and use that or does it work best if the cutout is made out of the flannel or felt. And do the board and pieces work best if they are the same material? ie: does flannel work on felt and vice-versa? I really hope somebody reading this can answer this question. 

I looked at some Preschool theme books for ideas and found a couple I really liked the look of:

I could see myself using some things in each book, but not others -- so I was having a hard time deciding which I should get or if I should just go with my own ideas. I went home and looked online and found one of the books I liked for about $10 cheaper on Amazon (and I have free shipping) so I got it. It's supposed to come today, and I'm so excited! I think it will be good to get me going because it's organized according to months so I can just turn to October and pick out the things I like from the book and from my own ideas and just do it. It will be nice not having to come up with everything from scratch. I think it is good for me to create a lot of the teaching aids though, because they will probably store in a lot smaller space than all the nifty toys I could have bought at the store. I may still get the other one later (especially if I can find it used or cheaper). I also found this great book of chants, rhymes, & finger-plays that was really well organized by theme I could totally see myself using with a flannel board.

I may be going overboard in planning, but I don't think so. I want Lily to really love learning and be interested, and I'd love to see if homeschooling would be a good option for us - so this is like a little experiment in that. Plus - once I have all the materials we can just reuse and add to them next year! I think a lot of successful ventures can attribute their success to good planning. You know not every idea is going to work out with a toddler, and I'd rather have too many ideas than not enough. Oooh - there's the UPS guy - gonna go check out my book and get planning for school!