Organization

Getting this area labeled at the end of last week REALLY helped make school much more efficient this morning. 

The top boxes are filled with the manipulatives we need for each corresponding day . 

Extras are now organized as well as my crafting supplies. 

Book basket, teachers manuals, activity box and check list for both curriculum. I also have a school supply box with crayons , scissor, glue stick , pencils etc.

I grab that week's file folder and books to add to my blue tote and I'm ready for our week

Progress of Organization

I thought I'd share how the Lesson Plan form has been changing as I get more in to the rhythm of our learning process with a 22 month old. I'm a visual person so I definitely like the color, organization and symmetry of a spreadsheet. My prior professional experience gave me quite a bit of exposure to Excel. I know, nerd alert, but it works for me :-D

You can see we will have daily tasks for our basic learning that can happen as we work on our two major themes for the week. How M experiences those concepts each day will change.

For now, I'm going to use a guideline for what I've some to see is the primary ways we learn through Printables, Manipulatives and Arts/ Crafts. The days that can fluctuate every week. There will be:

1. Intro day on Monday that will be about every day living learning with toys, books, conversations with mommy, errands, doing laundry etc. I listed a few toys but, we never run out of teachable moments.

Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, the core days will include : 

2. Printables Day- Activities with corresponding print outs to help with the major themes and  concepts

3. Craft Day- Art & Crafts. Aka: M gets to wear his smock day

4. Manipulatives Day - Montessori style activities that are M driven like the sensory bin.

5. Field Trip/ Assessment - Just to give us a planned activity for the day. We work well with focus & structure. I have Ladies Bible Study each week at my church which also gives M some group play time with other children. 

 I have listed all the resources at our disposal so I can pick which we will do that day. It's not my intent to  fill every waking moment of M's with an activity. We do school for about an hour and a half a day broken up by nap and lunch time. M learns in maximum 20 minutes spurts, then he goes off to play. He'll come back or respond when I suggest and then I know he's ready to learn again. The ebb and flow to our day works perfectly for us.

Screen shot of our week at a glance

Books & DVD's happen through out the week: I read to the Bible stories and repeat scripture to the boys during breakfast, lunch and snack.  We have a reading chair and box that has all of our basic academic books I've posted about before by a reading chair. M through out the day will bring me which ever books he wants and says 'read pease'. While I nurse D, I have accumulated quite a few Educational and Bible DVD's for M to watch that apply to our numbers, colors, shapes, letters and bible stories. D has to feed in the football hold. Mommy doesn't feel comfortable being mobile with a baby in that position using a shield. We make that time as positive and constructive as possible.  This is our phase in life and I remind myself  both the joys and challenges are temporary. Life's too short for guilt. Where was I before I felt the need to defend our choices?? Anyway.....

I've spent the last few days organizing Printables, Manipulatives and Craft supplies. The Arts and Crafts required some extra TLC. Tubs, boxes, cups and caddies help keep all the craft supplies handy for what ever M is inspired to do.  The materials listed in the first column can be used with any Letter, Number, Color, Shape, Bible or Unity Study Craft. The craft idea list is great for vocabulary and counting too :-)

Craft Ideas for 26 of our 43 weeks of learning.
14 of those left over weeks are Unity Study based with built in crafts
So, I have 3 weeks of craft ideas to come up with
and the first one isn't until February.

 I'm trying to streamline the Craft process. I'm efficient, not necessarily creative. So I've researched ideas to help inspire me on Craft Days. Once I feel the process itself is not time consuming, I can start adding some other fun activities I have in mind. The result of organization give me a more peaceful feeling and also eliminates distractions in our surroundings. Plus, we donated our old small TV and stand to charity over the weekend, so that freed up some space in our playroom.

Planning

After looking through many planning resources, the planning and assessment pages from 1+1+1=1 worked best for me. I have started some initial assessments based on just playing, watching some DVD's and our test runs ( go to August on the side of this page and the drop down menu will display if you want to see the test runs) so I can go from here.

Here are my planning sheets so far. They will be added to as we find activities and exercises that are effective and cross off ideas as we find out that the boys either aren't ready for or doesn't help learn that information/ skill.  I'm not necessarily following what it says per day, but used this planning tool as a gathering of all materials, ideas and resources. There is one for alphabet, bible, lapbook unit studies, colors, numbers and shapes. I also just came across this post on Ingles 360 about teaching the alphabet based on whether your student is a visual, tactile, auditory, physical or multisensory learner. This will definitely add ideas to my planning sheets.

Bible

Colors

Lapbook Unit Studies

Numbers

Shapes

Alphabet

An initial assessment I preformed with M on primarily his upper case letters this morning. So August was in blue pen, and I'll use a different color with each check so I know when he reached the goal. I changed the headings to suit me as well.

I also placed an Amazon order this morning for the last of my priority one items to start next week, we are counting down to the start of our Tot school :-) 4 days!

Lessons Plans

A Teacher's Plan: Templates

The Mom Binder project is done for now to the extent it can be. The Printables section is really the most unfilled. I will print out paper materials as we go along. Most of what we are doing is activity not paper driven since M is only 21 months old.

The second unfinished section is Lesson Planning. So, I'm looking for some ideas as how to schedule out our time by day and hour. This site was great inspiration! I'm going to start planning out a month at a time and see how that works. I have chosen at least through preschool to go with the spiral teaching method. Since I know our local public school district's Kindergarten Readiness Plans centers mostly around letters, numbers, shapes and colors, I will teach those core concepts in increasing degrees of difficulty for the next 3 years. That will bring us to the fall M turns 5. Year one of preschool - age 2- will be speaking and identification. Year two of preschool - age 3- will be phonics and one to one correspondence. Year 3 - age 4- will involve writing and counting to 20. Bible, life & social skills, art, music, PE, and unit studies will be taught each year.

Age 2 Overview

Weekly Lesson Plan Forms

Planning Ahead

Mom Binder

For the next few days, I'll be getting organized on paper. I bought my 3 ring binder, sheet protectors and card stock. I'm happily printing away my version of this. Yes, she and I chose the same blog layout. I'll update this post later with my results :-))

I've updated this post with the cover and TOC for my Mom binder.