Preschool With the Letter L {Intentional Preschool}

Welcome to Intentional Preschool! This is a weekly update where I share our journey through preschool (and fun “learning time” for our little tot too!). To see all posts, you can view my Intentional Preschool category!

~Shelby is currently 3 1/2 years old~

This is going to be more of a journey through pictures than anything else. We had an amazing first week! Shelby was so excited to see her Raising Rock Star Preschool board! She loved her “First day of Preschool” sign and all of the special treatment that came with it (we painted our finger nails and our “piggies” for the big day!)

Below is an over view of our preschool board. I know I have said this a trillion times, but our preschool room is currently sharing space with our guest bedroom while we renovate our basement. Hence the items are all staged on dressers, couches, beds and the like! But this is all Shelby knows so she is thrilled!

We are traveling through the Raising Rock Stars curriculum created by Carisa at 1+1+1=1. This curriculum is free (or you can pay $10 for one convenient download and some added perks, which I did and I am happy I did!) and it focuses on Godly character traits first which is key. We are working on developing a love for learning as well as making sure we have a happy heart. Carisa, as a homeschool mama and previously professional teacher (though she is still very clearly a pro) has just the approach that works for Shelby. We love it. LOVE it.

Look at all that “L” stuff! I happened to have a leopard pillowcase and we used that as our “table cloth” for the week. We read lots of great books and covered all of the concepts introduced. She knows her verse by heart and absolutely loved all of her popsicle props! We read Nobody Laughs at a Lion (a clear favorite!), Llama llama nighty-night, our Letter L book (from this Baby Einstein collection) and My ABC Bible Verses.

Shelby LOVED her calendar time. On the first day she kept asking “when are we going to actually start preschool?” because she saw the preschool table behind her. I told her “this is preschool too!” and then she was ok with it. But after the first day (after getting to touch and feel all of the letter L stuff) she enjoyed her calendar/character time more! We chose this calendar and I am thrilled. It has different cards for holidays! We love it!!

Our calendar and character board are based heavily on Carisa’s set up for her calendar connection. I omitted some items that are far above Shelby and focused more on counting the 100 days of school (middle on the blue sheet), the weather/season (left on the orange sheet), songs for months of the year (yellow sheet), days of the week (purple sheet) and a few miscellaneous songs and the books of the Bible (we haven’t started that yet). Those are on the orange sheet in the top right corner. The big “L” that you see in the middle on the green sheet is a special curriculum about virtues for our little girls/boys (mine is the girl version). I will be sharing more about that later….soon, but later.

The RRSP curriculum provides me with the basics (a core curriculum with preschool/kindergarten learning skills mixed in). It is much easier for you to view the RRSP page yourself to see the lesson plan and approach. No need for me to reinvent the wheel! Something the child works on throughout this curriculum is writing. Shelby does not like (or should I say “didn’t” like) writing or drawing (she is a master cutter and painter!). I don’t push her but I give her fun options. She had no interest in tracing the lines on her “getting ready for L” page. So we slipped the page into her brand new Crayola dry erase activity board and voila! She loved it! By the end of the week she was writing her letter L (tracing, but with a pencil!) with no help from me. Rockstar!

We LOVE our All About Reading (pre-reading) curriculum. This is a perfect add-on to our RRSP curriculum. Here, Shelby is decorating her Llama (buttons, yarn, marbles, you name it!). We are following the lessons in order, but I am using the sheets in the order we are following for preschool. They are in order of writing-ease (since she isn’t a fan of writing, I want to make it easier on her). We start with L. Next week will be T, then H and then, well, all the other letters in some fantastic order that I didn’t have to come up with.

And here is why we love our AAL curriculum. Ziggy (the zebra)! Shelby loves Ziggy. I could leave the room for an hour and she would have no clue. Ziggy would be there. And that is all that really matters. Like the chalk board in the back? That is one of the decorations Karli made while I was teaching Shelby. Gotta love tot time I will be doing a full review of our AAL curriculum soon, so you will be seeing plenty more Ziggy!

Did I mention she is a master cutter? Good. She wanted more cutting and I thought, let’s stick with preparing our letters from tot school (another 1+1+1=1 curriculum that we love). She loved doing these (and I believe it is why she is so great with cutting!). Here she is cutting her letter L. But she decided to make “a car wash” instead of cutting it out. I was laughing *hysterically*!

It wouldn’t be preschool without a dance party! We did this each day! We were learning about letting our light shine (letter L) so we danced and sang to This Little Light of Mine every day! Our favorite version is on the Cedarmont Kids CD. We LOVE this album. We have the three disc collection. She was a dancing queen

Now let’s not forget about little bit! This little girl wanted to be just like her big sister. So we called it her first day of tot school. She was thrilled

She spent the morning coloring on the chalk board, putting puzzles together and dot painting. My girls are obsessed with dot painting!

Below is a picture of a few of our “busy bags” that I put together for Karli. I have every intention of sharing them with you but I want to give them a good run so I can be sure they actually keep my little one busy. I pieced a bunch together in pencil bags (that zip) and store them in a drawer. She is free to take them as she pleases, but I do “ask” that she cleans one up before grabbing another. But my main goal is to keep her busy while I am teaching Shelby. So I don’t rule with an iron fist in this area

That about sums up week one. I am about to start week 2 (letter T) with Shelby in just 2 1/2 hours! Yes, this post is a bit last minute. These pictures take a lot of work to get together and I think I thought I could move faster than I can!

Are you using the RRSP curriculum? Are you a preschool mama?

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