The First Day of Preschool

Yes, preschool but a little different than most. Daphne, myself, and another mom named Candace have decided to do a co-op type preschool with our children. Daphne and I are going to homeschool and Candace and her husband are thinking about it. The idea first formed when I asked a mom in our community if she had done preschool with her four girls and, if so, what. This family, the Huberts, have four girls (youngest is now in late elementary/middle school) who are great children and I thought she would be a good person to ask. Anywho, she told me that when her oldest two were preschool age she and five other moms got together and did a co-op preschool rotating between themselves as teachers and aides and also each other's homes. They put together a curriculum of unit studies and met once a week. Some of the moms ended up homeschooling all the way through school years, some until high school, and some never did. Thankfully, Lori let me borrow her folder to look through. I talked with Daphne about doing this and we also asked Candace to join.
As the three of us talked, we decided to loosely use a curriculum called "Little Hearts to Heaven" that Karen had given to Daph and me a few years ago. It's a great curriculum that you can use from ages 2-5 depending on what you add in. Each unit has five days worth of activities/work and covers letter recognition, early math, and Scripture over those five days. We decided to meet every other week but thought the focus would be more on social interaction than academics as it's more of a supplementation to what we're each doing at home.
Today went great. It was a good "first run" and we really got a good idea of what may work best in the future. Here are some pics from the day's activities...

All the kids laying around the "A" on our floor. Each child walked a stuffed animal to trace the "A" and then they each walked it themselves while everyone sang a song about the sounds "A" makes. It was really fun.
Storytime. We read some books the girls and I had gotten from the library. Earlier in the morning we had talked about how God created everything including the animals, environment, and us. The books we read were mostly about different animals and then we discussed again how God created it all.


Candace and Joseph. Joseph is only 16 months old, so he may or may not come every time. Our children are all really a good range from 3 1/2 to 16 months.
This is from yesterday. The girls have really enjoyed the mini easel Grandmama and Granddaddy gave MF for her birthday. Here's Eves drawing an "E."
Mary Fran with her beautiful creation. She likes to draw "snakes" as you can tell. :)