Developing a lesson Plan

Their are several objectives to creating a lesson plan that will work for your child. You can find plenty of free lesson plans on the web but sometimes you just want to do your own thing.

I have sort of developed my own guide to writing a lesson plan.

• what is the goal?
• what are the required materials?
• what are the step by step procedures to accomplish said goal?
• what basics (as in abc's, 123's etc) are you going to incorporate?
• what do you have for the child to work on independently when instruction is done.
• how will you close the activity, what will you review.

Now for a real example of a lesson plan we used last week

1. The goal: re-introduce a favorite book Chicka chicka boom boom & review alphabet
2. Materials needed: The book, Markers & printout of traceable coloring page of a coconut tree.
3. Step by step procedures: read book allowing child to say the letter when I point to it, encourage letter sounds, encourage tracing carefully and coloring creatively but carefully in the lines.
4. The basics covered: letter recognition, listening and recalling pars of the story & Tracing
5. Independent work: tracing and coloring tree
6. Close the activity by reviewing favorite parts of the book & encouragement for a job well done

Now I don't always write it all out sometimes its a plan in my head depending on complexity of the lesson. I do like to make sure I have a few things jotted down monthly in case I need to obtain a new book or supplies. I find lesson planning extra helpful for math & science.

Typical day in PreK

I thought I would put my daily basics out their for those who are looking for a jumping off point. Our "school" day starts roughly between 8:30-9am it depends on what time my husband leaves. The first thing we do is check the weather (helpful when planning outside time in the afternoon) We have a simple little bulletin board where we have a calendar and weather center we usethese I taped yarn loops to the backs so my daughter just has to put the loop on the tack. We then change the date, day and month if applicable. for this I have simple index cards where I wrote it all out we keep them in a ziploc tacked to the board. We then recite our bible verse (generally spend 2 weeks on one verse) I then generally have 2-3 worksheets either printed out or from books that she does while I prep breakfast and tend to my 16mth old. I have a simple file folder that says "today" on it where I keep her morning worksheets. After breakfast I let her spend about 30-45 mins on starfall while I clean up and play with the baby, check email etc. Around 10-10:30 the little one goes down for am nap and we work on more hands on stuff such as crafts, our abc project, flash cards etc. At this point unless she asks to do something else I let her have freeplay till lunch. Lunch usually happens between 12-12:30 I try to plan meals that can go with our lesson.. Like apples for A or red, a star shaped sandwich for our shape (you get the idea) After lunch we spend about 20-40 mins on what I call "core skill" this is the skill that we want to master (or try to master by weeks end) this can be anything from sequencing to rhyming words etc. We then spend about 10-15 minutes on penmanship and tracing. We then wrap up with "circle time" we have a book of the day and discuss our feelings, ideas, dreams etc. I ask simple comprehension questions about the story and sometimes have an art activity. Around 2-2:30 my 16mth old goes down for her pm nap and we go outside have free play, nature walk around the house, have a scavenger hunt.. and the newest is the retaining wall that she says is her "outside chalkboard" She loves learning and generally asks for more work, more crafts etc. I keep a good stock of supplies so I can make something up or we love the craft ideashere. I do allow for rest if she is sleepy, Tv time if she is not abusing it or if we plan to watch something educational. We do have days where she simply is distracted and wants to do nothing. We call these pajama days.. and lets face sometimes Mommy needs those days too.

This is a photo of one of our projects we did today for our school room wall and for number recognition.

Here is our bulletin board (to show our date/weather center)

Welcome to Educate and Relate.

I have been slowly working for sometime on getting a homeschooling blog & message board back on the web again. I have had some downtime this past week or so, therefore I was able to take my many piles of chicken scratched notes and bring them to life back on the web. This blog will provide tips, tricks and incite into my world and ways of homeschooling. You will find my favorite 3 little words are Cheap, discount & Free. I have homeschooled preschool-5th grade, and prior to becoming a mother one of my many jobs was teaching PreK. I hope to be able to help many homeschooling families though this adventure.