Go Team Wood

This week we started a new project here at the Wood Family Compound. We’re calling it Preschool. (cleverly named, eh?) As we are coming upon age two, we are trying out a homeschool/preschool program. It’s pretty loose and informal, but has a plan. I like to think of it as the This American Life preschool. (BTW How cool would that be?) Each week we choose a theme and pick a variety of books and activities on that theme, all with the notion of having some structure in our days, keeping monotony at bay, and maybe even learning some basic life skills.

The themes have been chosen based on things interesting to almost-2-year-old boys, and which we can easily incorporate free or incredibly inexpensive activities to go along with our units. Our first week is Bugs, Bees and Butterflies. We have checked a wide variety of books from the library, plus culled several from our own collection. We have borrowed puzzles from the library and have an outing planned to the local nature center’s butterfly exhibit. We are planning to fit these activities into our regular days, reading books on the topic of the week in addition to attempting art projects, listening to music, and stressing other essential skills like manners, colors, numbers, letters, shapes and sensory enrichment.

Our calendar is filled with upcoming themes and outings, including the Beach, On the Farm, Trains, Public Safety, Construction, Zoo Animals and lots more. Hopefully we can find fun activities around our community to add to the books and puzzles and create a nice, well-rounded experience for our duo while spending very little or, better yet, no money. I am certainly not experienced or at all credentialed in preschool education, but I do know that something is better than nothing, and we should capitalize on these guys’ passion for books and exploratory nature and try to make the most of our days. It is easy to fall into a rut or to just turn on the TV, but I hope we can avoid that and maybe all three of us will learn something in the meantime.

There is a new category for posts here at Go Team Wood for our preschool adventures, and we welcome any thoughts or ideas for cheap/free things to enrich our toddler’s informal preschool education. We will update as we learn and do new things, should be fun.