Pate Preschool

The Pate Preschool officially opened today, and off to a great start! For months now the Hubby and I have been chatting about Baby Man. See Baby Man is not a bad kid, not by a long shoot, we both could see a lot of restlessness in him lately. Not in a physical kind of way, but a lack of being challenged mentally.  We talked a lot of wanting to place in him some sort of preschool, but being an one car family preschool wasn't going to work for us.

Over the past few weeks I have been throwing this idea around in my head of doing some sort of preschool at home with Baby Man. I was totally overwhelmed even thinking about this. Where in the world would I start? Do I even want to home school? Is is worth it? He is only 2 and half, is it even time?

A funny thing started happening. Home school starting smacking me in the face. Last week four mommies I know started homeschooling their kiddos, two of the families have little ones that are homeschooling too. That's when I started thinking that maybe I could actually do this. Maybe. Scrolling through blogs upon blogs for ideas and help, I stumbled across so many different things. Some where very helpful, some where life changing, and some where weird & hilarious not my thing.
Finally after hours of reading, two cups of coffee, and my eyes crossing, I found it. The perfect plan for us.

 It is an amazing curriculum created by a home school mom with an degree in early childhood education. There are printables, lesson planning print outs, step by steps, how to's, everything you need to feel confidante and succeed.   My favorite thing is that she focuses more on guided play learning , then "school" for these little ones. As I was clicking around her site I found another great "curriculum". Raising Rock Stars, is a curriculum to teach your children the bible.

Philippians 2:15

so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe.

Matthew 7:34

Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.

Just like for Tot School there are step by step ideas, printables, and memory verses. My favorite part, is the memory verses line up with the letter of the week in the Tot School curriculum.  Another great thing about the Raising Rock Stars is she suggest you start your week on Sunday nights with bible reading with Daddy! I don't know about you but the Hubby works a lot so any time we can all do something together like this I'm all in.

Needless to say, I was excited to start. I spent Sunday afternoon printing off the first week's lessons: coloring sheets, cutting sheets, lacing cards, puzzles, all A themed, and the coloring sheets for the story of Creating. Laminating some of the printables. (By the way I might have developed and unhealthy attachment to the laminating machine. It rocks my world. ) After a few hours of printing, cutting, organizing, Pate Preschool was finally set up. I really love my little preschool corner. I can't really say its a whole room but I love it.

I found a lot of things at the dollar store, including the posters. They had so many different types of "educational" posters. Everything from word tenses, colors, shapes, and phonics. I was impressed, plus its two posters for a dollar. Yes please. We also used a lot of chalk board paint and old formula cans for storage which actually work great! Needless to say our preschool nook didn't cost us much. I already had the chalk board paint (which runs around $15 at a home improvement store) the shelf, and the storage boxes (all from Ikea: the boxes where five for $2 and the shelf was $30 with hanging studs for the walls). All the little things I bought for Baby Man at the dollar store totaled right about $20. The most expensive thing I bought was the laminating paper which runs around $40. Total we spent about $60 for everything. By no means do you need to do it this way. The way I am wired I need assigned spaces. It helps me (and I think Baby Man) get in to a school mind set, but more about that tomorrow. I'll be posting about day one of Pate Preschool.