Started Preschool this week!

So Ethan started preschool this week both outside and inside the home! :) Today is our first home preschool day. We started with a Beach theme which is fun! We've done a number of art projects and some printables and playing in the sandbox and reading beach themed books. This afternoon I think we will create a beach in a bottle and maybe use watercolor paints in spray bottles on the sand to change it colors. :)

I have a question though - how many hours in a day do you plan for projects & teaching vs. free play at this age? I'm wondering if I don't have enough teaching & projects? I thought we'd spend two days on each theme, but we are going through all the plans I have so maybe I either need more, or we'll do one theme each day? Thoughts???

Yay! For the preschool age, I would do school 1-2 hours a day and play and normal life the rest of the time.

Thanks for the reply!

How did I miss this one?! LOL

When my oldest was this age, we did learning around every corner, but no actual lessons. He disliked (and still does) coloring, so art was the one thing we didn't do with him. But he knew his alphabet (recognizing and the order), numbers up to 20 (same as alphabet) and knew 7+ shapes by the time he was 4 years old. We enrolled him in private preschool when he was 4 for the socializing and the principal was amazed at his intelligence during the "interview". He only expected him to know square, circle, triangle and star, but DS got confused when he saw all the other shapes and wasn't asked what they were. He said "But what about the oval, rectangle, and hexagon?!" and the principal laughed and said.. "I think we are good."

That's so funny about your DS! LOL

So far Ethan knows triangle, star and heart. He confuses circle/oval and just doesn't seem to get square or rectangle. He can recite numbers to 13 before he gets confused, but we are working on the 1=1 association still. Letters seem to stump him. *shrug* He LOVES art stuff so we are doing a lot of learning to cut straight lines with scissors, gluing practice, painting smaller items, taking stickers off paper etc. - basically a ton of fine motor activities. We are also working on matching games, ordering items by size, color etc. He has all the basic colors down, but colors like aqua he yells at me that it's blue! LOL