Starting preschool with Luna

We started preschool! I had decided to wait until after Luna turned four in Oct before doing any school at all. Then last week I was going out of my mind trying to keep her busy little self occupied. So I bought a preschool book and then spiraled into true homeschool mom. We are doing this for real. Gotta buy a pleated jean jumper now I guess. And we love it (five days in so I guess this is the honeymoon). Thriftbooks can have all my money along with Amazon. I have done great with my New Years spending freeze… except when it comes to Luna. Then I throw caution to the wind because she NEEDS a play dough set and 17 books on outer space.

Her preschool book is the Morning Binder from Gentle and Classical Press. I made the mistake of buying the full preschool bundle in digital form- unaware of how much printer ink that would use up. Holy smokes. It would have been better to buy it all in book form. Anyway, it is exactly what I wanted. It’s a wonderful book and Luna loves it. On the first page it asks her how she’s feeling and she circles the correct emotion. Every day she excitedly circles HAPPY. “I AM SO HAPPY, MAMA!!!! ARE YOU HAPPY TOOOOOO???” Aaron did a couple activities with her one day while I was gone and texted me that Luna told him,”Dada, I LOVE preschool so much!” Her little pig tails just fly around doing preschool and it makes me so happy.

This preschool bundle also includes beautiful flash cards. Which I can print off at any time I want now! For the affordable price of one entire ink cartridge plus a laminator! Haha! 

This is our current set up. Play dough, watercolors, a piggy bank (“Mama, that is a bunny bank. You do not know animals”), Leapfrog pad, Morning Binder, and a lot of our favorite books (almost all of my best books were bought for me by Karen so it’s nice to have the right connections when starting homeschool). And a baby under the table.

My day starts a little earlier now. I’m up around 5 to take care of Daphne and morning chores. We do our preschool which only takes about 20 minutes. We read books and have breakfast. We go for our walk. We go to my job. We come home and take naps (the girls) or drink coffee (me). We thrive on routine and somehow adding school is, for now, really bringing a lot of happiness to our days.

Preschool is not just school right now. It’s also one on one time which I am learning Luna craves and needs badly. Her spirit is so happy by nature. But she is constantly begging for attention and it can frustrate me at times as I tell her to please go play. We do everything together all day so in my mind, we are spending all this time together. But it isn’t necessarily focusing on her entirely. With preschool my focus is on her alone. It gets broken up into small amounts of time throughout the day. Read a book during breakfast, color a page later on, read another book an hour later, do an activity of some sort before nap, etc. I’ve noticed that now she doesn’t complain as much when I tell her it’s time to have play time alone, and she is more satisfied all day. The difference has been night and day, and really eye opening for me.

A bedtime tea party with chocolate and books. I looked at books like these when I was pregnant with Luna (I also researched homeschool curriculums and wanted so badly to buy some, but Aaron asked me if it wouldn’t make more sense to just wait til our kids are at least born to buy their school?). So I was pretty excited to get them from the library and make it an event to read them with her. She was bored to tears. So we ended up having her “read” them to me instead and had a great time. Reading An Egg is Quiet,”This is an egg. And this is an egg. Here is an egg. And 1, 2, 7, 22, 18, 40, 4, 5 eggs. Wow. This is lots of eggs. There is an alligator.”