Nearing Summers End

With just a couple weeks left of summer, I thought I'd give an update on our progress. The summer preschool program went very well. With some suggestions from our therapist, Dylan is much more verbal. He will repeat 3-4 word phrases and give some spontaneous answers. He can follow simple directions. He can bounce a ball. He has also become much better at identifying animals, letters, numbers and colors! His self limited diet has expanded to include several new foods. We have lots to be thankful for.

One of the ladies I hired to help over the summer will be continuing on with us through the school year. The other helper will be available as needed. It may seem like a small thing, but I am so very thankful that both of these ladies showed up for work every day and did their jobs. And they genuinely care about Dylan.

Looking forward, I have decided to continue with an at-home preschool program to supplement his actual preschool. I am at work making new material and formulating his lesson plans. We plan to have two therapists, each here 2 hours per day in addition to his 3 hrs of school per day. This is sure to put extra stress on him at first, but if history is any indication, he will adapt fine.

Much of my inspiration for his program has come from amazing moms who share their homeschooling experiences on a blog. From these sites, I have put together a customized program to fit Dylan's specific developmental needs.  I have set goals with his school for the next year, and am using these goals as a framework to choose materials.

• Confessions of a Homeschooler - tons of free printables and Letter of the Week program.
• 1 Plus 1 Plus 1 Equals 1 - tot books and activity ideas.
• Pinterest - totally addicting.  It is a photo bookmarking site where folks share their favorite ideas from across the web and categorize them for others to find.  You can see my Pre-K ideas I have bookmarked HERE.
• Mommy Speech Therapy - I have just found this site and am hoping to find more like it.
• Happy Housewife
• Prekinders
• I Can Teach My Child
• Create Teach Share
• Kindergarten Crayons
• Life in Grace
• Spell Out Loud  (and her printable site HERE) 

One thing I've noticed is that with all the great free printables and ideas out there, there is nothing extraordinary to teach preschool Bible.  The activities are lame.  Seriously.  Think free clip art from the 1980's.  That's what it looks like.  If I had extra time, this is something I would be creating on my own.

Anyhoo, Dylan's program is created with a goal of kindergarten preparedness.  So we are working on letters, numbers, shapes, colors, art, emotion recognition, fine motor, pattern identification, cutting, pasting.

Then there are gross motor activities like bouncing/throwing/catching a ball, riding a trike, jumping, hopping, etc.

And general goals for learning his name and address, safety, personal hygiene, etc.

I look for a "theme" and activities that incorporate these goals in a slightly new way each week.  So if our theme is monkeys, we might use a Tot Pack to help with basic goals and read the book: Five Little Monkeys Then I would look for other ideas to use monkeys in gross motor, etc.