Last year I chose The Peaceful Preschool to use with the girls and we loved it! Rilynn was 3.5 and Rowan was 1.5 when we started. I made the decision to stretch the one-week units to two weeks, and I really can’t say enough good things about that approach. I wrote a very detailed post on why I chose to do that and I also shared how I planned and prepped for the curriculum – including how to print everything and assemble it! Below are affiliate links for your convenience.
Our first year through the curriculum was very gentle and relaxed…so relaxed that I didn’t have any particular milestones in mind for the end of the year. This wasn’t how I intended it to go, but it’s just how it evolved. I knew I wanted a simple approach to preschool, but I still had our days pretty planned out. I guarantee that only 1% of our days matched that schedule. We ended up randomly reading a lot of books, had open art time every day, did 1-2 activities a week and spent the majority of our days playing or adventuring outside. So imagine my surprise when at the end of the curriculum both of my girls were excelling. Rilynn knows all of her letters, can write them from memory, knows their sounds and has asked to start reading. Rowan can sing the entire alphabet, can write some letters from memory and knows the beginning letter of many objects and animals. Both girls can count to 20 and Rilynn has expressed a desire to learn more when it comes to math. I am not sharing any of this “to brag”, but rather to demonstrate how much a child can learn without a ton of formal education. This past year was very eye-opening and humbling for me. At the beginning I had a very specific idea what home education would look like for us in these early years…and by the end, we were at the polar opposite of that idea.
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I am very passionate and fascinated by the Charlotte Mason method of education. I began researching it a lot over the past few years (this book is great) and I feel like this method, tailored a little, is a wonderful fit for our family. One of the things that weighed so heavily on me this past year was Charlotte’s viewpoint on formal education and when it should begin.
“In this time of extraordinary pressure, educational and social, perhaps a mother’s first duty to her children is to secure for them a quiet and growing time, a full six years of passive receptive life, the waking part of it for the most part spent out in the fresh air.”
“…my object is to show that the chief function of the child–his business in the world during the first six or seven years of his life–is to find out all he can, about whatever comes under his notice, by means of his five senses…”
– Charlotte Mason
Her reasoning, coupled with my discovery of the Wild + Free podcast, completely revamped my goals for the girls’ early education. I knew that I needed to resist any pressure I felt from society or social media when it came to what was “normal” and instead embrace the still, small voice that kept tugging at my heart. I wanted something different for them. I wanted to encourage their curiosity, but still protect their childhood. It’s been tough. I worried that they would be behind their friends who were enrolled in preschool, that they wouldn’t be able to transfer into the school system if homeschooling didn’t work out for us, or that I would end up somehow failing them as a parent. I battled some really difficult and conflicting emotions throughout the year, but now looking back, I know I made the right decision for us. Every family is different and each one will have an individual set of goals and priorities that work for them. That is wonderful and something that should be celebrated! The sole purpose of me sharing any of this is to be an encouragement to families who may have similar goals. My hope is that our experiences can be a wonderful example of how much can be achieved by just “letting them be little” and delaying extremely structured or formal learning.
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After seeing how successful the past year was for us, I had to sit down and figure out what my plan was for the next year. I knew I wanted to repeat The Peaceful Preschool, but I didn’t know what the structure would look like. I once again scoured the internet for inspiration, encouragement, and ideas and eventually created a schedule and plan a few weeks ago. It was a lot busier and a lot more structured than last year, and after sitting on it for a few days, I tossed it out and started over. I began by looking into our state’s education requirements and confirmed that Rilynn won’t qualify for kindergarten until next August (2019). Because of the way her birthday falls, she will be turning six within the first month of school. I looked up a “kindergarten checklist” and realized that she already meets all of the recommended milestones. This immediately relieved any personal pressure I had placed on myself to “do more” this year. By completing an extremely gentle version of the curriculum last year, she somehow already landed a year ahead of “the standard”. Again, this is a whole lotta detail that some of you might find excessive, but I thought it may help anyone who is as detailed-oriented or OCD as me. Having the facts laid out in front of me allowed me to confidently move forward with another relaxed year of The Peaceful Preschool.
There will be some fun changes and supplements that I will be adding! As I mentioned above, Rilynn has expressed interest in both reading and math. These are both subjects I get a lot of emails about since many families either repeat the curriculum or have a wide age range of children doing it together at the same time. For phonics and reading we will be using Dash Into Reading and for math we are using Math Lessons For A Living Education (or here). I researched a lot of different options and I felt that these two were most in line with our simplistic and minimalistic approach. I wanted curriculums that were gentle, fun, and did not require a bunch of supplies/large investment. Both of these additional curriculums + The Peaceful Preschool will only cost $30-$45 a year total to get both girls to “1st grade”. We’ve done a few practice phonics and math lessons and Rilynn loves both!
We will be stretching the units to two weeks again, which makes this curriculum 52 weeks long. I’ve found that I prefer this as it allows the girls to really enjoy each letter and it provides the space for breaks if we need them. For example, units around holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc) can be completed in a week or week and a half if we want a few days off, but we can still stay on track and have some planned activities. I’ve learned over the past year that having a rhythm or at least a little structure works best for us. This is a huge reason I am totally ok with doing the curriculum for a year straight. Knowing that we may need some time off before the following school year, I’ve decided to start The Peaceful Preschool on June 25!
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Another big change that I’m incorporating this year is that we will be doing the alphabet out of order. I love interest-led learning, so I wanted the freedom to partially base our current unit on things the girls are curious about. With that in mind, I did divide the letters up by season so that the activities would coordinate with holidays, weather, etc. Each season has a group of letters and I’ll arrange them in an order as I plan the units. Some of you may be interested in starting at the same time as us, but for those starting later, I have all of the free letter unit resources up on the blog from last year. I’ll be posting our schedule for each unit along with any additional free resources I create, but they will be posted as we make our jumbled way through the alphabet.
Finally, I wanted to share a little about our daily schedule. I sat down and made a list of my priorities for the next year.
Priorities
Knowledge of God
Habits + Character
Read Alouds
Free Play
Gentle Preschool Lessons
Nature Study + Outdoor Exploration
Art + Handicrafts
Once I had a clear idea of what I wanted to accomplish, making a unit schedule was fairly simple. One day a week we will get out of the house for a meetup, playdate or outing, and one additional day may be needed for errands, doctor appointments, etc. This leaves 3 planned days a week at home per week or 6 days per letter unit. (If we can do our errands on outing days or if there are no errands to run we will gain an extra 1-2 days at home per unit) I get very tempted to overcommit our time during the week which ends up leaving us worn out, frazzled and usually pretty stressed. With that knowledge, one planned activity day per week works best for us. Now, this doesn’t include our family time activities, nature time, or outdoors time – this is specifically going to meet up with other families or going on a fun outing. Here is a look at our daily schedule.
Daily Schedule
9:00-10:00am || Breakfast + Morning time
10:00-11:30am || Outings/Errands or Free play
11:30-12:30pm || Free play or Preschool
12:30-1:00pm || Lunch
1:00-1:30pm || iPad / Tv
1:30-3:00pm || Quiet time
3:00-4:30pm || Afternoon time
4:30-5:30pm || Free play / Cook dinner
5:30-6:00pm || Dinner
6:00-6:15pm || Clean up
6:15-7:45pm || Family time
7:45-8:00pm || Bedtime routine
8:00-8:30pm || Read alouds
8:30pm || Bedtime
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Breakfast + Morning time
We’ve tried a lot of schedules and one thing is very clear: we are not morning people. We like slow mornings. I’ve tried waking up before the girls and getting things done or working out and it just leaves me overly tired or grumpy. Ryan and I are both night owls and can’t fall asleep before 11pm, so we’ve had to accept that and make our schedules accordingly. We all usually wake up between 7:30-8:00am and spend the next hour getting coffee, checking on the garden, having free play and sending Ryan off to work. The girls can be really slow eaters, so I discovered that doing morning time while we eat breakfast is the best way to use the time and it’s a great way to start every day of the week. Morning time consists of:
· Bible story
· Memory verse
· Habits
· Hymns / Songs
· Coloring / Activity
We don’t necessarily do all of these every day. Sometimes I will have a themed coloring page or activity for them to do while I finish up making breakfast or clean up. Our Bible story goes along with the current letter unit or with whatever habit we are currently working on. The three habits we are focusing on this year are Attention, Obedience and Truthfulness (you can find a lot about habit training from Charlotte Mason as well!). We will have a hymn to practice for each unit and I also stream kids music/worship music in the kitchen most days. If it’s an “outing” day, this time is really condensed as most of our planned activities start at 10:00-10:30am.
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Outings/Errands or Free play
This block is for our outings (see in detail above) or for free play on “home” days. The girls can do anything they want during this time. They have access to all of their toys, the homeschool room, and any art supplies. They never have any issue keeping themselves busy, but independent play is something we worked up to and it didn’t happen overnight. On “home” days I can use this time to get a few things done around the house and to work out.
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Free play or Preschool
This block is for free play on “outings” day and in that case encompasses the same things listed above for free play. On “home” days this is our preschool block. Preschool consists of:
· Calendar time
· Read Aloud
· Phonics / Math
· Motor + Practical Life Skills
· Art Project
Calendar time involves talking about the seasons, weather, month, etc. The read alouds, skills and art projects are taken from the written Peaceful Preschool curriculum. The phonics and math will be from the curriculums I listed above. We won’t do every one of these every day and I will post a letter unit schedule for each unit so you can see how we break it down. I’ve found that this hour block, mixed with the Morning and Afternoon times, is more than enough time to accomplish all of our goals.
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Screen time
I get a lot of questions about screen time. I am completely judgment-free when it comes to this topic. We’ve had seasons of life where the girls were getting 2-3 hours of screen time throughout the day and I have no guilt over that. There are so many educational shows and apps out there, and if you are at a place where you need to use those resources, have no shame in that. We are now at the point where the girls’ attitudes are a direct reflection of how much screen time they’ve had. The days where they have had too much they are downright nightmares. I’m not going to lie – it’s nice to have little, uninterrupted pockets of free time to get things done, but I got to a place where I knew that they needed to play instead of being in front of a screen. Yes, I have to break up a few squabbles, but their attitudes are so much better when their screen time is limited. I’ve placed screen time throughout the day, but right before quiet time seems to be the best. I said before that the girls can be really slow eaters. Once I told them that screen time started at 1:00pm and strictly ended 30 minutes later, they magically had no issue eating their lunches in 15-30 minutes. Having a set time helped them understand that there was a limit on screen time and it stopped them from bothering me about it all throughout the day. They can choose to play on their tablets or to watch a show.
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Quiet time
We have a set quiet time every day. Both girls have dropped their naps for the most part, but depending on how busy we are, they may take one nap per week. Rowan is now 3 and Rilynn is getting close to 5. If I know they are not going to nap, they each choose a room to have quiet time in. I usually put on music for them and they can do whatever they want for the hour and a half. They usually choose some sort of building set, dolls/animals, some art supplies, and a stack of books. I’ve had mom guilt at times over this, but by now I know how essential this time is for our day. Everyone comes out of quiet time in a much better place. Rilynn has no issue doing the full 90 minutes by herself. Rowan started at about 30 minutes and then I would let her join Rilynn. She’s currently at about an hour and then moves. You do have to work up to it, but if you are consistent, they will adjust to the independent time. I make sure to use at least 30 minutes of this time to do something for myself and the other part I may do a chore or blog.
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Afternoon time
This time is set aside for a few fun activities. It consists of:
· Tea party or snack time
· Poetry
· Fables / Fairytales
· Nature study
· Other projects
We pick and choose what we will do each day and I will have this listed on the unit calendars that I post. It’s just a nice way to come together after quiet time and sneak in a little extra learning/exploration before the evening.
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Family time
A few months ago I realized that I needed to schedule in protected family time. I felt like every night I would go to bed and it seemed like we had no quality time as a family. Dinner would range from 5:30-7:00pm and we would be rushing through the bedtime routine. This was largely due to my not starting dinner on time or Ryan coming home late from work. We agreed that dinner would be set at 5:30pm so that we could have a solid 90 minutes every night to do things as a family. We play games, go outside, swing in our hammock, do crafts, bake, or sometimes snuggle up for a movie. Whatever we do, we do together, and it has made the biggest difference in our happiness as the day draws to a close. We also use this time for bigger hands-on or motor skills activities from the Peaceful Preschool. After this, it’s time to get the girls ready for bed, read a few books and lights out.
So that’s about it! We’re really excited for the upcoming year and can’t wait to connect with more families doing this curriculum. I’ll be posting our plans in the next few days for our first unit which will begin on June 25. I’ll end this by providing a list of helpful links and resources for you to check out. If you feel that this curriculum is not the right fit for your little one, I encourage you to check out the other options listed below! Please do not hesitate to comment or email me any questions you may have Image may be NSFW.
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Our Curriculums
The Peaceful Preschool
Math Lessons For a Living Education || Or here
Dash Into Reading
Other Curriculum Options
Tot School
Literature Units
Playful Pioneers
Good Reads
Why We Chose The Peaceful Preschool
The Peaceful Preschool Year One FREE Resources + Printables
Minimalist Homeschool Supplies
Planning, Printing + Prepping The Peaceful Preschool
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