Preschool: Our first day!

Hi all! Sorry again for the quietness over here; we're all trying to adjust to the new school routine, and things have been hectic!

This year I'm home schooling preschool again; last year one of my girlfriends and I co-taught our 4 year olds for the year. This year I'm teaching by myself for Ryan, and now have the pleasure of including another friend's 3 year old daughter, Miss K. Miss A, the little girl I babysat last year will join on us on days when she's here this year. We're meeting twice a week, and it seems to be working out really well so far!

Our first day was wonderful. I was nervous as we didn't really know Miss K very well; her brother B is in Paigey's class. I wanted something fun and engaging for the first day, and after lots and lots of debating, we did If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and If You Take a Mouse to School! How can you not love Mouse? These books are some of our favorites...but as you will soon find out, we have a lot of favorite books!

Naturally we began by reading the books. Miss K didn't really know them, so it was fun showing her all the little things that Mouse does. They thought Mouse was really silly, and they giggled like crazy!

In the school book, Mouse takes the class' blocks and builds himself a mouse house. So we took Nate's blocks and made our own mouse houses:

K's finished mouse house

Ry finishing his mouse house

It was really fun seeing their thought processes, and how they went about building their houses differently. Through trial and error, Miss K discovered that blocks can't sit on top of triangles, but triangles sit on other blocks very well!

Hmmm...doesn't sit there very well!

We also made mouse pictures. I had precut all the shapes and had them laying out. They had to help figure out which pieces were the body, the tail, etc. With minimal help, they were able to do the glue sticks themselves and put the pieces on their paper. They even made the eyes, mouths and whiskers all by themselves! I was impressed with how well they did.

Ry gluing his pieces

The finished mouse pictures!

For snack we made mouse face cookies! I had made round sugar cookies, and they got to put vanilla frosting on the cookies and decorate them with round vanilla candy melts for ears, chocolate chips for the eyes and nose, and mini pretzel sticks for the whiskers.

K's finished mouse face

Ry's mouse needs a haircut, just like in the book!

We also played 'Hi Ho Cherry-O' and had music time. The kids LOVE to sing! Their favorites from the day were The Itsy Bitsy Spider and Row Row Your Boat. After we were finished, we still had some time left before Miss K's mom came, so they had fun knocking down their mouse houses and building them again!


I'm really enjoying teaching the younger preschoolers this year; it's a different mind set for me! I was super nervous as my kids never did preschool until they were 4 (unless they participated in an older sibling's preschool lessons), so I didn't (and still don't!) know exactly what to do. I'm pretty much writing these lesson plans myself, with some ideas from Pinterest and the internet. If I use someone's idea, I will give them credit :)

Do you home school? What activities should I try to incorporate for 2-3 year olds?