Homeschool Preschool, Here We Come!

I had meant to homeschool Yuri for the last, err, 2 years.

Sadly, it never became a top priority for me mainly because Yuri was still too little to pay attention to school “work.” In the past, homeschooling just meant reading books, learning new words, seeing new sights, travelling — basically trying to grasp every teachable moment.

All of a sudden, Yuri is 4 and I couldn’t anymore rely on just catching teachable moments as they go. We initially planned to enrol Yuri in a “real school” this year. However, because of reasons I detailed in this post last month, the real-preschool-plan was promptly scrapped. We were suddenly back to our original plan, which is to homeschool… and I am woefully unprepared.

Thanks a lot to regular enrichment classes from Eye Level (!), Yuri already has had a head start. Whew.

After-school frozen yoghurt pops! #wahmlife #homeschool #preschooler #toddlerlife

A photo posted by Marie Angeli Laxa (@maanlaxa) on Jun 14, 2016 at 2:12am PDT

In all honesty, I still haven’t found the time to prepare a meticulous curriculum. It’s funny because when Yuri was 2 years old, I spent almost all of my free time researching on homeschool curricula that we could use. In my old laptop, I even had a spreadsheet comparing and contrasting the curricula. Yes I was very OA, yet we didn’t even get to homeschool haha!

(In my defence hehe, I attended a seminar on homeschooling and was told that it’s too early to formally homeschool 2 and 3 year olds.)

Now that it’s time for real homeschool, I’m caught unprepared! We haven’t begun yet even though it’s already the end of everyone else’s first week of school. Then again, two years ago, when I was very vigilant, I was a freelancer who had a yaya. Now I have a regular 8-5 job — and a real estate broker on weekends — who is yaya-less and helper-less. But I’m confident that we’ll soon get the hang of it — as soon as I am able to organise a proper schedule. I’m procrastinating, help!

Anyway, in contrast to two years ago, when I had a full list of homeschool supplies to buy and several printables to print, right now, all I have are Yuri’s unopened preschool workbooks which I have collected over time (I told you I was OA!). The great thing is that they’re really helpful.

Here’s the workbook that serves as our primary “curriculum” for now:

This is a big, thick workbook that I was able to buy from Book Sale a couple of years ago for only P250. It looks worn out now (because toddlers aren’t exactly the gentlest human beings in the world), but when I bought it, it looked brand new. (The pages are still crisp thank goodness.)

Table of Contents – almost 300 pages!

Scissor practice!

What I love about this workbook is that each page has a perforated inner side so you can tear it off the workbook easily.

We have several other workbooks but so far, this is the most useful and complete. I tried to look for a similar workbook in National Bookstore, Fully Booked, and in online stores, but sadly, I wasn’t able to find one. I’m obviously recommending it to you, but I’m not sure whether Book Sale still has stocks of this workbook. Hopefully there are!

Here are more home tips, productivity, and homeschooling resources that you can check out from Canva:

• Canva Work from Home Tips
• Productivity Guide by Canva
• Canva Homeschool Activity Tips
• How to Start Homeschooling by Canva

Are you using a preschool workbook? Tell me so I can check it out! 😀

Also, if you are homeschooling a preschooler, what materials are you using? I’ll appreciate tips and pieces of advice!