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Starting Home-Pre-School with my 4 year old

Annie - posted on 08/19/2009 ( 2 moms have responded )

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Hi! I have a 4 year old daughter and a 3 year old son, and I am planning on starting a 'school' schedule with my daughter since its 'school' time. For some reason I want to attempt to stick with the public school schedule of M-F during September-May, but only an hour a day, tops, until she gets into more complicated stuff. Does this sound reasonable? I have found resources online and have a few ideas as far as what to do with her, but my mom is a bit more lax about it and says there's no need for structure or guidance at this point and that I should let her learn on her own. I promise I'm not trying to squash her childhood, but I want her to be learning most of the same things that kids in Public school are learning so that she and her PS friends will have comparable knowledge. I don't want her to feel like she's behind.
My next question is what do I do with my son during this time? He is highly intelligent and seems to have better focus than she does, and while I don't want to hold him back specifically for her sake, I still feel like she should have individualized attention when it comes to learning. I wonder if it would bother her that her brother knows as much as she does, obviously not right now but a few years down the road. He is only 10 months younger than her since he was a preemie. Should I have his dad take him outside or do something with him for that hour or so, or should I try to set him up in a different room and go back and forth between them trying to help? There's no hope of anything getting accomplished if they're in the same room, trust me! :-)
Thanks for taking the time to help!

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Sarah - posted on 09/15/2009

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I'm a mother of a 4 year old and I started her in home pre-schooling last year when she was 3 I acually put her in preschool for a little while and then it got to pricey on our budget. but now I do at home. there is a couple website's that you can go to for idea's of crafts, activities on the web. one of them is Preschoolrainbow.org. or enchanted learning.com. Have fun hope everything work's out for you

Melissa - posted on 09/09/2009

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Hi. My name is Melissa. I am a mother of 4 children. I have a 14 year old step daughter in High School, a 6 year old daughter in 1st grade, a 2+ year old son, and a 15 months old son. I stay home with both of my boys. My husband and I have been talking about me homeschooling them both. I already have a structured learning time for them during the day. I did this with my daughter as well until she started school. I noticed from my previous experience and from what I am enduring now that it is very common for them to lose that attention span around that age. I am sure that if you do go ahead and create a structured day of events for the kids they will love it and you will noticed that your child's attention span will increasingly get better. Just start out slow and work your way up. With Robert who will be 3 in November I am up to working about 3 to 3.5 hours a day now. He loves it and enjoys getting to tell his daddy all about it when he gets home.



Just remember that when you need to be one on one with the older child. You can always have the other child doing some creative learning. Such as coloring, building blocks, anything that gets them using there hands and imagination. My youngest son loves to color while Robert and I work on his studies.

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