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2yos and 3yos
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Hi! My family will be participating in a homeschool coop next year. I had mentioned to the director that I would like for the nursery (ages 3yo and under) to be quality. I have had some “nursery” situations in the past that were just putting the kids in a room with a pile of toys and a tv and expecting them to entertain themselves. I wanted to make sure that would not be the case. So, I got elected to make a plan for the nursery! 🙂 Anyway, I have been thinking about it. I would like to have some sort of structure and plan for the 2yos and 3yos, but not overboard. I don’t want to have to prepare complex crafts and activities either. I have enough planning with my own homeschool! I am hoping to do all prep work over the summer. I am trying to think of simple ideas and a simple structure that would mesh with the CM philosophy. Here are the things I have thought of so far:
Singing and playing musical instruments, Play-do, painting, bubbles, sidewalk chalk, storytime, quiet time with Classical Music in background; outdoor play (although there is no playground); snack
What would you do with a group of 2yos and 3yos that would follow CM?
Jennifer
I run a co-op & your ideas are great. Simple is great! All of our activities are simple and easy to implement w/o busy “pea & stick work”. Just an fyi.. Play-doh is difficult to clean from carpet. Oh, and avoid glitter like the plague!
We have 2 hours of classes, this is our structure that has worked well. We had 2, 3 & 4 year olds in the class. Our twos are typically older and potty trained.
- First Hour: “Story Time Adventures”, we read a great living book & have a related activity. For example, we read Caps For Sale and acted it out with a stack of caps and a toy monkey that screamed. We read Blueberries For Sal & made/ate blueberry muffins. We made an apple pie, planted a bean, played Williamson Trim-a-toes (animal guessing game) & more to go along with our stories. NO CUT/PASTE HERE stuff! For fun, we’d sometimes check out a big book version of the story from the library. We also memorized poetry, I highly recommend some type of memory work! We went out to the playground at the end of this hour.
- Second Hour: “Music & Movement with Show & Tell”, think Kindermusik w/ instruments, scarves, etc. S & T is self explanatory.
We had snack at the beginning of this hour.
Best wishes with your new adventure! Preschoolers are so much fun.
HTH,
Christie
PS – B4FIAR and Peek with Books are great for ideas.
How about some sort of “nature study”? You could bring in an ant farm. Or if you have time for them to complete their cycles do catepillars/butterflies. Or plant bean seeds or flower seeds (they could paint the pots before hand to take home). Or even something simple like bringing in a container with roly-polys (my 3yr olds current favorite) or worms. I’m sure you could find books to go with each of these ideas (the very hungry caterpillar and seeds and more seeds come to mind).
HTH, Rebecca
I love this idea for nature study for a co-op, along with some literature!
I now have a class for our co-op next year. Thanks for the idea!
Mary in CO
Thanks for the help! I like the idea of basing the plans around a piece of literature. I had thought about basing them around the ABC’s, but couldn’t get excited about that. That seems overboard for little ones. I got on the SCM Early Years list and wrote down some ideas. I think that will work. Also, I like the idea of a nature study of some form. I am thinking I could just include that with the literature activities. I can see reading The Giving Tree and bringing in bark, leaves, seeds, a sapling. I like the idea of the Very Hungry Catepillar and bringing in caterpillars for the kids to play with. I don’t know if I could come up with a nature study for every book, but I can see it working great on some of them! Thanks for the help, everyone! Anyone have any other preschool books that would work good with a nature study?
Jennifer
Eric Carle has a whole series of nature books (The Very Busy Spider, The Lonely Firefly, The Tiny Seed, etc.) If you can find this (it’s out of print), Be Nice to Spiders by Margaret Bloy Graham is good, too. May be better for older 3’s though. Also try Lois Ehlert (Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf) and A Tree is Nice by Janice May Udry.
This isn’t nature study exactly, but would fit with the growing plants idea: The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss.
That’s all I can think of right now. If I think of more I’ll do another post.
Karen
We had snack at the beginning of this hour.
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