Homegrown Preschooler

What a treat to come home to!  When we got back from China 3 weeks ago, I had a bucket of mail and a few packages waiting for me.  One of the packages was the book The Homegrown Preschooler:  Teaching Your Kids in the Places They Live from Gryphon House.

What a perfect book for where we're at.  So many homeschoolers, myself included, have asked, "What do we do with our toddlers and preschoolers while we're schooling the older kids?"  I'm guilty of thinking that they're just in the way during school time.  Not so!  Preschoolers are simply a different animal, in need of their own educational support.

This is the nice, clean cover art.  And this is my copy:

As you can see, there are a lot of things I want to refer back to in this great book.  For $29.95, they pack in recipes, building instructions, theory, activities, how to set up your home for optimal learning, and so much more!  The pink tabs are things I want to do with Katie, the yellow ones are for my own reference (like trying to talk dh into building a light table for us), and the blue ones are things to try with Luke.

Things have been so crazy around here that I haven't had time to do as many of the activities with Katie as I would have liked, but the book has been a great reminder of the mindset that I need to have in providing opportunities for her to learn through play.

Who doesn't love counting bears, right?  

This was one activity that I was more excited about than Katie was.  

Samuel really got into the idea of mixing colors in shaving creme.

Katie, not so much.  

While the book is written for adults, and intended to be ideas for preschoolers, many of the ideas have a much wider age appeal.  

One of the things I loved about this book was that it was easy to read in little bites.  It wasn't something where I needed a bunch of uninterrupted (ha!) time to myself to understand what was being presented.  It was perfect for reading a bit while I waited for the littles to doze off at bedtime or naptime.  

Another thing that made this book special to me is that there are sections on both adoption and special needs.  Two issues very relevant to us right now.  Sometimes I read with tears in my eyes, grateful for someone putting words to what's going on in my life.  

The Getting Started Checklist in the back of the book comes at the perfect time for me to incorporate a few purchases into our back to school expenditures, and the Activity Checklist is a great way to hold myself accountable to be deliberate in focusing on different areas of development and getting them covered every week.  I think a perfect planner would have our curriculum weekly checklist on one side and the Activity Checklist from this book on the other.  

I really liked the reminder to be deliberate in providing learning moments through play.  Even though our review period is over, this is one book that will be staying on my nightstand for quite a while.  I plan to refer to it as I set up our school room for the new year, too.  

Monkey see, monkey do.  Now that's positive peer pressure!  

You can click below to read what other reviewers had to say about both this book, and also about Global Art, a book that we used in our homeschool last year.  

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