Our First Home Preschool Unit - BUGS!

I'll apologize in advance that this is a very different post from my norm.  This past week I started some more intentional home preschool with my 3 year old.  In searching for ideas, themes, crafts, activities, and books, I found it so helpful to see and hear what others were doing.  It really helped me pick and choose what I felt would work best for our family and, particularly, for my son.  With that in mind, I've decided to share some of what we're doing in hopes that it gives someone else a fun idea!

I started off my "planning" by just writing down a long list of things my son enjoys and several things I felt would be important for him to know.  Here's what we came up with:

June - Bugs
July - Tractors / Farm Animals
August - Ocean
September - Community Helpers (police, firefighters, ambulance, trash truck, etc)
October - Dinosaurs
November - Trains
December - Kitchens / Cooking / Food
January - Weather
February - Trucks (school buses, monster trucks, food trucks, etc)
March - Jungle Animals
April - Birds
May - Planes and Helicopters

Once I had a list, I organized them based on when made the most sense to me.  Our schedule may change and even the topics may change, but this gave me a basis to start from!

Since Bugs would be our first unit, I went a bit Pinterest crazy checking out all the different things others have already done (check out the link for all the ideas).  For the sake of your time, I'll just show you what we did our first week.  Keep in mind that children at this age learn predominantly through play so we only had about 10 minutes each day of focused instruction or activity.  Beyond that it was just talking about bugs as we looked at books or pointing them out as we played outside.

First Activity:  I bought him a composition notebook just for school!  He was so excited to have a notebook all his own!  We wrote his name on the first page and just let him color it.  The next page had the word "BUGS" written.  We discussed the letters before he colored on the page and then taped on some bugs.  Simple as that!

Second Activity:  We also found these really awesome insect fact cards from Stay At Home Educator!  They come with 15 different insect cards each with a picture and several fun bug facts!  I chose 4 cards to go over each week so the different types of bugs would get overwhelming.  The first week we looked at the housefly, ladybug, cockroach, and honey bee.  He loves going over them and using them to "teach" his dad!

Third Activity:  Even though he's still pretty young, I want him to get in his mind that he can write letters. One day we focused on drawing a line.  Just a line.  The next day I wrote a capital B on the page and helped him trace it.  It didn't look much like a B when he did it alone, but it was just good practice in showing him one day he will be able to do that.

Every Day Activities:  Every day we have school we go over the letters in BUGS and read one, two, or fifty bug books!  Here are a few of my favorites:

Bug Hotel - This one is a great board book with flaps full of information!  Each page is a different bug.  It's the primary book I'm using for the month since it's simple to understand and has an interactive component. (Pictured above to the right.  It's the bottom book.)

Bug Sticker Book - This is just a fun sticker book FULL of stickers that can be pulled off and rearranged as much as he wants!  We've been using it as a treat on Fridays.  :)  (Pictured above to the right.  It's the top book.)

Jam and Honey - In our house we love bees and talk often about how much they help our garden grow.  I checked this book out from our local library and absolutely love it!  The first half tells the story of a little girl going to pick berries for jam while the second half is a bee getting nectar for honey.  It explains how to handle bees and to not be afraid of them.  Such a cute story!

The Eensy Weensy Spider Freaks Out (Big Time)! - This was a cute story of how the eensy weensy spider decided after she fell down the water spout that she didn't want to climb anymore.  Her ladybug friend came alongside her and soon she regained her confidence to climb again!  I just loved the story of friendship and confidence!

The Honeybee Man - This was another fun story of a man who raises bees on his roof in Brooklyn. While a story, it explains all the ins and outs of how the bees make honey!

There are several others we enjoyed that I may share another time, but these were some of my favorites (and my kids)!

Let me know how you've been exploring bugs with your little one!  I'd love to hear new ideas or activities to make learning fun!  :)