My children have all loved the Little Saints Pre-School Program. I love that they love it. 😉 No really, I do love it, it just initially took a *TON* of preparation. In fact, the first year I justified all the hours I spent cutting out flannel board pieces and card stock learning games, and $$$ I spent purchasing the recommended children’s books, by telling myself, “It’s worth it.. We will be using this over and over with all our children.” So, even though I would love to switch to using just the plans over at Serendipity this year, we will also be using Little Saints. Actually, I think they will work out pretty well together, if I follow each one loosely without trying to take on too much. In fact, the Little Saints program eventually introduces one letter per week anyways, and what better way to do so than with the Alphabet Path?
Even though I plan to attempt both this year, I decided to start out slowly. I think maybe in a couple weeks we will begin Along the Alphabet Path, and maybe do two weeks on, one week off, but I am going to see how this first month goes before deciding for sure. So, this week we just completed Week 1 of Little Saints. In the Little Saints Program, each week has: a Lesson Emphasis (this week it was “I Belong to God” and everything we do relates to the theme), Bible Passage, Poems, Storytime, Nursery Rhymes or Finger Plays, Songs and Circle Games, Music Appreciation, Art Projects and Learning Games.
Here is a glimpse at what we did this week:
I made these matching cards from various Catholic images that I found online, printed onto cardstock, and then laminated.
by Twinkle Toes
by Chiquita
We are looking forward to continuing next week!
We are on week 4–numbers!! Those books look pretty familiar, we just returned them to the library! It’s been kind of fun reserving. I like the program, but I decided this week (with starting the others grades 1 and 3) that I’m going to do each theme over 2 weeks, maybe more. It seems we don’t have enough time on it all. 1 week is not enough for numbers, 1 week is not enough time to read the books (there’s a lot of books) more than a couple times. (the littles like to read them over and over, and they are pretty good books, I like to too.)
I also want to incorporate the alphabet theme somehow along with it! We have also always done different themes each month during the school year, since Nicholas was little. (actually since I did daycare pre-children) like Sept, we do apple stuff, apple painting, lots of apple crafts, apple testing, apple orchard, etc…I’m finding no time for that with the weekly schedule…so I’m going to stretch each lesson out.
Did any of that make sense?
Fun to see your crafts, the same ones we did a few weeks ago!
God Bless!
I forgot to say, instead of the flannel board, which looked too hard to cut out and make nice (although you did a great job) we made paper dolls, I might have to post a picture. I always take pictures and never get around to blogging!!
Anyway, the girls loved them! I made skirts and pants and shorts and dresses. Oh, and hair!
Yes, that made sense Jamie!!
I wanted to start in August, and usually do, but with swimming decided not to even try this year.
Your right… It is very hard (especially with home-schooling older children at the same time) to get to everything scheduled in one week. I think you are smart to spread it out over 2 or so. You want it to remain fun, and have time to soak up the material, and not get overwhelmed in the meantime!
With Little Saints, what I would try to do, is pick and choose the themes that you want to fall at a certain time or month, ie: week 9/Guardian Angels/Colors; Week 16/Thanksgiving; etc, and schedule those into your schedule first then add in the rest of the themes wherever they fit.
I use to get frustrated when I would fall behind, and then noticed that one of the next weeks was something we celebrated a few weeks ago. You probably already thought about that, but I just thought I would mention it in case. 🙂
I would LOVE to see pictures of your paper dolls! When I pulled out the pieces this week, I thought, I really should make some girl clothes for that guy, since the girls are using the program, but then never did. Thanks for the reminder!
I’m glad you and your girls are enjoying the program! God Bless!
Hello – I came across your site when searching for flannel boards. I sure wish I knew there was a Catholic program when I was homeschooling preschool with my oldest. I am glad you are out there, you have a lot of resources on your site. I have a home-based business selling flannel board story pieces, if you or your readers are interested in a catalog let me know! I’d also love to send you some for review on your site if you are interested. Parents and teachers love them. Altho we do not have specifically Catholic sets we do have Old and New Testament sets and basic educational items. Have fun with the kids, sounds like you have a great program going! I am going to pop over and see Little Saints and think about doing it with my 4 year old.
Karen
are your parts of the body dolls anatomically correct?
dont answer that.
increasing my numbers
woo hoo
r