The First Month of Pre-K at Home: We Quit

No morning is complete without their morning brews and books. (Clancy takes hot water with milk, honey, and an ice cube, Nathnaiel takes coffee with half and half, haha)

Week four was tough. Clancy was giddy and silly and fidgety. I was driven to get to a certain point in the preschool workbook.

One lesson was to draw from flower pot to flower pot. Each pot had either an upper or lower case A or B.

I’d ask, “Is this an A or B?” Then I would steal myself for his fidgety, exasperated response.

“Uppercase, uppercase, uppercase! No! NO! Lower, lower, lowercase!” He’d squeal, not even looking at the book but sprawled across the table.

I could feel my eye start to twitch and suggest we do a different activity to which he would freak out and adamantly demand we keep doing THAT activity. Then we would proceed with the same general delinquent response.

I had it. We didn’t do anything else from the Good and the Beautiful curriculum.

At this point, I decided not just to be done for the week but to be done with it for good. I was already modifying the curriculum enough for it to be frustrating for me, so to modify it more would just be ridiculous. That curriculum is not a good fit for a boy who doesn’t care about distinguishing letters yet. And that is just fine. He is four! He will know it all, and I will not make it miserable doing so.

What he loves is reading with us. Watching and learning. Running wild, looking for real-life things, like birds. He has worn out his Oregon birding book and takes his bird identification very seriously. Reading is a religion to him.

My friend shared the curriculum she is starting in October with her daughter, who is the same age as Clancy. Her daughter can already write letters and her name; she has an interest in writing and an eye for detail. She would probably crush the preschool coursebook. As parents, we are quite similar, and neither of us wants to push academics on our 4-year-olds, whether they are ready or not.

So we decided to join them and do Playing Preschool! There are books to read every day and then activities to do. I think it will be great through these winter months to have craft-type activities we can focus on and new books that Nathaniel can read to Clancy each morning before he goes to work!

The cost to switch to this curriculum is not much, $30 for the curriculum, and then I will only print off what we need each week. The bulk of it I will access from my Supernote e-ink tablet that I can write all over with notes. Acquiring books in a rural community is not so cheap. At first, I am relying on used books ordered through the locust that is Amazon. I plan to keep some and return the rest.

We are starting October 2nd as a family (and alongside our friends!) and I am really excited to find curriculum that I think will suit this age and our family dynamic so well!