Weekly Preschool Schedule
I organized my son’s at-home preschool schedule around learning the alphabet. We focused on learning one letter per week. During each week, we did writing practice worksheets, read stories about our letter of the week, crafts, salt tray writing, air letter writing, letter recognition worksheets, STEM activities, and sang songs about our letter. Since many stores were temporarily closed or doing curbside pick-up, I was limited on what supplies I could get quickly so I relied a lot on what we already had at home. If there is something that I did for a letter that doesn’t work for you, pick a different theme with the same letter so that you don’t have to go out and buy anything special (such as substitute alligator for anaconda).
In addition to the weekly outline, I started each day’s lesson by going over what day it is. For example, Monday, March 17, 2020. If you don’t have a paper calendar, you can print one off online for free. Having a paper calendar was helpful for my son to touch the boxes and count the number of days until we reached the 17th.
Not only did we count days of the week, but I incorporated counting into everything we did — reading a book, stop and count things on the page; crafting, count supplies; writing practice, count how many letters he wrote. I mixed it up with what we would count so that it didn’t become repetitive.
Click on the links below to see that letter’s weekly schedule: (more letters to come. . . )
Letter A: apples, ants, and anacondas
Letter B: butterflies, bees, and bears
Letter C: cats, carrots, and cookies
Letter D: dinosaurs, dogs, donuts, and ducks
Letter E: elephants, eggs, and envelopes
Letter F: feathers, farm, firefighters, and frogs
Letter G: goats, gummy bears, gardens, and glasses
Letter H: hair, hugs, hearts, hippos, and hedgehogs
Letter I: ice cream, ice, and iguanas
Letter J: jeep, juice, jungle, jaguars, and jumping
Letter K: koala, kites, and kings
Letter L: llama, lemonade, lion, and ladybugs
Letter M: mermaid, marshmallows, mouse, and monkey
Letter N: night, nature, nest, and nap
Letter O: octopus, otter, and ostrich
Letter P: pizza, pineapple, pigs, pandas, and penguins
Letter Q: queen, quilt, and quiet
Letter R: rainbows, rocks, and racecars
Letter S: snails, stars, and strawberries
Letter T: turtles, trees, towers, trucks, and turkeys
Letter U: unicorns, umbrellas, and underwear
Letter V: volcanoes, violins, vines, and vacation
Letter W: watermelon, worms, and whales
Letter X:
Letter Z: zebra, zoo, and zoom
Looking for other ideas for learning the alphabet?
Try the egg match game! Using plastic, pull-apart eggs, write the uppercase version of the letter on the top half of the egg and the lowercase version of the letter on the bottom half of the egg. Ask your preschooler to connect the eggs so that each egg has the matching uppercase and lowercase letter.
Sand Mold-Chalk Letter Match — I wanted something tangible for teaching the alphabet so that my son could have hands-on learning and I was excited to find these alphabet sand molds. I ordered them right away and they were the perfect size for his little hands. When we worked on our letters, he could feel the letter, trace its shape with his finger, and really get a visual for what each letter looks like. I made a game to help him connect uppercase and lowercase versions of each letter. I wrote the lowercase letters with chalk on our patio and had him place the uppercase sand molds on top of the lowercase chalk letters. We went in ABC order until he really got a handle on his letters and then I had him randomly pull out a letter from a paper bag and find its match on the patio.
Alphabet Recognition Worksheets: I have integrated these worksheets into the weekly schedule, but here is the link to all of them, as well as a couple additional worksheets.
The Vowel Song: help your child learn which letters are vowels with this song!
Phonics
Spooky Phonics: draw a line from the letter to the word that starts with the same letter.