How Do You Preschool?

I am so excited to share an interview I had with Heather L. who uses the My LDS Preschool curriculum to teach her children.

Heather is a mom of three ages 5, 4, and 2. She is a stay at home mom who is working on getting a college degree online and does an amazing job with cutting, coloring and styling hair in her spare time. I have had the pleasure of knowing Heather since she moved into my ward several years back. I asked for this interview because it has been fun to see the ways she has adapted the lessons to meet her individual needs and I knew it would be useful for other moms to hear her story.

I asked her what would be helpful for someone trying to decide if they should use our curriculum. “They just should! hahah!” Then she went on to say, “As an LDS mom, I love that I get both the secular teaching and the religious teaching. I would never be able to get the quality with all of the games and activities and printables for the price. My kids love the crafts and all the hands on activities. They don’t love the actual writing very much, but I have incentives to help them get through it. They also love the fun snacks. They are still asking for some of the snacks we had from some of the first lessons.”

Read on for other insights from Heather L.

What does your teaching week look like?

I prefer to get all the teaching for one letter done in a week. That doesn’t always happen, but if I do, I follow this format:

Monday: I introduce the new letter in the morning with the ABC activity in the lesson. I pull it out when the kids are bored or just need some structure (in other words, driving me crazy). We do the letter song and do a couple of review games. My review games are simple. I hide the letter posters we have already covered and I have previously laminated around the room. Then I tell them, “Go and find the letter _____.” Then my boys race around looking until they find the letter I asked for. They love it. I also plan to get a couple of fly swatters and lay the letters out and have them swat the letter I call out. We do the Scripture lesson for FHE that night. I also have a simple ABC puzzle that we put together with the letters we have learned.

Tuesday-Friday: The remainder of the week I just pick one or two of the activities to do each day. I have found that it works best for me to set timers in 15 minute intervals. I spend 15 minutes cleaning, 15 minutes on my college school work, then 15 minutes on preschool. My kids have free play during the time I am doing other things. This really works for me.

I teach totally on my own time frame and do more lessons in the summers when my kids need more to do.

How do you prepare to teach?

I look through the whole plan for the week and write down which things I want to do. Then I print out anything I need and laminate anything I think I will want to reuse. My prep time start to finish including laminating is about 1 1/2 hours.

How do you organize your stuff?

I keep my basic supplies (things like scissors, glue, stickers and etc.) in a little tubby. At first I had to buy a good amount of basics, but now I just find myself reusing the supplies. Things that I have laminated and want to keep to reuse I have organized into an accordian file. I keep the alphabet posters in the front of the accordian file together and use them to play review games. [Previously mentioned during her Monday activities]

I know you have your kids in a paid preschool run by the local high school as well, how does that work and why did you decide to still do My LDS Preschool?

They go to formal preschool 3-4 days a week for 3 hours. I like My LDS Preschool because it gives me something fun to do with my kids. It is not one of my strong points to just sit down and play. My LDS Preschool has helped me bond with my kids and I can see how they are learning. I saw from the sample lesson how much they retained from just that one lesson – not just the ABC’s, but the gospel lesson too. There are things I like about their paid preschool, but they weren’t getting everything I wanted them to know like letter knowledge and the scriptures. That is why I chose to do My LDS Preschool with them. I just appreciate the structure. It is my way to play with them and they are learning stuff. They absolutely love it and ask to do it all the time.

What final advice do you have for moms teaching their children?

Go at your own pace and keep it fun. It does not have to be super structured. My kids don’t think of it as school. They think of it as the fun stuff.

I loved hearing all Heather L. had to share. We would love to hear how you preschool too! Write to us at info@myldspreschool.com with your story.

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