This is the most asked question I get… and I always answer with a plain ‘no’. Totschool, for us, is about expanding Adam’s English vocabulary not as a way to teach him new words in his second language. We are very much concentrating on getting him to speak English first because once he leaves the house he’ll be in a Serbian world so we are not worried about him picking up that later.

It would be foolish to give the impression that this is all free, everything comes at a cost, but we’ve kept it really rather low. I’ve decided if I find a great whole alphabet pack I’ll consider supporting the people who make it, especially if they give some away free, even so I’ve splurged less than £20 so far. We have bought odd bits like a white board eraser and extra rice and laminating pouches, and the printer ink will probably need a top up soon too.

This often gets asked too, and for us at the moment nursery isn’t essential. I also believe that nursery isn’t necessary for kids that this age. We have 2 parents working from home, we have space to play and a good number of toys. Having worked in nurseries in the UK I’m probably more picky about who I leave my child with and the policies here are much more relaxed than UK nurseries. Nurseries here tend to have quite a long day of around 7 hours, there is no half way point, no playgroup for 3 hours or similar, and I don’t like the idea of Adam spending 35 hours a week apart from us.

Doing some structured activity daily is fun, it’s a focus to the hours spent trying to do something other than play with wooden trains and it’s good for Adam in terms of concentration and development. Adam’s vocabulary is exploding and I really think this is part of the reason why. His grasp of numbers appearing over the last few weeks is really impressive. Printing in colour has been a big yes and anything with lots of pieces is really attractive. Finding the right level between repetition and novelty is also important. Established activities are taken in quickly but hold less appeal. By starting with table-work we’ve built a foundation for instructed activities that he can spin into his creations, it’s fun to finally get onto crafts and I’m really glad we did it this way.

I don’t think I started with a plan beyond each day to do something. That said a rough plan is emerging with Monday being introduction to the letter, one day being more focused on a non-letter concept, another dominated by the paint dabbers and at least one paper free. I’m vaguely planning to run through the whole alphabet in order at least once before changing things.

Some things are clearly favourites but not what I expected. Many of the free activities emphasis pencil control and he’s just not interested, there is a lot about linking upper and lower case letters and directional work, that, while good, doesn’t suit the level he’s at. I started with the letter activities from 1+1+1=1 and letter packs from ‘This Reading Mama’. Both proved way to advanced for Adam so we only use a small selection. The ‘Back to School Preschool Centers’ from ‘In my world’ have been so successful I’ve bought the whole alphabet packet and I’m looking forward to using the bits we’ve not got to yet. This week I discovered Roaming Rosie which has some great ideas I’m hoping to add in next week. Beyond that it’s been mostly Pinterest finds. I have found myself often botching printouts like, phonics cards at 220% for puzzles, screen grabbed book pages, and putting craft templates through a graphics program to add colour.

I started by doing a lot of browsing, reading well known totschool sites like 1+1+1=1 and totschooling.net as well as searching through google and pinterest. I usually start with the 1+1+1=1 sheets and add in pieces from other sites or my own library. I’ve obviously clicked with some materials more than others but generally I go by feelings – Would Adam be attracted to this page? Would he understand these instructions? Is this sufficiently different from the other activities? etc.

Adam loves the Cbeebies show – Bing – and some months ago I made him cards with each of the characters to help him develop his new found skill of matching. This week we used the fruit game I’d imitated from the show. It was an activity that boosted vocabulary and included his letter sound – C for carrots. We also used cars because he loves vehicles. We usually tend to go for shows with stories rather than those that nightlight concepts such as letters and numbers.