Our Curriculum

Home with Savi (formally Tot Tot Goose) began when my daughter was one year old. I was bored at home with her and felt that if I was bored, she must be bored. I was a high school English teacher and really wanted to push my daughter into learning more. Home with Savi started as a collection of activities that I did with my daughter to help encourage and foster learning in our home. As she has gotten older, the activities have become more structured (more for me than for her!) and we are loving our time learning together.

We move through our themes at our own pace. Some may take longer than I may have originally planned, but that’s okay! If she doesn’t want to do a specific activity I had planned for the day, then we do something else. That was one of the reasons I needed our homeschool environment to be more structured. If I didn’t have things planned in advance, we wouldn’t get anything done.

What is the recommended age?

There is none! To give you an idea, my daughter turned 3 years old in January 2016 (so for the 3-4 year old preschool lessons she was 3.5 to 4.5 years old for the school year). But you can easily tailor each activity to meet the skill level of your son or daughter. There are some things throughout this program that I have done with my daughter for over a year and I have changed the activity as she gets older. If I can, I will leave other ideas that you may want to try with your kids to see if it works better.

How much time should I allot to lessons each day?

Anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes is ideal (split up throughout the day); however, there are days we get more than 90 minutes done and there are days when we barely get 10. Toddlers learn a lot by playing, and at this age, that is exactly what they should be doing! This isn’t school (there is plenty of time for that later). We don’t sit down and just do worksheet after worksheet. Use your toddler as the guide – you don’t want to force them to do anything or they will just be unhappy. Make your lessons fun and something that they will ask to do over and over again.

What is your typical day like?

Savanna normally wakes up by 8:30am. She comes and knocks on our bedroom door and we lay in bed for a bit watching cartoons, talking or playing with a stuffed animal that she brought over. By 9:30am, we are eating breakfast. Then I clean the kitchen and get some things organized before our day starts. She uses this time to play with her houses and little people in the playroom. We start doing activities around 10:30am and stop around 11:30am for lunch. After lunch, we play board games, puzzles or head outside together before nap time. After nap, she gets some alone time to play on her own while I make dinner.

Why are you incorporating Spanish in your lessons?

My husband, her father, is Cuban. It is important to us that she also learns Spanish. It is a little difficult as I barely speak any Spanish and my husband is really only home at night for about an hour before she heads to bed. We decided that if she was going to learn Spanish, I needed to learn it and incorporate it into our lessons. I’ll be doing the best I can to teach her a second language!

Ready to take a look at our curriculums?

Check out the 3-4 year old Preschool Curriculum or the 4-6 year old Spanish Curriculum in these posts.