Homeschooling in Preschool
Are you considering doing preschool with your child AT HOME? Maybe you’d like to get a head start on kindergarten or maybe you are keeping your child home from preschool in order to save money. Either way, these 10 skills will provide a solid foundation for any preschooler.
1. Practice motor skills
Gross motor skills involve activities such as catching and throwing a ball, skipping, balancing, and so on. You can encourage your child to try new things with kid songs or exercise videos. Allow plenty of outdoor time! Take a trip to a playground and allow your child to climb and slide. All of these skills count as learning at this age. These gross motor more skills also affect fine motor skills, so don’t overlook them just because they don’t seem academic.
Fine motor skills are strengthened by activities your child does using his hands and fingers. Just like picking up Cheerios with the pincer grip is a skill babies learn, playing with small items and stacking will help your child eventually learn to cut, write, and paste. Threading beads, connecting blocks and building with play-do are all entertaining options for preschoolers. Don’t forget to sit with your child and play along too. Show how to cut out shapes, flatten the dough, and roll it into a ball.
2. Coloring, cutting, and tracing
I allow my children to cut paper as they wish. We have a stack of blank paper in our school cabinet. I ask them to clean up after themselves, but it sure beats having them cut on their hair or our furniture! You can draw lines on paper for your child to follow along and cut (straight, curvy, wavy, and zig zag). You can also find free worksheets online to print that will provide cutting practice.
To help my children take an interest in coloring, I print coloring pages with their favorite characters and provide them with new crayons periodically. My second child struggled with pencil grip, so I allowed him to practice with half-sized crayons in order to develop his grip.
Tracing is another activity for your child to try using a pencil OR a skinny dry erase marker. What can you have for tracing practice? Shapes, simple pictures made of shapes, ABCs, and even your child’s name! If you’re using paper, try a highlighter to make quick practice for your child to trace. If you’re using a skinny dry erase marker, put a worksheet with shapes and letters inside a sheet protector or a shop ticket. These can be easily put into a binder to use at the same time each day.
3. Take turns and share
If your child is an only child and hasn’t had much practice sharing, try playing. a game like matching cards or throwing a ball where you can practice taking turns. It’s important that your child learn to wait for a turn. When playing a game like matching cards, the child must pay attention when it’s someone else turn to know the location of the cards. I’ve played this game with preschoolers before, and it’s quite easy to see which children had experience playing and which ones had not. Sharing and taking turns will also help your child form friendships easier.
4. Sing!
Singing provides an opportunity to use gross motor skills because you can also dance while you sing. Singing won’t only help your child musically, but it will also give him an avenue to memorize foundational knowledge:
—ABCs and their sounds (It’s not too early to start.)
—Months of the year
—Days of the week
—Counting
—Rhyming
You can play the songs in the car, in the bedroom, during breakfast, and so on. We found quite a bit of songs on Youtube that we could listen to and watch.
5. Manners
Some behaviors in which you may want to provide training are:
—How to ask by saying “please”
—How to show gratitude by saying “thank you”
—How to apologize (I prefer saying more than, “I’m sorry.” You can find different ideas online but I like saying, “It was wrong of me to________. I should have ________. Will you please forgive me?” I also don’t allow the person who was wronged to say, “It’s ok.” Instead, I teach them to say, “I forgive you.”)
—How to get a parent’s attention without rudely interrupting (placing a hand on the parent’s arm and waiting or saying, “Excuse me.”)
—How to address adults that are not the child’s parents. In our house, we say Mr. or Ms. and then the grown-up’s first or last name.
6. Counting and Sorting
Toys, snacks, and everyday items can be counted. You can involve your child in counting and model or show them how to do it since you are doing it every day anyway. Young children love to imitate their parents. Having children sort items by color or size is a fantastic start and much more hands-on than a worksheet. You can also learn to count with songs. Start small and add more on as your child learns.
7. Puzzles
Working puzzles and recognizing the pattern in them pays off later with both reading and math where your child will need to be patient and notice patterns. You can buy cheap dollar store puzzles and even switch out with a friend to trade. I prefer handheld puzzles, but there are digital versions you can try if you are on-the-go. If your child is reluctant, sit down and work the puzzle with him for a few minutes.
8. Ask questions
Every errand you run and trip you take away from your house is a field trip for your preschooler. Be purposeful and ask questions to your child to get him to think. Children observe things in the car as you drive around (as long as they AREN’T WATCHING A TV). Ask your child questions such as:
—Why do you think____________?
—How do you think____________?
—Where have you seen that before?
—Would you like to_______? Why or why not?
The same type of questions will also apply in ANY CONVERSATION you have with your child. Children who are spoken to and asked questions of hear more words and therefore have a larger vocabulary and understanding of the world around them. It is easy to tell a difference between children who have been spoken to at home and those who have not.
9. Read
Read with your child EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. I will admit that if I had not known of the extreme importance of reading, I probably would’ve been too busy most days to end up doing it. I worked outside the home full time. Knowing how much of a difference it would make for my. child, particularly in those first 5 years of life, I pushed through and MADE THE TIME. I enjoyed it so much!
Busy parents, I hear you. You’ve got to snatch every opportunity you can to read with your child, though. Audiobooks can be a great time saver, but don’t forget to the be the reader also. After all, you can interact with your child by asking questions like the ones I mentioned earlier. You can be there to make sure your child gets to make personal connections to things you are reading to them. Be sure to read a mixture of story books, nonfiction (true) books, and some rhyming books. They all have their own special benefits.
10. Name and Safety Information
Your child should know his name (first and last) as well as his parents’ names. Does your child know where he lives and on which street? Other safety information you should teach your child is stranger danger and how to keep his body safe. There are books and programs specifically for teaching on these topics, so be sure to read reviews carefully and ask for recommendations. Whatever you do, don’t forget to teach this critical information. In our family, we did not use a structured program, but learned gradually in conversation.
What do YOU think you’d like to add to this list of Homeschool Preschool? Comment below!
Remember, YOU are your child’s most influential teacher.