What do you do for preschool?

Parenting and Education (Other) Homeschooling
1

I’m a stay at home Mom and I’m always with the kids. I get to be on the computer for maybe 30 minutes a day and not much time to plan lessons. I already bought the Horizon preschool curriculum and I use YBCR, YBCD, Little Reader, Little Math, we rent Signing Time DVDs and Preschool Prep and we have a lot of puzzles, crafts and stuff to use but I get so lost thinking of what to do each day. :confused: I spent close to $1,000 already on this stuff. It’s money well spent but I’d like to use what I have and not buy more. I also have the Marshmallow math book but no time to read it. Oh and ABCmouse.com my son loves it!

Friday I made a sight word parking lot (I got the idea off Pinterest) and I put all new words for my 2 year old to find and drive his cars on. I’m looking for things like that that teach them while having fun. My daughter Lily is 1 and I just let her watch the programs and play with her and sometimes count her cheerios or just talk to her while I cook/clean and tell her what I’m doing. My 2 year old Kevin likes things that he can play with and touch. He loves ABCmouse.com. He likes to help cook and clean. My mom makes realistic baby dolls and made one for Lily’s 1st birthday. The doll is anatomically correct and wears a diaper and Kevin brought me the baby and said “She pooped pizza”. He likes saying what food he pooped, anyway, I showed him how to change her diaper and he really liked that.

How do you set up your curriculum’s for each each day? Are you just creative or do have a schedule you follow for each thing?

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Here are some good blogs with lots of idea

http://engagingtoddleractivities.wordpress.com/
http://www.1plus1plus1equals1.com/ForTots.html
http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/preschool-printables

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Thank you! Those look like fun!

4

Thank you Happy,

I am also interested in it. My LO is only 13 months but I am looking for future material. I am havin a look the third link that you have included in your list

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Hello happy, I am collecting some material for my LO who is now 13 months. I have looked the link http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/preschool-printables, that you named the other day. I have looked and it is very interesting. You can download a lot of useful material freely. Besides, you can pay some money and get all the material of letter of the week. http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/letter-of-the-week. I think that letter of the week is what I have been looking for. There are some reviews where people say that it is too much for the babies. What is your opinion? Have anyone used the letter of the week? What did you do when your LO was two years old?What type of activies could I do with a two year toddler?

Now she is 13 months. I am using LR, http://more.starfall.com/, wink to learn, pocoyo videos… I read and sing nursery rhymes. Any other idea, please?

6

Nuria2012,
Are you going to buy the preschool curriculum for your 13 month old?
I bought the preschool curriculum today. My 2 1/2 year old loved it but I didn’t think to let my 12 month old do it. It’s not laminated yet and everything goes in her mouth. It’s a lot of cutting and tracing too so I don’t know how much of it she’d be able to do now.

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Hi FLKL,

I am not thinking about buying anything right now. I am only having a look all the resources, websites… that might be useful in the language learning developmen of my LO. I have read that where the material of the worksheets or handouts is began to be used about two years/two years and a half. Now I am a SAHM, have more time to collect the material that I will use in the future. I have seen that preeschool curriculum. I think it is too big. It could a perfect guide for me in order to work with Nuria before she goes to the school, about three years. I am collecting worksheets about prewriting, pretracing, alphabet and so on. I would like to have how much you have spent in the material that you have bought. There were several options. I want to be aware ifi worths the penny, if it is too material… I would like that you told me about it. Now I am also interested in those activities that parents have done when babies are from 12 to 24 months. Apart from nursery rhymes, dvds… I would like something educational that could enjoy my LO and she is more and more authonomous to play on her own. I love playing to her, I am another baby but in woman… lol

Please I would like that you told me about how it works with your LO in the next weeks. Perhaps, I don´t need to collect many worksheets, and buy it in four or five months to prepare and sellect the resources.

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Pinterest is probably the best place to search for ideas. Search for things like toddler games, toddler crafts. You will find more ideas than you will ever be able to do.

9

My son is a bit older. 3 and a bit.

I have categories and I set aside a bit if time each week for them.

Reading
Phonics
Math
Science
Geography
History
Art
Fine motor/ dawning cutting, pasting folding etc
Gross motor, bike riding, balance beam, jumping. Etc.
Music.

We do reading, phonics, math, music, fine and gross motor everyday. Fine motor is usually as simple as coloring or doing a craft. Or even helping with dinner. Gross motor lately has included playing hopscotch and climbing over the couch. :o
Music takes a few minutes to run little musician and we sing all the time.
Reading often doubles as science, history, geography as we read books related to those subjects.

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I would definitely make a weekly plan of all the things you want to cover (and how much of it) each day, and put the week’s material aside, in an organized fashion, for the week to come. I do not have a choice but to do that, since I work full time and my nanny implements our program.

I do it every weekend, when my son is either napping or early in the morning (before he wakes up), or alternatively during Daddy time. You picked just the right material, I think, so it is a matter of having a plan! Having a plan will also be a great motivator because you will be able to track progress and plan longer term.

My son is older than yours, but if you contact me privately, I will be happy to send you an example of our schedule.

Rivka at acceleratededucation.blogspot.com or http://tinyurl.com/giftedboy

11

It depends on the kid, because I have one child who LIKES doing workbook-type activities, who is a toddler. But that has not been the case with my other kids, and my general attitude is, let them be children. The single most important brain-building activity for children of tender years, is unstructured play, and having time and space to imagine, create, and come up with things themselves, and generally think their own thoughts. All of us need that to a certain extent, but in early childhood, the need is critical for developing creativity and original thinking.

So, I do not come at it with the idea that toddlers and little children must be trained in how to think, but more that they must be shielded from being trained in how to think, so that their potential for creativity and risk-taking isn’t flattened.

That said, my toddler really and truly does love to draw, paint (especially, paint, and that means with brushes rather than fingers), and is doing phonics, letters, and numbers more readily than his much-older brother, because for whatever reason, he seems to have been born wired to want books and reading. He holds a pencil in a tripod grip, even!

So with an outlier like that, I just try to parent to his signals, but I don’t push. If he just wanted to play all day, that is perfectly normal and healthy. But if he brings me a book or wants to watch Leapfrog or fill in worksheets and proudly display them on the fridge, we do that too. As for the older brother, he is NOT into workbooks, and I am doing my best not to foster a hatred of learning or a resignation to the idea that learning is tedious, by not pushing him into a mold that he finds unbearable. So the older brother plays Minecraft whenever he can, watches physics videos because he’s genuinely fascinated by origins of the universe and space/time/gravity and the scale of things…but I keep requirements extremely basic and short on any written work. He still makes sudden quantum leaps when he’s ready…half a year ago, he was frustrated that he couldn’t even draw shapes properly (and was quite old enough!) but then, poof, his brain matured and now he draws stick figures.

Because his toddler brother is already capable of making actual representative art that even looks like what it is supposed to be, we work hard at praising effort and heart, and work hard to avoid praising innate gifts that the learner himself did not bring into being and therefore isn’t responsible for the degree to which he possesses them. And we are going to have to work really hard at avoiding comparisons or using them as negative motivators (like, “Look, your little brother is already doing it! Don’t let him pass you!”)

Didn’t mean to diesel on the topic. But you can tell I am not on board with excessive “training” at younger and younger ages, because not having enough time for free, self-directed play, actually blunts intellect later on.

12

My daughter has recently turned 3. I am homeschooling my older child who is 6 and so the younger one has to fit in with that too which means she joins us for many science experiments, watches many of the youtube videos I show my elder for whatever we happen to be studying. Mostly with her individually though I focus on reading - both sight word reading and phonics - this child actually likes more formal teaching than I did with my eldest but the achievements are about the same for their ages despite this.

We are using Easy Peasy getting ready 1 as well abcjesuslovesme.com 3 year old curriculum to cover the more general preschool tasks. She has started MEP reception and we do counting daily - since my eldest often leads this we usually count quite high for the younger and she has picked it up well. My 3 year old loves to draw and paint and has excellent fine motor skills (much better than my elder at the same age) and we do cutting as well. She does also operate the computer a little.

She is in gymnastics as well and since she is well behind where her sister was in gross motor skills we do also practice these things daily. We also have a lot of free play in the garden and also with blocks and other toys that are not as educationally classified though many times serve as better educational toys than those that teach letters and sounds. We do a fair amount of music - mostly just listening to and learning songs (my younger loves music more than my elder did at the same age).

My priorities for age 3 though are to get the reading going well and read to her from everything and anything. I also want her to have a lot of time to form relationships with her siblings and other people.

13

Wow. You went nuts on stuff. We used free Starfall. Same as ABC Mouse.

For a one and two-year old, I would just suggest signing songs and playing games. Go to the museums or zoos… Many museums and zoos have Mommy and Me programs or Stroller Time. The local, state, an Federal parks often have programs for little ones. The Fed park near us has a toddler story / activity time twice a month. These are great programs that teach I think better than an formal school program.
Many libraries offer a toddler story time. Get out to these, too.

My day?
We have breakfast, count cheerios or discuss food groups
pick out our clothes - do you want to wear the red or the blue shirt?
morning walk, play iSpy or just chat about the weather
play time
games, stories
make , and they can hep a bit
nap
wake up, snack they can help choose and make
play
learning games
help with dinner, they might be seated at the table to play with small stuff while I cook

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Hi
I am already started making preschool videos for kids with lot fun for free,
Checkout here and give me any ideas to make even better videos
Videos Link: https://goo.gl/ld25WH
Thanks :thumbsup: