The Preschool Homeschool

When some people think of learning toys they picture mini-toy computers and electronic learning games. Although these toys do have a place in the educational spectrum, they aren’t the best choice for preschoolers. My daughter received a mini-laptop for Christmas. While she likes playing with the small mouse and having a kid-sized computer, it’s not her favorite toy. Her favorite toys are ones that require no batteries, don’t make any funny sounds or have a computerized voice saying “Bye-bye!” every minute and a half. Her favorite toys are her kid-sized pots and pans set, her apron set and her beauty salon.

These toys are her favorite because they require imagination and imitate real-life. She cooks everything from soup with ice cream in it to pancakes and ketchup. She gathers all her makeup and pretends to be a famous stylist with her pretend curling iron, blow dryer and scissors. Granted, she makes me look more like a KISS band member than a movie star, but she’s proud of what she’s done. So the best learning toys aren’t always the ones that make the most noise, have bright colors, scream at you in a computerized language, or require you to sit in front of the TV.  Here’s my daughter enjoying some of her toys - we’ll keep it a secret that she’s actually learning!

Happy new year everyone! What are your goals for your homeschool this year? This year is a big year for us. We’ll be finishing up our 3-yr. old pre-k program and start learning more advanced stuff after summer. She turned 4 in December, so by this fall she should be ready for some serious Pre-K fun!! Our goals for the first half of 2009 are:

• Learn all letters and letter sounds by May
• Know how to write her first name
• Know how to spell her first name
• Know her phone number and address
• Know how to count and recognize numbers up to 50
• Know basic addition using counting and sorting activities
• Know how to mix and create new colors from primary colors

That’s about it for the rest of this school year. Our goals for the latter half of 2009 are dependent upon how far we get in the earlier part. We haven’t done much since Thanksgiving, but we’re getting ready to get back into the swing of things. The last relative leaves tomorrow and then life gets back to normal.

Magnetic boards are a great idea for a preschool homeschool. These boards come in all shapes and sizes, with and without added materials. The most common type of magnetic board is the magnetic whiteboard. These are great because you can use them for felt stories, to stick craft examples up, to write on and to encourage creativity by letting your child draw all over them with dry erase markers. They also make a great clay board so clay doesn’t get stuck on your floors.

Smaller magnetic boards are sold at discount and dollar stores and work great with magnetic letters and numbers. I managed to find a couple of magnetic boards at Wal-mart this summer for only $2 each. One was letters and the other numbers. The boards are very flat, more like a folder type size and come with numbers, letters, shapes, and picture magnets. My daughter absolutely loves these. Here’s a couple pics of her working with her magnet materials and a pic of the two magnetic boards:

We use the small magnetic shapes for counting, sorting, adding and subtracting lessons, which is what she’s doing in the pictures. If you can’t find magnetic boards in your area, order some magnetic letters, numbers, shapes and pictures and use your fridge.

With the holidays upon us, saving money in every way seems more important than other times of the year. I found some very productive curriculum materials this weekend for $3. I got an entire alphabet strip set that has colorful letter and flowers all over it that I hung around the dining room. Alphabet Strips I also got two packages of large die cut shapes. One is coins and the other is weather. I found all of these items at a store called the Dollar Tree. A run of the mill dollar store. They had obviously gotten some overstock from an educational supply company because they had tons more items useful for homeschooling, but not necessarily for preschool homeschooling. So don’t pass up your local dollar stores when looking for preschool supplies.

Here are two Christmas crafts we did yesterday. I had all materials on hand, all I had to do was print out the templates provided at The Best Kids Book Site to complete the projects.

We did a reindeer headband and a deocrated stocking. For the reindeer she decorated it and we used white pipe cleaners for the antlers. I had to staple two strips of brown paper together for a large enough band. We didn’t use glue for this project because I found that the pipe cleaners weigh down the reindeer, if you print him out using regular paper. We stapled this craft together.

She decorated the stocking with crayons and glitter and glued some cotton on top. She loved both of these projects and they’re great for independent preschoolers. Here’s some pics of our crafts:

One of my goals with our holiday homeschooling is to teach her a variety of classic Christmas songs. We practice by singing them in the car, singing them to the dogs and listening to them on a CD. There were a couple songs that I didn’t know if I had the correct lyrics and I found This Great List of Songs that includes lyrics. If you’re looking to teach some holiday songs this Christmas, check out this site and print out your favorites. Another great idea is to use a share program to download just the songs you’re working on learning. This way you can listen to them in the house and car without added songs in between.

Homeschooling during the holidays is one of my favorite times. There are so many free activities available online and in our community that I don’t have to do too much but wake up and see what the world gives us to learn. This month we are focused on learning a few christmas songs - Rudolph, Jingle Bells and Santa Claus is Coming to Town. We’ll also be baking a lot and learning about measuring and cooking. December is my favorite month to teach about cooking, ingredients, measuring etc…I also use December to teach my kids about giving. We do either Operation Shoebox or choose an angel from the tree and buy presents for a child. This year my son is working on doing a care package for the soldiers, and he’s really enjoying that. Next year I’ll focus more on other holidays celebrated this time of year, but she’s still too young to grasp the concept of other religions/holidays this time of year.

Don’t forget about the cookie contest going on over at my other blog. There’s only one entrant right now, so let’s get some competition going. This is the last week to submit a recipe for a $10 Walmart gift card. Click Here To Enter

If you’d like a chance to win a $10 Walmart gift card, visit my Cooking Kids Blog and enter your favorite kid-friendly christmas cookie recipe. On a side note, if you have a blog, letting your kids help you run a contest is a great learning experience. The kids and I ran a no-bake cookie contest earlier this year and the kids really enjoyed helping and learning about no-bake cookies and the judging process. In the beginning they were both willing to pick the first cookie they liked as the winner, but after seeing how the judging process worked, they were excited for each new recipe.

If you’re not big on cooking, you can run a story contest, poem contest, joke contest or any other topic you and your family would like judging. If you have a homeschooling blog, you could run a most creative homeschooling project contest or something along those lines. Good luck!

One of my favorite websites for preschool homeschooling, The Best Kids Book Site, has a craft blog. I subscribed a week before last and absolutely love getting a useable craft sent to my email box twice a week. It’s called Craft of the Day, and you can subscribe to the RSS Feed and have the ideas sent straight to your email box. They are sending out Thanksgiving craft ideas right now, and all the one’s I’ve gotten have been easy to do and use common supplies. I hate when I check out a craft site, only to realize that most of the supplies used I don’t have on hand. The craft for today is a simple turkey made with heart feathers. All you need is construction paper, scissors, glue and imagination. I hope you enjoy getting these crafts as much as I do.

Craft of the Day

I stumbled across a free downloadable zip file while searching for some Thanksgiving Day activities for me and my daughter to work on this next week. We have already made turkeys from our handprints and did a turkey coloring sheet, but I wanted something we could work on that we will actually use on Thanksgiving. This zip file has a variety of different graphics that you can use in all different ways. I used my editing software to print out the turkeys in a circle with four on a page, and we’re going to color them and use them as coasters for Thanksgiving dinner. I hope you enjoy this free Thanksgiving resource. Find the free zip file HERE.