The Preschool Homeschool

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.

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