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Preschool has been a blast so far! I’m more confident than ever that homeschooling is right for our family and our kids. I’m loving the flexibility. Squeaks can pick and choose her activities and we can stop when she’s had enough for the day. We can structure our lessons around the weather, family events, play dates, and moods in general. Plus her younger brothers are in the mix and watching too. The other day we played hide-and-seek and I realized just how much Little Dude is absorbing when he covered his eyes and counted to ten nearly perfectly!
Preschool and even kindergarten are actually not even required in the state of California. I believe there’s a bit too much rush to get kids “educated” these days. That’s why I’m a big advocate for just playing school up to a certain age. Kids learn so much through play anyway. I turn our lessons into games as often as I can. I can already tell that an active learning style is going to be more beneficial to Little Dude especially. Squeaks is just one of those kids that does well with sitting and doing worksheets though. She even asks for them!
This mix of active and traditional learning styles has resulted in a good variety of preschool homeschool tools.
Truth be told I’m a bit of a sucker for educational activities. The back-to-school season is like Christmas! And that Target dollar section…forget about it! I’m always on the hunt for a good learning game. Of course, if I don’t find what I’m looking for I can always just make it (and share it with you in my Printable Library or shop), but there are some preschool homeschool tools I can’t make that I just love.
Here’s a short list of my favorite preschool homeschool tools so far for those of you at the beginning of your journey. We use all of these almost daily if not multiple times a day.
Do-A-Dot Markers
These things are awesome for when your kids want to paint but you don’t want to deal with the mess. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for getting down with some finger-painting goodness but a mama has her limits. The number of Do-A-Dot printable on Pinterest is amazing and the majority of them are free. Of course, you can always just set the kiddos down with a blank sheet of paper and let them go at it. The fun colors and squishy circles are very satisfying, even for me.
Here are a few of our favorite Do-A-Dot activities:
- These fun shapes printables from MPM School Supplies.
- Alphabet letter hunt worksheets from Tot Schooling
- Farm themed numbers pages from Kindergarten Worksheets and Games.
Snap Cubes
Not only are these babies awesome for counting, measuring, and beginning STEM activities, but they are also great for color sorting, pattern practice, and fine motor skills. As a huge bonus to me, they rock at keeping Little Dude entertained while sister is learning. My little engineer. We keep our snap cubes in our busy binder (Check out the post to see the pattern cards we use with them.)
Here are some more fun snap cube activities:
- Alphabet uppercase snap cube mats from Life Over C’s.
- Preschool Math Measuring Your Hands and Feet from Little Bins For Little Hands.
Art Caddy
You could accomplish this idea with any number of different set ups but the idea is really what has been beneficial to us. Every time we sat down to do a coloring sheet, worksheet, or journal page I found myself running back and forth to get different writing tools, glue, scissors, etc. I use to keep all of these items is a cabinet at the end of our hallway (such is life with no designated homeschool room). Getting rid of all the individual boxes for crayons and markers was a big help too. I was always trying to keep the kids from ripping them and now everything is all together, no boxes needed.
Hopscotch Rug
This one is pretty self explanatory. I love this thing though. Great for counting and gross motor, and perfect for rainy days. Thumbs up!
Sidewalk Chalk
Talk about a versatile toy. Sidewalk chalk is the best! Draw shapes and have the kiddos hop to each one. For that matter, you could draw the alphabet, numbers, get multi colored chalk and hop to each color. If you can draw it, you can play “hop to it”. I’ve even see people use sidewalk chalk on their trampolines. More gross motor fun! Genius!
Laminator Machine
Okay, this one is more for me, but it’s still a huge one on my list. Homeschooling involves printing things out; A LOT of printing things out. Laminating worksheets makes them dry erase and then we can reuse them multiple times. I’ve laminated pretty much every game in our busy binders too. Little Dude is pretty rough on things and if I want my games to stay nice, laminating is a necessity. Who am I kidding though, I’d laminate anything and everything if I could. LOVE my laminator!
Books
One of the simplest, and yet most effective of our homeschool tools. A no-brainer for sure. Read, read, read. Exposing little minds to new vocabulary, letter sounds, letter recognition, imagination, rhythm and rhyme, the list goes on and on. Benefits galore. The majority of our nonfiction books are Usborne. They are known for having awesome educational books and I fell in love with them when I was a consultant. I just couldn’t give it the time I wanted to but I still absolutely love their books and so do the kids (I’m not getting paid a dime to say this). The number of books in our house grows almost daily and we go to the library as often as possible. I could do a whole post about our favorite books and maybe I will at some point. For now, just go read all the things!
This Is My Home, This Is My School by Johnathan Bean is an awesome picture book for introducing the concept of homeschool to your kiddos. Squeaks started to ask why her friends went to school and this book has helped explain things in a way she can grasp.
Puzzles
Squeaks is totally digging puzzles lately. She gets two puzzles a day in her quiet box and it’s not going to be long before I’m going to have to invest in a few more challenging ones for her. I love that they encourage problem solving and fine motor skills. They’re perfect for quiet time. Although this alphabet train puzzle is way too awesome to not do all the time. This locks and latches puzzle is a favorite of Little Dudes, and it’s another great way to keep him entertained and learning during sisters lessons.
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