2022-2023 Preschool Homeschool Picks
For my girls ages 4 and 1
This is the last post in my homeschooling curriculum series. The next several free posts will get back into natural health and homeopathy for children and their caretakers.
My preschoolers all loosely participate in our family read-aloud time. There’s really no way around it, so we get out the Little People toy bin and our tray puzzles and the little ones can play while I read. I start out our school day with music and American Sign Language, then I move directly into the read-alouds that are just for the preschoolers. After that they can play and have a snack while I read the older kids’ school. Then when we read our fictional read-aloud, I ask them to again be quiet and sit calmly - this is how we practice for sitting in church. Our motto for this time (like it is at bedtime) is “calm and quiet!”.
Additional Read-alouds
In addition to the Bible read-aloud for the day, I like to do some fun but quality reading with the younger ones. I have what we call “red-box books” that I keep in the…red box :). These are books I pulled off of reading lists from educators I trust to make sure we get in good quality picture book literature every year. I have a 4-year rotation for these books, and a plastic tub in our basement where I store the ones we are not reading.
It’s like Christmas in July when we get to switch out the red-box books and see what our read-alouds are for the year! After we read through everything once, the preschoolers get to pick each day what we read. This year our red box contains:
Books about McDuff the Dog
Harry the Dirty Dog books
A few simple chapter books from Christian Light Publications
1-year-old Curriculum
I started doing “table activities” with my oldest when she was about 18 months old. It helped fill the time in our day and gave us some intentional time together. A lot of people say to do absolutely nothing that looks like school until age 6, but I may disagree. However, my thoughts of what is considered “school” are very different from the conventional thoughts. Learning should be a lifestyle, and I try to cultivate that from the very beginning. I also never force the youngest of us to do any work, we modify and skip as necessary. But they usually are ready and wanting to do school every day!
All that being said, I loosely use ABC Jesus Loves Me 1-year-old curriculum. I downloaded this when it was fairly new to the interwebs and I love the activities it provides. We do the color, shape, and animal activities which involve a lot of coloring with egg crayons, finger painting, watercolor painting, water “painting”, and dot marker-ing. I don’t usually do the Bible ABC book because it’s often a little too involved for me - it requires too many messy extras.
We also have some cute animal alphabet flashcards we look at about once a week (I got them as a gift at some point). And I have several homemade busy bags and some matching puzzles.
I used to get ABeka nursery crafts, but this year I’ll be copying paper crafts out of this Easy Animal Craft book - and I’ll probably have to make extra copies for the older kids as these are a favorite in our house.
Finally, I choose a different fingerplay poem to teach the younger ones from WeeSing FingerPlay. These are so fun and cute and usually end in giggles every time we do them.
All of this takes just a couple minutes to get started and then they usually stay entertained long enough for me to get the other kids’ work done.
Preschool Read-alouds
For my 4-year-old girl, I have a few extra read-alouds (that we’ll use for read-aloud dates) and those include:
Preschool One-on-One Work
These are things just for the preschooler that we do while the older girls are busy doing independent work. These are done on a loop:
Alphabetti flashcards
My Word Book (I got this used at a book sale)
My Number Book (I got this used at a book sale)
Preschool Seat Work
And this is what we’ll work on at the table with her older sisters:
Building Thinking Primary, second half (we did the first half last year)
Geometry (shape) worksheets and activities from Moffat Girls
Calendar Printables - I don’t remember where I got these, but they are cute and my preschoolers love marking the weather and how they are feeling each day.
And that’s it for my younger ones! It takes a little time on my part to print and plan but my kids have always loved doing these simple activities. We enjoy the time, plus when they start “real” school (we don’t say it like this, we call it all “school”), then it is an easy and seamless transition.
What do you like to do with your preschoolers?
Check out all of our 2022-2023 choices here.
