Homeschooling with a Preschooler
Preschool is a wonderful time for children. They can express themselves, control their bodies well, and can follow simple instructions. But, they still have short attention spans and need to get up and move around more often than older children.
When Amanda was a preschooler, she insisted in participating in "school." She wanted to sit with Brandon and do something for at least 10-20 minutes a day, sometimes longer. So, I had her occupied for a little while, but then I had to get creative to keep her busy while I got things done for school, chores, etc. Here are some ideas of things she enjoyed doing.
1. Drawing and coloring
2. Music while playing
3. Blocks for stacking and building
4. Large beads, pasta for stringing on a shoelace necklace
5. Sewing/lacing cards (these are easy to make at home with cardboard and hole punchers)
6. Puzzles
7. Sorting items (I like to have this serve a purpose when possible so she'd sort clothes, socks, buttons, screws, bolts, washers, etc. If your preschooler puts things in his mouth, you will have to limit what you use.)
8. Old caculators, keyboards and cordless phones (with cord removed) make good imaginative play objects
9. Cut and paste collages from magazines with safety scissors and washable glue featuring themes like family, community, foods, transportation, healthy meals, things God made, etc
10. Play dough
11. Read along books on cassette (available from most libraries)
12. Leaf rubbings or rubbings of other flat objects
13. Sturdy books to look through
14. Junk mail, toy catalogs, etc to look through
15. Macaroni collages
16. Clothes pin in the bottle games, waste paper can "toss it" games, etc
17. Hide a toy, treat or small gift and have them hunt for it with hand drawn clues of where to look for the next clue (I would send them from one end of the house to the other to keep them busy :-)
18. When all else failed, I would put in a short educational video.
Above all, keep a sense of balance. We can't allow preschoolers (or any child for that matter) control our day and keep us from carrying out things that need to be done. But, we need to keep in mind that they are little, need our attention and have needs as well.