Homeschool Days: Tips for Keeping Your Preschoolers Busy & Learning

Let’s be honest, pre-school isn’t going to seamlessly fit into your day of homeschooling other children. However, I hope I can help you find some ways to keep your youngest learners not only busy, but growing in ways that will prepare them for their big start to school. 

PREPPING FOR LEARNING:

Everyone’s expectations are different for their preschoolers. Some swear by a complete curriculum and preparing them through more of a school-like experience, while others have more of a play-the-day-away-and-the-learning-will-come-naturally style! I’m somewhere in the middle but I always say the parents know what’s best for their kids! No judgement or any attempt to sway you either way here!

I like to use this printable Preschool Assessment for ideas on what to cover for the year. Although it’s really for the end of the year check to see what your kids have mastered, I let my preschooler use the sheets as a practice throughout the entire year and hope that by the end of the year he has a good grasp of the skills. You can find other resources on your own to reinforce the concepts in this pack but I love that it includes pages about reading emotions and tracing practice among dozens of other practice sheets.

If you want to keep your printing and copying to a minimum, these are my favorite school“supplies” for just that:

“SUBJECTS” TO COVER IN PRESCHOOL:

LETTERS:

The ABC’s are an obvious first lesson in pre-k but don’t forget to teach letter recognition (seeing the letter and knowing its name) and the SOUND the letter makes. One of the easiest and most fun ways to introduce those letter sounds: The Letter Factory movie by Leap Frog! . My kids loved this one and the characters they use to demonstrate the sound the letter makes it super memorable.

The Reading Lesson is a simple introduction to letter sounds and eventually letter sound blends and irregular sounds. I didn’t start this until Kindergarten but I could see it being a great jump start tool for preschoolers and get parents prepped for the rules that we may have forgotten from 30 years ago!

SIGHT WORDS:

You’d be amazed at how quickly a preschooler can memorize sight words! Sight words are words that we use often in daily language but they don’t always follow the rules that “The Reading Lesson” would teach us for most words. Having a list of words like “A, the, I, be, to” etc. is a huge jump start to reading those little leveled reader books in the next few years.

My favorite resource for sight word lists for each grade level is from Confessionsofahomeschooler.com! Erica has well-rounded, simple, and clear activities and many free resources! Her site is definitely worth subscribing to as she offers really useful tips and printables for preschool and up!

Here is a link to the kindergarten sight word caterpillar. You could definitely use this for a preschooler by choosing the simple, one to two-letter words first and work your way through the list. I use a little pocket chart from the dollar section at Target to hold our Caterpillar words and my kids feel so accomplished as they see it grow! Some times they even ask for multiple words instead of one at a time so they can see it grow faster.

Our “Sight word Caterpillar”:

COLORS & SHAPES :

Probably the easiest concepts to cover, colors and shapes are everywhere! But as simple as it is to point out some colors around the backyard, it’s easy to forget to actually do it! I like using simple and inexpensive craft supplies and some free printables (check out the end of the post for FREE printable craft stick pattern pages!) to cover this job! Many sites like this one have pages you can print for use with colorful pom-poms or dyed craft sticks (all usually available at a Dollar Store.) You can use these to cover specified patterns or blanks on the worksheets for some color-matching practice! This is a super-simple, super-cute rainbow we use! I would recommend laminating them or tossing them inside one of the dry erase pockets to make them last longer!

NUMBERS & COUNTING:

Also an easy one to cover, let your preschooler count everything! “How many chicken nuggets are on your purple plate?” or “How many stuffed animals are on your bed?” (I’d be amazed if my preschooler could count high enough to accurately cover the ridiculous number of stuffed animals on his bed! WELL…until we discovered this thing! I’m pretty sure we have over 60 stuffed animals in it.)

I really like the foam puzzles from the Dollar Store for number recognition and you can talk to your child while he or she is working on fitting them in about what the number is and maybe even have some little objects to count out for each one.

TRACING & NAME-WRITING:

Once again, those amazing little dry-erase pockets are perfect for line-tracing and name writing. You can download and use this free font  to make sheets for your little one to practice his or her OWN name! I love making these! For some reason, my preschooler prefers to use dry-erase markers to a pencil or crayon.

PLAY! PLAY! PLAY!:

I think most of these concepts can be learned through play so I don’t push for too much “formal learning” time each day for my preschooler. Letter sounds, sight words and name-writing will require more practice and hands-on teaching, though. Because I have two older students in our “class”, keeping the youngest busy while still learning is not the easiest part of the day! However, our bucket of “busy bags” helps a lot. You can change things out daily or weekly as well to keep items from getting boring.

OUR “BUSY BUCKET”:

Here is what I keep in the “big blue busy bucket”:
Bag of Pom-Poms: as mentioned before, pom-poms are a great tool for counting or color sorting. Or you could make some plastic cup/balloon pom shooters for some giggles.

Bag of colored craft sticks: great for color sorting, patterns, shape building and more!

Foam Number and Letter Puzzles

Bag of various animals: We have a game with 100 penguins in different colors that we can sort in a million different ways. Or you can set them up on “seats” to make a giant screaming crowd of wrestling-match spectators, also a good time.

Bag of wooden blocks and some colored wooden shapes:

Bag of lacing cards or lacing blocks: these are wooden shapes or blocks that have holes in them to practice lacing shoelaces through them.

“Match It!” Math and Spelling Puzzles

Dry Erase Board and some markers – no plan here, just creative fun.

Clothespin Matching games: These are a FREE resource and a fantastic game for number and letter recognition, and color-matching! My preschooler’s favorite activity and great for hand-eye coordination!

LEARNING ALONGSIDE OLDER SIBLINGS:

Also, if you have older students like I do, try to get your preschooler involved in whatever they are learning. Younger kids LOVE to feel like the “big kids” and they soak up so much! Just remember to keep your expectations in check. I’ve noticed my preschooler’s vocabulary is advanced a great deal from what I remember my older two having. He’s listening to them ALL THE TIME! He picks up so many words and even uses adverbs correctly because of what he hears during the day.

DAILY “WORK”:

My youngest loves to be in charge of our “daily work” and uses his magic pointer finger wand (his favorite part of school, I believe) to count out the days on the wall calendar and go down the list of months and days. He says he’s our “leader” – the truth on many days.

SCIENCE:

Science experiments are a definite highlight for my preschooler! These hands-on activities are so memorable for this age! Bonus points for messy projects!

**MID-POST WARNING: Preschoolers do not have time for brushing hair and wearing shirts and stuff.

ART:

Speaking of messy, Art is a super-simple way to get your youngest involved in school! He may not follow all the “rules” of the concept we are learning but ART is ART and it should be fun!

GEOGRAPHY:

You don’t have to Mod Podge a map to your table like me but have a MAP somewhere where your preschooler can see it and ask questions! This is the BEST part of our school room! Geography can be fun for preschoolers too! Pointing out things on the map including our hometown, where a cousin lives or a favorite travel destination.

If my kids know any place on the map, it’s all seen relative to where Disney World is – ha! Florida IS pretty easy to find!

We also love to do live web cams from around the world! You can see what’s going on at the Coliseum in Rome or even the Great Wall of China, we love to just watch the sunset live to pretend we are with our friends in Laguna Beach, CA.

READING:

Reading books are the KEY to growing your preschoolers vocabulary! The more words he or she is exposed to through reading, the more words go into the mind bank! Pretty simple to grasp, but don’t count out that your preschooler could benefit a lot from listening to you read more advanced books to your older kids, or even from listening to an older sibling read out loud. If you have a bookcase, place those preschooler-friendly ones on the bottom for easy access!

LOWER THE STRESS & HAVE FUN!:

The possibilities for teaching a preschooler are endless and really accessible! I would recommend making a plan of what concepts you’d like to cover and having some play “tools” to reinforce learning BUT also keeping realistic expectations for each day. Be able to resign some days to a learning through nothing but play. I promise he or she is learning something everyday!

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