Starting Preschool At Home

Besides reading books, here are three great things to start doing with your preschooler at home:

1. Memorize a Bible verse each month
2. Sing a song/hymn of the month until it is committed to memory
3. Go on fieldtrips

That is a good start. Now, if you would like some themed ideas for your year, take a look at my masterplan , which helped shape all our preschool years here at Jesus’ Precious Little Lambs. Also, you will find two years of corresponding lesson plans under the Category “Preschool Lesson Plans” (listed on the side bar).

Here are some supply purchases I would suggest for reading and math:

For Reading:

(Amazon and SimplyCharlotteMason.com)

Sandpaper letters to teach letter sounds and directionality for writing.

You can watch “sandpaper letters” from a Montessori instructional video called Helping Children Learn to Read to learn the correct teaching method.

After your child knows all his or her letter sounds, purchase a moveable alphabet.

Your child will begin to use the moveable alphabet by building 3 letter phonetic words (cat, sun, man, pot, etc.) which is a next step to learning to read. This is both Charlotte Mason and Montessori. To fully understand the purpose and use of the moveable alphabet, watch the video “moveable alphabet” in Helping Children Learn to Read.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We used a lower case alphabet puzzle by Lauri to “word build” and practice letter sounds for a long time before purchasing the moveable alphabet because it is much simpler to start with. Later, we purchased the moveable alphabet, which is not only useful for teaching reading, but also spelling (for many years to come). We began to use our moveable alphabet when my older preschooler was ready to start Simply Charlotte Mason’s Delightful Reading Curriculum. Your child will be ready for this reading curriculum once they are quite proficient at sounding out and building three or four letter words (often by age 5 or 6). See my post Simple At Home Preschool for more about Word Building, and for confidence building guidance that YOU CAN TEACH PRESCHOOL!

For Math:

(Rainbow Resource!)

We use these math manipulatives in preschool and beyond.

Large building blocks

Pattern Blocks

Attribute Blocks

Geoboards

Unifix cubes

Along with these manipulatives, I recommend purchasing and becoming familiar with the suggested activities in the book, Developing Math Concepts in Pre-Kindergarten and the Developing Number Concepts series by Kathy Richardson, so that you understand how to develop mathematical thinking in your child while playing with the manipulatives at home. These are fantastic math lesson books that involve no workbook/worksheet work, but are all hands on work designed for Pre-K through 2nd grade. I marvel at how Kathy really understands how kids develop mathematical thinking–just take a look at her article “Too Easy for Kindergarten and Just Right for First Grade” for a small sample of her genius.