Preschool Reed family style

I've had some families ask me what we do for homeschooling and preschool. I will admit this was the first year I really got into homeschooling preschool as my older girls went to preschool and we just did things on the side at home. Usually working on handwriting, or letters or numbers we usually did a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

This year was a little different as I chose to keep Maggie home from preschool. Our preschool has consisted bascially of getting in what I can when I can get it in since I have three other children to teach at the moment. We haven't skimped on things though. Maggie has learned her days of the week, months of the year, how to tell what the weather is like and chart it on her weather map. We're working on colors and color patterns, number recognition, letters and their sounds, and even blending some three letter words to read. Maggie has learned so spell her name and is learning how to trace lines to spell her name and other letters.

This all sounds like a lot, but in fact we do it in such a matter of fact way that it has not seemed like much work at all. How you ask? Well I'll tell you. You can actually get these results buy remembering one simple thing. Have fun! If you can remember that you will find that your preschooler will learn so much in such a way that it almost seems effortless for you.

Here are some of my preschool secrets :

Learning Letters and their sounds- Leap Frog Videos,, Letter Factory, Talking Words Factory, Talking Words Factory 2 are all great videos and they work. In 2 weeks or less they will learn their letters and their sounds. Of course in order for that to work they do have to watch it at least once daily for two weeks.

Letter of the Week - this is a free online curriculum that teaches the letters and their sounds. It includes daily activities for each letter of the alphabet.

Number recognition- I use a combination of Touch Math and The Leap Pad Math Circus video.

I've also used websites such as Tot School to add some pizzaz to our days as well , and created our own Totbox to add Maggie's school stuff in so she can pull it out. I actually have a picture of that on the blog here and will have to dig for that photo and will post it.

File Folder games are awesome for little ones and even big kids to in order to help them learn. What better way to teach your child and not have them even know that they are learning something?
Websites such as:

File Folder Fun.com
Child Care Land. com
Positively Autism.com
Preschool Printables.com
The Resource Site.com

are great places to start with. Some of the websites may require you register for membership but these websites are free. You can also make file folder games of your own, and you can also buy premade ones as well. You just have to google them.

The next fun thing to do is to make Lapbooks. We absolutely love to Lapbook here. Lapbooks are educational and make a fun keepsake. You can be as creative with them as you want.

To learn about lapbooking you can go to www.squidoo.com/lapbooking
This website will give you some links and a quick tutorial on how to make lapbooks.
Also Lapbook Lessons.com will give you a not only all the information you'll ever need on lapbooking but also videos on how to make minibooks to add to your lapbook. If your unable to access that from their site you can easily type in lapbook on You Tube and they are on there.
Some of my favorite Lapbook websites are :

www.lapbooklessons.com
www.homeschoolshare.com
www.homeschoolhelperonline.com

You can also purchase them already made and download to your computer

www.currclick.com
www.heartofwisdom.com
www.homeschoolinthewoods.com

So there you go. Simplicity is the name of the game for preschool. Fun and enjoyment.
Playing with playdough, helping cook things in the kitchen with mom, learning to set a table, tie their shoes, zip their coats , jump and skip, draw pictures on paper and on the sidewalk with chalk. All of these things are equally important as much as academic work if not more important. Cuddling, kissing and lots of hugs also go along with the grade, because our little ones are little only once in their life time. So enjoy my suggestions and enjoy your little one.