After making the decision to homeschool, I soon learned that preschool at home means different things to different people. I am definatley on the relaxed side of preschooling at home. I was surprised to learn that some people felt it important to show others how much they can teach their kids at home; having them reading at 4, knowing that alphabet by 2, and much more.
I am not part of that camp. In my mind, there will be plenty of time for stressing about school when they are older and it matters a lot more. For now, we have fun, try to keep each other entertained, and don't sweat it when we are too busy or too tired.
Here's a look at what we do....
Crafts and more crafts. They just have to be fun, they don't have to be "educational". We keep doing them as long as the girls are interested and stop when they are bored. If they don't want to do the craft the way I had planned, we change plans. If they want to make dinosaurs instead of flowers, that's fine. If everything, even the sky, needs to be pink, that's fine too.
Paper crowns: hours of fun.
Actually drawing now, not just scribbles!
Making hearts with paper bits... everything pink, of course!
Chalk on black paper.
The chalk then ended up all over!
Getting creative with popsicle sticks. They made this one up on their own.
One of my very favorites, sensory bins. This is a portable one I made right before we moved. It's just a tackle box with some dried rice and beans, a couple of little dishes and spoons. She's making dinner for the baby.
This is a bigger version we did several months ago, tons of fun!
I just let them go wild with shaving cream. As you can see, it was a big hit.
Fun on the road. We travel a lot so I look for coloring and sticker books that we can easily take along.
Helping in the garden is always fun and I try to talk about what is going on and how plants grow. Here we are harvesting pigeon peas.
This was a simple graphing activity that I found on www.1plus1plus1equals1.com, she really got into. All you have to do is make a dice, then roll it and graph the results.
It also involved physical activity as she "rolled" it across the room.
Painting more activities from www.1plus1plus1equals1.com, we use lots of stuff from this website, it's lots of fun.
Finger puppets!
Another fun printable activity I found, I can't remember where. She has to sequence the pictures from small to large.
So there are some glimpses of how we do preschool! Again, we keep it relaxed and fun, they have so much to learn at this age, that I don't want to waste time pushing academics they aren't inerested in, or aren't ready for yet.
Preschool is fun, it's keeping their minds busy, it's explkoring, it's learning to be curious.
