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Whether you plan on homeschooling entirely, or you’re just trying to prepare your littles for kindergarten, working with them a little each day can have huge benefits.
Not only do you get to enjoy spending one on one time together but you get to be the one to introduce them to the joy of learning. I found with my kids, it didn’t take much time or effort to give them a strong foundation. Kids are naturally curious, eager to learn all they can, and want to spend time with us.
While there are curriculums and other resources specifically for preschool, these seven things are what I would tell a parent who is looking to start working with their child. You don’t need anything fancy or expensive. You taught them to eat, to walk, to talk, to play…you can do this!
1. Anything and everything fine motor
Basically, you want to give them as many opportunities as you can build up those tiny muscles in their hands. Eventually, when they are learning to write, they will be ready for success.
Fine motor activities can be coloring, puzzles, cut and paste activities, stickers, the possibilities are endless.
One thing that is always a big hit in our home is play dough. And if you haven’t used play dough mats before, you should definitely give them a try.
We have several printable versions (Count to 10, ABCs, seasonal, etc.) available in our shop here if you are interested. Once printed, you can laminate or place in a plastic sleeve to make reusable.
2. Teach Proper Pencil Grip
To piggyback off of #1, as soon as your child shows an interest in coloring or drawing, make sure to work on correct pencil, crayon or marker grip.
This is super simple and it might seem trivial now but it is much easier to form the right grip early on than trying to fix it later.
3. Have conversations with your child
Talk with your child about anything and everything that might arise throughout your day.
When you’re on your way somewhere, talk about where you’re going, what you’re going to purchase and things that you see as you’re passing along. When making a meal, talk about what you are doing and why.
At family mealtimes, ask about their day, even if you were there for it all. What brought them joy? What was hard for them today?
This may seem super simple..and it is, but intentional conversations encourage kids to ask questions, teach them about the world around them, and help them to develop their vocabulary and speech clarity.
4. Family Read Aloud time
Whenever you can, read aloud to your child whether that’s a short board book, recipe instructions or a family devotional. This could even be a book you are currently enjoying. If my kids are playing while I read my bible and devotional, I’ll read that out loud too.
Recently in our home we’ve been reading the Little House on the Prairie series. My son Xander is able to read these books fully on his own, but he just enjoys me reading aloud to him still and so we have been working through those.
I have come to truly cherish this time with him especially as he gets older.
My daughter Nora who is just starting her preschool work may sit with us or play and listen. While she may not be able to follow the storyline fully, she has picked up on character names and there are things she recognizes as we read. We usually do a chapter or so and then she gets to pick out a few books at her level for me to read.
5. Let Your Kids Help In The Kitchen.
It may (It 100% will) take longer and be quite a bit messier, but kids loved to help in the kitchen. I have never met a child who didn’t.
Helping cook and bake for the family not only gives kids a sense of accomplishment but also…they are more likely to eat what they make, which is amazing if you have a picky eater.
Cooking with your kids is also such a fun way to teach number sense, measuring, ordinal numbers, fine motor skills…all the things.
You are even teaching them how to respond when things aren’t going exactly as planned, how to clean up messes, how accidents happen, and how we can fix hiccups like an eggshell in the bowl.
And it doesn’t have to be a fancy or complicated recipe. This can be making a box mix, packing a picnic lunch for the family or banana bread (a personal favorite of ours and what we were making in this photo).
6. Sing all the songs
Songs are so amazing for helping young learners (and older ones) to remember some of the things that they would normally learn in preschool such as days of the week, months of the year and the alphabet.
One thing that I actually did with both of my kids is teach them how to sing the alphabet backwards, which I found really helped with their pronunciation as well as helping with any confusion around LMNOP since it goes so fast. For a rhyming end, you can sing “once you know the alphabet, you can sing in any way” since backwards you’ll end with …CBA.
7. Keep Learning Simple, Intentional and fun
I think a lot of times as parents we tend to overthink things because we don’t want to miss anything or fail our child in anyway.
But if we are intentional, and we set up the environment for them to learn and grow, then we’ve done our job. Kids WANT to learn about the world around them, we just have to make the space for them to do that.
Sometimes that means that a grocery trip that could’ve taken 10 minutes is going to take 40 minutes, and we have to be okay with that. Every time we take our kids somewhere or they get to do something new, they are learning and it is such a joy to watch as a parent.
And remember, when they see we are having fun, they will too. The goal is not perfection. The goal is to foster a love of learning.
Happy Homeschooling!
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