Summary: Homeschooling preschool and kindergarten can be done so easily through playful learning activities. Here are our favorite preschool and K resources for doing just that. Frugal or free! I am a former preschool teacher who came home to homeschool her child.

Are you looking for hands-on curriculum and resources for your little learners?

How about some that are frugal or free?

As a former preschool teacher, I recommend using playful and hands-on approaches for the preschool, PreK, and Kindergarten.

I used many of the early academic activities discussed below in my own preschool for many years.

Here are my favorites for the preschool and the kindergarten years, which are easy to use and are frugal,too.

Choose from these ideas and activities, with regards to how preschoolers learn, which is in short spurts of learning activities. They have very short attention spans.

What about attention span issues?

For preschool, we only worked for 15 minutes at a time. Our focused learning time in kindergarten was about 1/2 hour to an hour at most. Little ones really don't have more attention span than that on the average.

This level of work in the early years prepared my daughter well for the elementary years. She is a homeschool grad now, who also graduated college.

So be encouraged that hands-on learning works!

Let's start with:

math play, then
early language arts
fine motor activities and handwriting
arts and crafts
early science
the fun of easy field trips.

Again, all of these subject areas do not need to be addressed at the same time. It all depends on the needs of your child.

1. MATH PLAY

Preschool/K - Early Math

We didn't use a complete math program, but preferred doing our early math, with our own hands-on activities, card games were great, too.

Click the link to reach more of my article on early math activities:

Preschool/K - Early Math...for hands-on learning fun with numbers, sets, etc, and also how to make a Math Manipulatives Kit, without spending any money.

This post shares how we went about making our kit and learning early math concepts using our manipulatives.

2. EARLY LANGUAGE ARTS

There are many ways to introduce the ABC's to your child. We enjoyed introducing the letters of the alphabet with simple ABC crafts projects and a little book called the Big Book of Alpha Tales.

Not every homeschool family does phonics but we found that phonics was key to the development of reading skills for our daughter.

To read about Explode the Code and all about early language arts, phonics and more you will find links and more here -Preschool/K - Early Language Arts.

Next, let's talk about resources for fine motor activities for handwriting....

3. FINE MOTOR and HANDWRITING

I am a former Occupational Therapist and I share lots of developmentally appropriate handwriting activities on my blog here - Handwriting.

Playful activities are the best way to get your child ready to write their letters.

To develop hand coordination and wrist strength for handwriting, we did LOTS of crafts, enjoying sidewalk chalk art, etc.

Sometimes we tore paper into small pieces to make a design with glue, which helped to strengthen the finger muscles.

Click here to reach my fine motor article on: Small Muscle Games.

My friend, Penny has Free Fall Cutting Practice activities that you might like, too.

There's always benefit for small muscle development from playing with legos, small blocks, small cars, etc.

This photo shows one of the special ways to help your child with fine motor skills and grasp.

Click here for my article on 9 Ways to a Mature Grasp - Games and Fun!

For frugal ways to teach handwriting, I invite you to click here for my article on Teach Your Kids to Write.

It has lots of ideas for beginning handwriting, if your little ones are ready for that. It doesn't matter when your kids learn to write, as they will likely get it when it is the right time for them.

4. ARTS AND CRAFT ACTIVITIES

Arts and crafts are, of course, great for developing fine motor skills, but they also are super for learning direction following, attention to task, and let's not forget, creativity.

Coloring, painting, playing with clay were popular at our house. A favorite was painting with pudding!

My daughter enjoyed drawing, then sometimes she would dictate a few words about her picture, which I would write down for her to copy. When she chose the words herself, her copywork was very meaningful to her.

We also had fun making simple books using her own words. It is so wonderful to watch your child create their own story. Tips for how to do that is in this link below:

Click here for my article on The Art of Simple Book Making - Your Child is an Author

When your child is making their own very, very simple book and using their own words, they are learning great pre-reading skills at the same time.

They are learning what words are used for, as they see you copy their words down for them, then later read them back to them. The thrill of seeing and hearing their own words is something that makes reading real for them.

5. EARLY SCIENCE FUN

Early Science - Hands-On!

Early Science can start with exploring one's backyard, through the natural things that your child will do, like picking up leaves, touching them and feeling the texture of them, spotting spider webs, watching birds fly, etc.

My friend, Amy offers a discussion of 3 prepared preschool curriculum that you might like to read about, too.

6. FIELD TRIPS

Some of our best memories were made when we did simple field trip, like going on a train ride with friends, fishing at a kiddo's fishing hole, or joining other homeschoolers for a park day.

Or heading exploring in our backyard, for insects, worms, even slugs....And of course birds - Our Favorite Books about Birds and Birdwatching.

Thanks for stopping by BJ's Homeschool,

Betsy

Betsy is mom to her now college grad, whom she homeschooled from day one. She blogs at BJ's Homeschool, about the early years, high school & college and wrote the book - Homeschooling High School with College in Mind. She offers free homeschool help through messages at BJ's Consulting.

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