homeschooling preschool

I have had this post in the works for a long time now. A few people have asked me about ideas for homeschooling preschool and I thought it'd be a breeze to put the post together. There are just so many ideas though! I homeschooled Elle for her two years of preschool. She wanted to 'do school' just like Thomas so it was really easy to teach such an eager learner! Ava will be starting next year. She's already been doing several things like learning her colors, sorting, learning her ABC's, counting, puzzles, etc... but we will start a little more structured routine with her in the fall.

As far as a curriculum plan for homeschooling Ava next year I plan to start the Math-U-See Primer book. I went through this book with Elle when she was 3 and it took us two years to get through it. Mastery of concepts is not required like it is in the other Math-U-See books. The Primer is just a good book to use to introduce your child to math. It gets the child familiar with counting, shapes, place value, skip counting and basic addition and subtraction. The use of the manipulative blocks makes it fun for young ones. Elle could not write her numbers a lot of the time we were in this book which was fine, I just wrote them in.

We will be using Handwriting Without Tears manipulatives to learn how to make letters. I did not find Handwriting Without Tears until Elle was in kindergarten. She was struggling so much with writing her letters and numbers backwards. This program really helped change that for her. Hopefully by starting Ava with the wood pieces maniuplatives next year she will not struggle as much when it comes time to actually learn how to write them later on.

I am most excited about starting Before Five in a Row with her though. I love literature based learning and even though I have never used this curriculum before it sounds like it will be right up our alley. It is divided up into 23 different unit studies using classic, quality children's books geared toward 2 - 4 year olds.

That is probably the only formal curriculum I will use. There are plenty of free (amazing!) ideas all over the internet. Especially on mom blogs! One of my favorite blogs for teaching ideas for toddlers is Chasing Cheerios. There are so many great ideas there. If you have a toddler you have to browse through her archived posts! She also has a great list of links to other teaching blogs in the sidebar. One other site that will keep you clicking link after link is - My Montessori Journey.

I'd love to hear from you too! Tell me your favorite ideas/books/websites for teaching preschoolers. Most of my favorite homeschooling curriculum has come from talking with other homeschooling moms!