Category: Ages 2-6: Preschool at Home

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Science Experiment for 2-8yr olds: Make a Color Explosion in Milk!

The kids participated in a science fair event a couple of weeks ago… where kids and adults could share their favorite science-related collections, photos, experiments, and knowledge. Some adults set up a slide show of their astronomy photos, sharing bone collections, a cartographer shared some of her materials, kids brought in their rock collection and more… My kids  set up a science activity station with the Color Explosion in Milk....

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Preschool Math: Teaching Numbers Greater than 10

Have you heard of a seguin board?  It’s a Montessori math tool for helping young kids understand place value.  When ED was little (about 3), I made a printable and used it to work with her when she was ready to tackle the teen numbers.  She used to skip some of the numbers after 13. I used a homemade version of the Montessori seguin board (download the seguin board activity...

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Preschool Science at Home

Five or six weeks ago, someone asked me how I go about setting up our science units. I wanted to spend some time really laying out that process. Since we have homeschooled from the start, I thought it would make the most sense to talk about the preschool years first. (Click here to see the second post in the series: Science in the Elementary Years. Science in the preschool years:...

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Preschool at Home: Science for 2-5 Year Olds (and Up!)

Amazing, Fun Science To Wow the Little Ones! One of the wonderful things I love about homeschooling is all the hands-on activities you can do with kids.  In the preschool years, I scoured the Internet and various science experiment books to find things that would intrigue and excite the kids… and that they could have a hand in doing.  Most of the things we did were done using household ingredients....

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Preschool at Home: A Few Math Ideas for the 2 1/2 to 3-Year-Old Crowd

The last few weeks I’ve been trying to put together some posts for those who are interested in doing some preschool activities at home with their kids. Today, I thought I’d highlight a few things I did with my kids for math in the 2 1/2-3 1/2 age range. Here are some activities I did with ED when she was 2 1/2.  She was just learning to count up to...

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Preschool at Home: Handwriting

ED really enjoys writing…  Here’s a picture of ED writing in her journal from last January. The kids and I made a special trip to Staples for them to pick out their own journals. I offered to write whatever they wanted for them, so they could record things about their day. While I wrote heaps for DD and LD, much to my surprise, ED insisted on writing in her journal...

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Preschool at Home: Learning Letters

I thought it might be useful to pull a lot of our letter-activities together into one post, although we didn’t ever focus exclusively on letters. We generally had a theme or unit (astronomy, birds, volcanoes, bears, pirates, princesses and whatever else the kids were interested in at the time…)  and we added in these types of activities to supplement whatever else was going on.  So, just keep in mind that...

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Preschool at Home: Learning Letters

I thought it might be useful to pull a lot of our letter-activities together into one post, although we didn’t ever focus exclusively on letters. We generally had a theme or unit (astronomy, birds, volcanoes, bears, pirates, princesses and whatever else the kids were interested in at the time…)  and we added in these types of activities to supplement whatever else was going on.  So, just keep in mind that...

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Preschool at Home: Activities You Can Do with Your 2-4 Year Olds (Fine Motor Skills)

I frequently get questions from parents who wonder just what to do and where to start with their preschoolers.  I thought I would spend a few posts sharing some of the things I’ve done with my kids along the way. Many of the things we did are things most parents do naturally in their home: free play with toys, time exploring and playing outside, dancing to music, reading books aloud...

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K4 Preschool Plans for the Fall

Last week we started back to school, but I thought I’d spend a few minutes sharing our overall goals this for this next semester. I’ll start off sharing our plans for ED’s preschool. Early next week I’ll share the plans for DD (age 6) and LD (almost 9). Math This year I decided to go with Right Start Math Level A for ED (age 4).  I did this curriculum with...

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Butterfly and Insect Lapbook

A few weeks ago, I asked DD what she wanted to learn about. She chose to study butterflies and insects. We used two lapbooks. One is no longer available. The other one was a free lapbook on butterflies from Yee Shall Know. (Website no longer available.) (If you’ve never seen any of her lapbooks, I highly recommend her free lapbooks. (Website no longer available.) They are based on the Magic...

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Sunny Side Up (game learning about double digit numbers)

I brought out a dice game to play with DD called Sunny Side Up.  The dice have the numbers 1-5 and a smiley face.  I made little cards that have 9 numbers using just those digits (such as 51, 42, 14, 3, 5…).  We each have our own card and take turns tossing the dice.  We try to build numbers using the value on each die.  So you need a...

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Preschool Activity — Living Non living cards

I’m sure I will talk about this elsewhere, but my three year old loves these cards! These cards also sort into the 5 Living Kingdoms (animal, plant, fungus, etc.) We have Living Non-Living Cards here: Montessori Living NonLiving Cards We also have Vertebrate-Invertebrate Cards here And don’t miss our animal classification worksheets and other animal materials: You might be interested in this related post: 20 Activities for Early Elementary That’s...