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Preschool is the perfect time to start homeschooling your child. At this age, they are full of curiosity and are constantly taking in all of the information around them. Whether that be something you’re teaching them or simply things they observe in the world around them, they may as well be tiny little sponges for all that they soak up.
Making the choice to start homeschooling your child in preschool allows you to take advantage of this and make their learning environments fun and engaging which will help you foster a lifelong love of learning in your child.
How do you make homeschooling fun for a preschooler?
I am a firm believer that learning, especially at this age, is done best through play. Preschoolers love to explore, create, and get their hands dirty. This natural drive to observe and manipulate the world around them can help them master tough topics normally seen as beyond their ability to understand simply through participating in daily play.
Using a simple game of catch, you can explain the basics of how gravity works on an object, playing with measuring cups and water can help them begin to understand the concept of measurement and volume.
While most children think that screens, the tablet or the TV, for example, are fun, they don’t offer a ton of opportunities to think outside the box. Quality, open-ended toys like blocks or loose parts can open up their imaginations and create more natural learning opportunities for your child.
Create Natural Learning Opportunities
You would be surprised at just how much preschoolers can learn through simple everyday play.
They’ll practice their counting and their turn taking skills while playing a board game with a parent or a friend. They’ll work on their vocabulary and early literacy skills while reading a story before bed. They’ll soak up an immense amount of knowledge simply by being preschoolers experiencing most of what the world has to offer for the first time.
With that said, however, if you are looking to add some more structure to your daily routine, creating some natural learning opportunities for your child that still give them room to explore and observe on their own is easier than you might think!
Preschoolers love when you can tie sensory play into everyday lessons.
Explore the science of snow, if you’re in an area that gets some each winter, and bring some of it inside to play with. Talk with your child about how water freezes and how this snow will eventually melt back to its original state.
Explore the layers of the ocean by making an ocean in a bottle. Discuss the various different sea animals that live within each of these layers.
Playdough is a fantastic medium for fine motor practice. You can use it to work on your colors, shapes, letters, and numbers in a hands-on way that makes covering these concepts both fun and engaging for your young learners.
Using art to teach your child is a fantastic way to make some of those bigger concepts stick.
Mix colors with finger paints to learn about primary and secondary colors or create a craft to go with a storybook that you are reading with your child to strengthen their comprehension skills. You can even explore the solar system by making your own planets.
Art has the ability to span just about every subject and capture your child’s interest, making learning fun and exciting and that can very clearly be seen when you use music as a teaching tool.
Music is such an easy way to help your preschooler remember things. There are so many songs, rhymes, and fingerplays out there that can help you teach your preschooler everything from math to the letters of the alphabet in a fun and exciting way.
No drills, flashcards, or quizzing needed.
Now, obviously, this list just scratches the surface. There are so many ways that you can make homeschooling fun for your preschooler and almost all of them involve play.
In fact, if you just remember that you’re not trying to incorporate a little bit of play into your learning, instead you’re trying to incorporate a little bit of learning into your daily play, then you’ll be just fine.
