regardless of the language it comes from.
Covering the Preschool Basics
Your darling finally made it to the preschool stage. You’ve chosen your curriculum (see Chapters 10 through 19 for an overview of the options), painted the corner that you plan to use as a schooling area, and selected an assortment of pencils and crayons for the school adventure. Before you launch the educational adventure, step back a minute and look at your 4-year-old child again. Preschoolers barely sit through an afternoon snack without wiggling. You can’t expect to plant that little body that wants to move so much. Pack up the curriculum, periodically dust your corner, and enjoy your child right now.
Teaching with a preschooler
Teaching with a preschooler around isn’t as hard a task as it sounds. Although your little person may insist on individualized attention once in a while, most 3- to 5-year-old children can amuse themselves for a while if they have to. A school time box with old clothes for dress-up time, some paper and crayons, a picture book, and a few favorite toys may be all you need to keep your preschooler happy while you work with the rest of the crew.
Teaching your preschooler
With individuality and exploration in mind, here are some ideas for introducing learning into your post-toddler’s world. Your child may not enjoy doing all these things. Your best bet is to introduce a wide variety of activities and see what they like. Incorporate as many of the toddler ideas from the previous section as you think your preschooler would enjoy. Music, for instance, is ageless, and a preschooler enjoys music as much as, if not more than, a toddler does.
While you don’t want or need to create a structured learning environment for a preschooler, the child’s energy level usually demands that you do something or risk finding her outside one morning jumping on all the plants in your flowerbed “just to see what they would do.” A preschooler’s creativity and curiosity will win out, whether you offer anything in the way of education or not. A large part of education is exposure to a wide range of experiences; offering these at the preschool level gives your little one something to do at the same time that it enlarges her horizons.
Introducing advanced concepts at too early an age does nothing but stress you and your preschooler. Instead, spend your days playing, exploring your world, and enjoying preschooler-hood. There will be plenty of time later to memorize the numbers to 100 or the color theory chart. Right now, enjoy your 3- or 4-year-old.
Here are some ideas for preschool learning. For the most part, choose the messiness level that you can tolerate and go from there. If the thought of finger paint covering your kitchen floor and your preschooler makes you cringe, try another activity altogether. If the thought only makes you cringe a little, how about finger painting with vanilla pudding? It doesn’t stain quite as much. Whipped cream works, too, and while it’s stickier than vanilla pudding, it hoses off nicely.
Read aloud. Preschoolers generally love to hear stories, and this is the perfect time to introduce them to poetry, stories, folk and fairy tales from various cultures, and family history. For the most part, younger preschoolers require shorter stories, while a 4- to 5-year-old child may sit through a folk tale or two at one sitting. If you happen to have an older reader at your house, your elementary age child may enjoy reading to the toddler, and it gives them some special time together.
Finger paint with your preschooler. Look for finger paint at educational stores, discount warehouses, or the local toy store. Special finger paint paper works the best, but isn’t absolutely necessary if you aren’t raising a budding Rembrandt. One box of finger paint paper took me through two preschoolers and I still had some left long after finger painting season.RELAX! SHE'S 3 YEARS OLD!You hear the horror stories of parents enrolling their children in “academically acceptable” preschools in the nation’s most competitive educational districts — sometimes even before the baby’s birth! Unfortunately, some of that competitive spirit sometimes rubs off on the homeschooling community as well.Before you run out to purchase “Teach Your Baby Fifteen Languages Before He’s Two” CDs, stop, take a deep breath, and mentally count the years until your preschooler reaches age 18. Write that number down and post it at the top of your lesson plan book if you need to. You have that many years to get the basics into them.Very few children already know astrophysics before entering college. Very few. However, most of them know how to read and compute. Some even know the basics of calculus. Some, but not all.During the preschool years, the most important thing that you can do is teach the child how to learn for herself. And that skill comes through — you guessed it — play. Preschoolers pretend and act out what they know in their world. They experiment with science: What happens when you throw a ball at the ceiling?How about letting go of a raw egg as the dog passes underneath? Would the result be different if you let go of the egg without the dog there to catch it? (I’m not advocating these things, mind you. Those who live with preschoolers know that this is how the little guys think.) And this too develops scientific thought, regardless of the mess.Memorizing childhood songs helps preschoolers develop memory skills. And they’re much more likely to memorize Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star than the periodic table of elements. You achieve the same skill: memorization. But there are two ways to go about it. You can choose the fun way or the pulling-teeth way. Laughing through Twinkle, Twinkle or John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt gets you much farther with your preschooler than “Okay. Let’s try it again: antimony, arsenic, aluminum, …”And with a whole arsenal of fun things in their preschool repertoire, you’ll be classified as the greatest dad/mom ever by your little one. What more could you want?
Take walks outside and explore the world. Go outside. Look at bugs and identify them for your child. Talk about the flowers, trees, grass, cement, and sidewalks — basically anything
