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Workshop Wednesday: Building Blocks for Success in Math

April 18, 2012 by 3 Comments

Math is called a foundational subject for good reason: if you don’t have a solid foundation, anything you try to build on top of it is in danger of falling apart. Math is also called a sequential subject, meaning that math skills must be mastered in sequence, each skill building on the skills before it. This picture represents my view of math skills and the order in which they should be mastered, starting at the bottom and building up, one skill upon another.

No one starts teaching math by instructing their preschoolers in differential calculus. The first math skill we teach is Sorting: Which ones match? Is this one like that one? We may start the sorting process with colors or shapes, but Sorting is still the basic skill being learned. Sorting is the #1 most important math skill, used from recognizing number value to solving the most complex equations. Counting is an extension of sorting, assigning a number name to each different quantity. We “know our numbers” when we can group the correct quantity of pieces to represent any given number. We have mastered counting when we can recite the quantities in ascending order. The ability to count backwards is preparation for further skills yet to come.

Place Value might be considered to be an extension of Sorting by placing 1-digit numbers together in one group, 2-digit numbers as another group, yet another with 3-digit numbers, 4-digits, and so on. Children who are learning to count past 10 are learning place value, even though they are not yet adding or subtracting large enough quantities to require carrying or borrowing. Those skills work hand-in-hand with addition and subtraction, but an understanding of place value has to come first. Using a large quantity of identical small manipulatives, such as toothpicks, you can demonstrate the quantities represented by numbers in the ones column and numbers in the tens column to show how and why we write numbers the way we do. As your student gains skill with addition, you can revisit Place Value to demonstrate carrying into the tens, hundreds, thousands, and as many columns as your child wishes to add.

The next natural step after Place Value is Addition. Your child may already be using his counting skills to inform you that since he already has 1 cookie, if you would just give him 2 more cookies, then he would have 3 cookies! He may not recognize 1+2=3 on paper, but he certainly understands cookie quantities! Addition facts are best learned through using real-life objects, manipulatives, or even diagrams, rather than just expecting a young mathematician to transfer immediately to written problems. Hands-on practice makes subtraction easily evident as the un-doing process for addition, thereby taking away the stigma that subtraction is yet another new skill to learn. If a student knows addition facts to the point of quick recall, that same student will be able to perform subtraction. Therefore, a student who struggles with subtraction is a student who has not mastered addition facts.

Multiplication is often presented as one more new skill to master, but when presented as a “short-cut” to repeated addition, the student will see multiplication facts as a convenient tool, not as an obstacle to further learning. Multiplication facts can be demonstrated with a large quantity of small manipulatives that can be grouped into repeated rows (½” squares of heavy paper or cardboard work very well). Some quantities of manipulatives can be rearranged to show various factors which result in the same amount, such as 1×12, 2×6, 3×4, 4×3, 6×2, and 12×1. Grouping and regrouping the manipulatives will give your student a deeper understanding of multiplication facts as he sees the groups (visual), arranges them with his own fingers (tactile), and repeats the facts aloud (auditory). A kinesthetic learner will prefer standing or kneeling to do this activity, providing yet another sensory element.

Why isn’t Division listed in these Building Blocks? Simply because Division is un-doing Multiplication, just as Subtraction is the un-doing of Addition. The only tricky part to Division is that sometimes things don’t come out completely even, and we get “left-overs”—but every child who has tried to share 5 cookies with 3 friends understands that concept already. Division uses the quick recall skills for multiplication facts to regroup as evenly as possible, and the “left-overs” will be dealt with in more detail later on as these skills progress even further into the concepts called fractions and decimals. By the way, fractions, decimals, and percents are all “nicknames” for the same amounts—they are just different ways of looking at the same quantities, such as ½, .5, and 50%, and those all mean that you and I are sharing equal amounts of the same cookie!

The final Math Building Block to be mastered is Logic. Logic means making sense of things, so they come out right. Logic may come in the form of “If/Then” statements, such as the block in the picture shows: If all cats have 4 legs, and Fido has 4 legs, does that then mean that Fido must be a cat? Fido might be a cat, but we also know that other animals besides cats have 4 legs, so we cannot assume that Fido is a cat until we have more information. That is logic: using information to prove a point, but sometimes you realize that you don’t have enough information yet, and the point you prove could be wrong. Another use of logic is in balancing equations. A very simplified example is 7-2=5; if we add 2 to each side, we’ll see 7-2+2=5+2 or 7=7, a true statement. What we do to one side of an equation must also be done to the other side to keep it balanced, as if the equals sign was the pivot point on a balancing scale.

If your student is struggling with any of these building block skills, back up and practice the previous block’s skills until they are mastered. Recall of these facts should come as easily as a reflex action before the student is ready to move on successfully to the next building block. Don’t worry that other students may be moving ahead already—they may not be ready either, and their “progress” will soon result in more struggles. Remember that a student who cannot do division does not know multiplication facts well enough. A student who struggles with multiplication does not know addition facts well enough, and neither does the student who struggles with subtraction. A student who has trouble with addition does not understand place value or number values well enough. Success in math is achieved by mastering skills in sequence and building a solid foundation with each skill before attempting more challenging skills.

For more tips, see also:
Looking for the “Hard Part”
Why Does Math Class Take SO LONG?

Filed Under: Auditory Learning, Homeschool How-To's, Kinesthetic Learning, Learning Styles, Math, Roadblocks to Learning, Tactile Learning, Visual Learning, Workshop Wednesday

Workshop Wednesday: Sidewalk Art

April 4, 2012 by 1 Comment

What better way to incorporate drawing lessons into a beautiful homeschooling day than with chalk on the sidewalk or driveway? We often took our favorite storybooks outside with a bucket of chalk (and maybe a folded towel for under the knees) and picked some simple illustrations to duplicate.

Our favorites included the Little Miss and Mister Men characters by Roger Hargreaves and all of the fanciful creations of Dr. Seuss. Actually, we discovered that you can turn nearly any smiley-faced character into a Seuss-ian delight by adding an outcropping of tall feathers to the top of its head, a long, long, long tail, and brightly colored fur in zig-zaggy stripes. Now that’s a great lesson in cartooning! Encourage your budding artists to make a game of adding more and more features to their creatures by calling out “Heads” or “Tails” and supplementing those traits. Give each character special talents or accessories, such as juggling ice cream cones, wearing a polka-dot necktie, or holding a dozen strings tied to gigantic balloons.

Be sure to take the time to admire each other’s masterpieces and praise their unique qualities. Give each artist a turn to tell about his or her drawing, pointing out details and describing techniques used, for informal practice at oral presentations. Most of all, have fun making silly drawings and enjoying the chalk antics.

Sometimes we made several individual drawings, and sometimes we connected multiple parts into a long scene that filled our front sidewalk for the full width of our property. One summer day when lots of neighbor kids were looking for something to break up the boredom, I drew a very basic chalk outline of an old-fashioned circus train that stretched out over several blocks of our sidewalk, assigning each block (one box car) to a different child. We discussed as a group what sort of things our train should have (planning and problem-solving skills), and the children chose what they wanted to draw (delegating skills). One drew a box car with two giraffes sticking their long necks out the top. Another drew a lion in a cage, and another chose to draw the train’s steam engine with great puffs of smoke billowing out the smokestack. Our train had a few clowns, bright colored flags and pennants, and the words “Circus Train” on the side of yet another box car. The kids spent most of the afternoon drawing and coloring with the chalk and adding special touches. When anyone finished his own section, he would go help someone else, giving them all a great feeling of teamwork. The finished sidewalk “mural” received lots of admiration and compliments from neighbors and was the object of several photographs by parents. The kids all put so much work into their circus train, that we were all very glad that we had no rain for several days afterwards! However, rain was usually seen to be a magical eraser that tended to bring new inspiration for more drawings instead of disappointment that the previous masterpieces were gone.

Obviously, a variety of chalk colors makes drawing more delightful, but don’t underestimate the value of plain white chalk. Your art students will discover shading on their own, as they go over and over a section to make the color more intense, and having a limited palette of colors will make them more creative with using patterns. Be careful to use chalk marked “sidewalk chalk,” as others may not wash off as easily. I once bought a box of beautiful colored chalk at a garage sale, only to discover that the intense colors left permanent stains on the clothing we were wearing when we used it! The knees and elbows and sleeve cuffs had deep colors ground in from kneeling and leaning on the drawings, no matter how careful we had been. One more point: chalk is soft and gets used up quickly on rough surfaces, so buy in bulk! No one wants to stop in the middle of drawing an enormous stegosaurus, just because he ran out of chalk.

Whether your creations are large or small, simple or elaborate, you can enjoy a nice day outside with chalk, learning to copy drawings from books or making your own creations. Starting with simple line drawings from a favorite storybook will help beginning artists gain confidence, since they don’t have to rely on their imaginations for inspiration. After all, a large blank sidewalk can be rather intimidating! Making your drawings LARGE increases the number of details that can be added: a small face may not have room for much more than eyes and a smile, but a big face can also hold eyelashes, freckles, glasses, or a handlebar mustache!

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Homeschool How-To's, Kinesthetic Learning, Learning Outside the Books, Tactile Learning, Visual Learning, Workshop Wednesday

Workshop Wednesday: ABC Flashcards

March 21, 2012 by 2 Comments

Anyone want to upcycle some of that ubiquitous cardboard packaging that passes through our homes and turn it into teaching/learning tools? You’re on! Let’s make some flashcards!!

DIY flashcards from upcycled cereal boxes

This week’s photo actually shows three related sets of alphabet flashcards that measure 3” square. Call these approximate measurements, because no one needs to waste precious time obsessing over the precision and exactness of something we’re making for free. I collected cereal boxes, brownie mix boxes, popsicle boxes, tissue boxes, pudding cup boxes, and pretty much every flavor of thin cardboard box that was large enough to cut up into something else. Confession: I made these with a paper cutter, but only because I saved up and treated myself to one. During most of our homeschooling years, I used a ruler and scissors for projects like this, and the results were just as good.

Open the boxes flat and start measuring and cutting. Again, don’t let perfectionism sidetrack you with thoughts of non-90-degree corners or less-than-perfect sides. Your students can learn from playing with these cards even after they are rescued from an eager-to-play-fetch-with-anything puppy. When you have a decent supply of cards cut from the cardboard, grab your Sharpie marker and write on the blank sides. Here we have one set with upper case letters (upper left), a set with lower case letters (lower center), and a set with both upper and lower case letters in pairs (upper right). I have also made sets with numbers 1-100, states and capitals, and many other topics that I hope to address in future Workshop Wednesday posts. (Anticipation!)

Bonus Tips:

  • I favor teaching letter recognition with upper case letters first, since reversals are less likely; then introducing the lower case letters as the “little brothers” of the capitals. Kids get it, even when the big brothers and little brothers don’t look exactly alike. Learning to group the larger and smaller letters as pairs is another method for avoiding reversals.
  • Making multiple sets of letters will allow your students to spell out vocabulary words, play word games, or leave traces of their newly-acquired knowledge all around the house as they spell out the names of every lamp, vase, and throw pillow.
  • If your students have mastered letter recognition, you can make 3×5” word cards and practice turning sounded-out words into sentences.

Learning Style Activities

Visual learners will appreciate flashcards with color, so you can either use colored markers for the main information or let your visual student draw designs on the edges and corners of the cards with colored pencils or fine-point markers to jazz up the natural gray or brown of the cardboard.

Auditory learners will love to read each letter aloud, no matter what activities or games you play with the cards. Switch things up by asking them to say the sound of the letter instead of (or in addition to) its name.

Tactile learners have already grabbed your new supply of flashcards and are spreading them out on the floor or table, rearranging the letters into words. That’s how you can confirm that you have a tactile student: their hands and fingers are into everything, learning as much as they possibly can about texture, heft, and balance. Please don’t scold them for grabbing and touching—it’s how they learn best. A tactile learner who is forced to keep his hands in his lap is like a visual learner wearing a blindfold. Seriously.

Kinesthetic learners will adore playing games with these cards, especially if you spread things out. Drop the stack of upper case letters on the floor in the living room. Drop the stack of lower case letters on the kitchen table. Now shuffle the “pairs” cards and place that stack in a neutral location somewhere between the other two piles of cards. Ask your student to look at the top card and run to find the matching letter cards from each of the other locations and bring them back. (Beginning students may need to take the pairs card with them for reference.) Grouping all three cards together will prove he brought the correct ones. Your energetic student can repeat this activity until he is worn out enough to sit down for reading time or some other lesson that requires seatwork.

Combine all learning styles into challenging activities that will help your students learn from all situations and all styles of teaching. Let your imagination run free with ideas and adaptations for your own students, living quarters, and academic needs. If the weather is agreeable, take the cards outside and combine relay races with spelling or vocabulary words. Mud puddles can’t destroy your prized set of flashcards, since replacements are easily made from the next empty box. You may soon find yourself rescuing cardboard boxes from the recycling bin and calling them your “homeschool supplies” as you think of more and more uses for homemade flashcards!

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Auditory Learning, Kinesthetic Learning, Learning Outside the Books, Learning Styles, Phonics, Preschoolers, Spelling, Tactile Learning, Visual Learning, Workshop Wednesday

Workshop Wednesday: Dot-to-Dot Skip-Counting

March 14, 2012 by 1 Comment

I bought a dot-to-dot coloring book, which was much harder to find than I had anticipated (this one is from School Zone Publishing). Their pictures only used numbers from 1-25, so I dug out some small white stickers, grabbed my scissors and a black fine-point Sharpie, and went to work. I cut the stickers into pieces small enough to cover the numbers on the picture and re-numbered the drawing using skip-counting. Sometimes the pictures are complicated enough that it’s important to only do one number at a time (cover previous number with a sticker, write new number on the sticker, then move on to next number), just so you don’t lose your place and mess up the whole thing. With more complex drawings, my stickers sometimes overlapped the lines of the picture, so I just re-connected those lines, drawing right across the sticker.

Click on photo for larger image.

I changed the directions at the bottom of the page to correspond to the new, improved numbering system: Count by 2’s; Count by 3’s; Count by 10’s; Count by 12’s; and so on. I made the skip-counting harder as the difficulty of the pictures progressed. To make things even more challenging, I changed some of the directions to say “Start at 3. Guess the rule?” so that the pictures didn’t always begin at 1 and the student would have to analyze the numbers to determine which one came next. I made some pictures start at 2, 3, 4, 5, 50, 55, 101, etc. and vary in increments. Some pages counted by 2’s on even numbers; some counted by 2’s on odd numbers. Some counted by 5’s, 10’s, or 100’s—a wide variety of skip-counting experiences.

Skip-counting is good practice for multiplication, and following the numbers of a dot-to-dot puzzle helps your students learn what interval comes next by connecting them in numerical order. The complexity of the numbering system quickly overtakes the simplicity of the picture, providing a worthy challenge to math students who might feel silly doing the simple dot-to-dot coloring page in its original version. Following the random order of the numbers on the page provides more interest and more challenge than if the student had just written out a skip-counting series, and the student can easily self-check his work by judging whether or not the picture has been completed correctly.

BONUS TIP: After you’ve gone to all the trouble of changing the numbers, wouldn’t it be nice to have this last longer than once-through-and-done by your little smarty-pants student? Cut the pages out of the book, slip a page into a plastic page protector, and let your child use a dry-erase marker on the plastic. Wet-erase markers (also called “transparency markers”) will work great, too, and they don’t rub off instantly whenever a stray sleeve crosses the page. A quick wipe with a wet tissue will clean up wet-erase markers and prepare the page for the next use. You could even use enough plastic page sleeves to hold all the pages from the entire coloring book and put them all into a 3-ring binder. Give your child the binder, some markers in assorted colors, and a couple of tissues, and you won’t hear from him for a very long time!

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Learning Outside the Books, Math, Roadblocks to Learning, Tactile Learning, Visual Learning, Workshop Wednesday

Workshop Wednesday: What Is the Missing Element?

February 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Use this worksheet as an example to make simple Missing Element worksheets for your children. No one should have to stop and sing the Alphabet Song from beginning to end, just to figure out what letter comes after P. The same concept applies to numbers and counting, just without the song. My young kids viewed little worksheets like this as a fun challenge. After a little practice, they could do these orally, asking “What letter comes after V?” any time we had a few seconds to fill: while standing in line at the store, waiting for a red light, any waiting, anywhere. It kept them mentally active, which made the waiting much more bearable for them. I used the same process for numbers, asking “What number comes after 19?” and similar questions. The worksheet itself is a visual method; the oral question and answer exercise is an auditory method.

These are good mental exercises for those students who already know letters and numbers, but who don’t automatically recognize a short segment of the longer series. This is also a good skill to build into those youngsters who are just mastering the ABC’s and counting—notice that I said mastering, not initially learning.

For those students who need a more tactile application, let them match alphabet blocks or letter tiles to the challenges on the worksheet, filling in the gap with the appropriate letter on a block or tile. Number tiles can be used to create the number challenges, using multiple tiles to produce multiple-digit numbers. Borrow letter or number tiles from games, or make your own by cutting 1-inch squares from cereal box cardboard and marking with a Sharpie on the plain side.

Be sure to allow your students plenty of free-play time with the Missing Element exercise, as they will be sure to want to challenge each other (or you) with more examples. When a child continually quizzes you for the answer, give the correct answer each time, knowing that he is learning from your consistent responses. When you are confident that he really does know the correct answer, you can give the wrong answer with a questioning tone of voice or say “Is it K?” to see if he will correct you!

For a young kinesthetic learner, spread out the letter or number series on the floor using Post-It notes or flashcards and let the child hop on each one as he reads them off and shouts out the missing element as he hops into the gap. Another method for energetic children is to have flashcards for the series in one room and extra flashcards for the missing element in another room. Challenge your little Tigger to run, hop, or somersault into the other room to search for the correct card(s) to bring back and fill in the gap in the series.

Combining all of these learning style methods will give your students practice at using more than just their preferred style of learning, which helps them gain a better understanding while also broadening their experiences. As your students get older and expand their knowledge base, you can adapt this Missing Element concept for other academic pursuits as well.

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Auditory Learning, Kinesthetic Learning, Learning Outside the Books, Learning Styles, Math, Tactile Learning, Visual Learning, Workshop Wednesday

10 Ways to Improve a Lesson

September 10, 2009 by 1 Comment

Sometimes we all need help teaching a lesson. The lesson may be too confusing, too short, or just plain boring. Your student may need a more complete explanation or just want to delve more deeply into the subject. You may need to expand the lesson to include an activity to fit your student’s learning style. No matter what the reason, here are a few suggestions for how to improve a lesson.

  1. Make it bigger. — Suppose your child is learning fractions, and the book’s diagrams are rather small. Draw similar diagrams using an entire sheet of paper for each one — sometimes bigger IS better! Simple drawings and diagrams do not demand precision: children are good at pretending, and they can pretend along with you that your drawing is accurate.
  2. Take it outside. — Fresh air and elbow room can improve anyone’s ability to think. Even reading a favorite storybook outdoors can give it new perspective.
  3. Add color. — Say good-bye to black-and-white; say hello to understanding. Use colored pencils or markers, highlighters, construction paper, or colored index cards. For example, write each step of a complicated math problem in a different color to help clarify the progression.
  4. Add texture. — Go beyond flat and give your fingertips a chance to enjoy themselves. Form ABC’s with Play-Doh, cut letters out of sandpaper, or draw with chalk on the sidewalk.
  5. Let your student play with it. — Exploration is the birthplace of genius. Go beyond the lesson plan and indulge your student with his own session of free experimentation, whether with math manipulatives, Scrabble letter tiles, vinegar and baking soda, etc. Playing is learning.
  6. Add more details. — Why strain to understand a single example, when ten examples will make it crystal clear? Suppose your child is trying to learn the letter A; show the child many examples of what A looks like, from several ABC books, from newspaper headlines, on packages in your pantry; draw A with crayons and markers, in shaving cream smeared on a window, in dry cornmeal poured in a baking pan; arrange small items into an A shape: pennies, pipe cleaners, pencils, building blocks, toy cars, fingers, etc. — after all of these examples, your child will better understand how to recognize an A!
  7. Discuss it. — Skip the one-sided lecture and the interrogation-style Q & A session; try an open and honest give-and-take, valuing your student’s opinions, reactions, and ideas. How would you react if those opinions were coming from your friend, instead of from your child?
  8. Build it. — Cardboard, scissors, and tape are the stuff that feeds imagination. Projects don’t have to be constructed well enough to last forever, just long enough to illustrate the concept.
  9. Research it (together). — Expand two great minds at the same time. The teacher doesn’t always have to know the answers before the student does — your student will develop new respect for you as he sees you willing to learn with him.
  10. Make it personal. — Use a personal application to your student’s own life, activities, or possessions, and he’ll never forget it. Instead of math manipulatives, use the student’s building blocks, toy cars, baseball cards, Barbie doll shoes, etc.

The specific examples given above might be either too simple or too advanced for your current needs, but you can adapt them to your student’s situation. Even if you think some of these ideas may not help with your particular struggles, dare to give them a try anyway. You may be pleasantly surprised at the results!

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Auditory Learning, Encouraging Your Student, Homeschool How-To's, Kinesthetic Learning, Learning Outside the Books, Math, Roadblocks to Learning, Tactile Learning, Top 10 (and other) Lists, Visual Learning

Preschool Is Not Brain Surgery

April 17, 2009 by 12 Comments

I have tackled the topic of homeschooling older students while you have preschoolers around several times before, but I’ve never yet directly addressed homeschooling for preschool itself, especially when preschool marks the official beginning of schooling for your oldest child. This changes now: I am here to encourage you that you can teach your own child for preschool. You do not need an advanced degree in education to be able to effectively teach your child at home for preschool.

I have prepared a list of things that my children and I did during their preschool years that cover all of the types of activities and subjects your child will need to prepare them for their future academics. These activities may be done in any order, corresponding to your child’s interests and abilities. Progress according to your child’s abilities: if your child has difficulty understanding any given concept, set it aside for two weeks or two months while you do other activities and see what a difference that makes. Pick it up again later, or set it aside a second time, if necessary. All children learn at different rates, just like they begin to walk or talk or get teeth at different times. Faster or slower is not better, it’s just different.

Multiple activities can be done each day, if it works with your schedule and with your child’s interests. Fifteen minutes at a time may be adequate for the average preschooler, but the child may enjoy several of these short sessions throughout the day. Focus on only one activity at each session, but if your child is really enjoying the activity, you can let him continue playing with it after the formal “lesson” time is completed.

Read books to your child. Snuggle up together for special Mommy-and-me time. Use funny voices for the characters. Vary your tone to match the scene: fast and loud for the exciting parts, slow whispers for the sneaky parts, sniffling when the character is sad, bouncy and happy when the character is happy. When the book is a familiar favorite, stop periodically to ask your child questions: Where is Papa Bear going next? Why is he doing that? What will he find there? These help build your child’s memory by asking him to recall details he has learned from all of the times you have read this story in the past. Which bear is wearing the red shirt? Point to the smallest bear. Can you find a bowl on the bears’ table? Questions of this type help your child notice details and learn to identify colors, sizes, objects, etc. Why did the bears leave the house? Where did they go? What is this little girl’s name? These questions teach comprehension: read a portion of the story, and then ask the child about key elements that were just read. At first, you may want to ask questions about one page at a time, but soon your child will be able to recall details from several pages back.

Include ABC books, even though they usually have no plot or story. As a child, my personal favorite was The Nonsense ABC by Edward Lear. For my own children, their favorite was The Dr. Seuss ABC. What those books have in common are fun, rhyming poems for each letter. Lear’s “A was once an apple pie” was just as easy to remember as Dr. Seuss and his “Aunt Annie’s alligator.” The delightful poems were much more enjoyable than a simple picture book of ABC’s, although those are useful, too, as you will see in a moment.

Learning letters. Gather all the ABC books you have, and compare the pages for the same letter in each book. Linger over one letter per week or a letter every few days, until you know for sure that your child knows that letter. Use sticky-notes or home-made flashcards to label objects in your home that begin with the letter of the week, and help your child make the letter’s sound every time you see one of those objects and say its name. Banana, B, buh, buh-nana. You get the idea — and so will your preschooler. You may need to get creative on a few letters, such as Q, unless you live with a queen in a home full of quilts and have a pet quail. For X, you may need to use words that have an X in them, such as fox. The picture ABC books will come in very handy now, especially if they use several items for each letter. Don’t overlook your public library — they may have ABC books for unique topics, such as animal ABC’s or around-the-world with ABC’s.

Help your child learn to recognize a letter, no matter what font it is written in. Making a Letter Recognition Notebook is an excellent method for this. Focus on the appearance of the letters themselves, instead of what objects begin with each letter. Do one page for the upper case of a letter and another page for samples of the lower case letter. The goal here is for your child to be able to spot an a, whether it looks like a ball against a wall or like an egg underneath a tiny umbrella.

Learning numbers. Repeat the activities from the Learning Letters section above, but do them for the numbers 1-10. Draw a group of dots on the page to correspond to the number represented. Use counting books for activities similar to the ABC book activities. Once your child knows 1-10, you may add numbers up to 20, if you’d like. Your goal here is for the child to recognize each digit and immediately know how many objects that number stands for.

Learn colors. Ditto. A color-of-the-week activity will show your child all the varieties of each color. Light blue, dark blue, bright blue, dusty blue, navy blue, sky blue. Blue jeans, blue socks, blueberries, blue blanket, blue water bottle, blue crayons, blue cars, blue blocks, blue game pieces. How many blue things can you find in your home? You may be surprised!

Learn shapes. Ditto once again. The variety within each shape can be confusing at first to little ones. Is a big circle the same thing as a small circle? Are a cookie and a ring both circles even though one has stuff inside it and the other one is empty? Rectangles and triangles can be particularly tricky. Use a dollar (kids love learning with real money) as an example of a rectangle, then turn it up on end to show the child how the dollar is the same shape as a door. No more tricky rectangles! Long and skinny or short and fat, rectangles will still look mostly like a door or a dollar. Triangles have 3 sides, no matter how long or short those sides may be, and once your preschooler can count to 3, he can begin to recognize triangles. Browse through the snack cracker aisle at the supermarket for some tasty, edible geometric shapes! Careful nibblers will transform one shape into another, naming the shapes as they admire their creations and then eating their artwork.

Fine motor skills. See Preschoolers’ Educational School-time Activities for a variety of helpful activities that your child will enjoy doing and learn wonderfully useful skills at the same time.

Gross motor skills. Let your child practice on a “balance beam” made by drawing a straight line with chalk on the sidewalk or driveway. Masking tape on the floor is a good substitute indoors. When your child can do it easily without stepping off the line, switch to using a 4″ x 4″ board (any length) lying directly on the ground. When the child can walk that board easily without losing his balance, prop the board up with a brick or concrete block (or other stable item) at each end — just don’t go too high, so that the child will not be hurt if he does fall. Please stay close by your child whenever he is practicing this.

Other useful concepts. Play. Notice the weather each day. Go to the park. Walk around the block. Smell flowers. Watch an anthill. Put a bird feeder or a bird bath near a window and keep it filled so you can watch the birds and learn to identify them. Make cookies. Add a set of measuring cups to the bath toys. Visit a zoo. Watch a construction site (from a safe distance) and talk about what each man or machine is doing. Learn from life every day.

Social Skills. See Social Skills — What Should I Teach My Preschooler? for a very complete explanation.

What about school questions? Preschoolers ask questions; it’s what they do, and it’s who they are. Your homeschooled preschooler will undoubtedly ask questions about going to school: Why does my friend go to school and I don’t? When will I go to school? Can I ride on a school bus? Can I play on the school playground? Why does my storybook show kids doing things at school, but I don’t have any stories about kids who homeschool? Ah, yes, those questions.

You can share as much as you think your preschooler will understand about why you chose to homeschool, but try not to make other families look bad for not homeschooling. One way around this is to point out what vehicles are owned by the families on your block or in your neighborhood. Some have small cars, some have pickup trucks, and some have minivans. They pick the type of vehicles that they want for the things they do. Some families send their children to public school, some go to private schools, and some homeschool. Each family picks the type of school that they want for their children. Each family can also decide if they want to plant flowers around their house or raise tomatoes in their garden. They can decide if they want to have a dog or a cat or tropical fish or no pets at all. Some families choose to eat in fancy restaurants, some families get burgers at the drive-through, and some families make all their meals at home. Every family gets to make choices, and homeschooling is one thing your family has chosen.

Sometimes the trickier part of answering these questions is to show that not following the crowd can be more fun. Because you are homeschooling, you can go to the park when the other children are stuck inside the school building. This is also a good way to bring weather (good or bad) into the conversation: you can play outside on nice days instead of having to sit at a desk all day long, or you can stay inside where it’s warm and dry all day long on the cold and rainy days. Perhaps you can visit the school playground after school is over for the day or on a weekend or during the summer. Perhaps you can ride on a city bus or a church bus. I have known preschoolers who begged and begged their parents to let them go to school, only to find out that school was not the fun experience they had imagined it to be. One little boy asked his mommy if he could be homeschooled again, because all he really had wanted from school was to play on the playground, and when he was in school, the teacher only let him go out to the playground at certain times and for very short periods. Being homeschooled with his brothers was much more enjoyable.

Many children (and parents) ask about the lack of homeschooling in storybooks. I agree that there are very few books that portray education at home, but I have a sneaky way around that, too. Not all storybooks show everything that a child does every day, and not all storybooks show children going to school. Therefore, maybe, just maybe, the children in some books are homeschooling, but the story is telling about some other part of their day. Our school books were not in every room of our house — ok, sometimes, but not always. When the Bear family went for a walk to let their porridge cool down, perhaps they had been doing their lessons all morning, and now it was lunch time, and they would continue their lessons after lunch. Stories are not always about what you can see — sometimes there are also lessons to be learned in what the pictures do not show. And finding those lessons also teaches your child to think about the story and what it does and does not say.

Do I need curriculum to homeschool preschool? No. If you don’t believe me, take this quick test:

  • Do you know the alphabet?
  • Can you count to 20?
  • Can you identify basic colors and shapes?
  • Do you know how to use a pencil?
  • Do you know how to use scissors?
  • Can you read a child’s storybook?

If you answered Yes to 3 or more of these questions, you will probably do just fine. Use the money you would have spent on curriculum for a family zoo pass or a storage cabinet for all of the arts and crafts supplies you will accumulate in the next few years!

Preschool-aged children need foundational skills: pre-reading (recognizing letter names and letter sounds; visual distinction: recognizing differences and similarities between objects), pre-writing (small muscle skills and coordination: using fingers), and body control (large muscle skills and coordination: using arms and legs). Children who are only three, four, or five years old do not need to be able to identify nations of the world, Presidents of the United States, or the life cycle of seahorses. These tiny tots will benefit much more from spending 15 minutes cutting colored paper into confetti than they would from endless coloring pages for geography, history, science, or social studies topics. I have probably just stepped on the toes of multiple eager teachers, but please understand that your little ones will not remember very many of these superfluous lessons until they are able to read fluently for themselves. Then you can turn them loose on the library shelves and get ready to hear them recount the myriads of fascinating facts they have read.

Once when I was selling some of our outgrown books at a used curriculum fair, my customer asked if I had the teacher’s manual for the 2nd grade reading text. “No,” I replied with a smile, “I thought if I couldn’t figure out the answers to the questions in a 2nd grade reading book, I had bigger problems than the teacher’s manual could fix.” She thought about that for a few seconds and began laughing along with me. “You’re absolutely right!” And she bought the book. Teaching preschool is even easier than teaching 2nd grade reading. And you will be able to do it just fine without a teacher’s manual or fancy curriculum.

More articles related to Preschoolers are listed in Topical Index: Preschoolers.

Filed Under: Activity Ideas, Auditory Learning, Deciding to Homeschool, Homeschool How-To's, Kinesthetic Learning, Learning Outside the Books, Preschoolers, Tactile Learning, Visual Learning
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