Including Preschoolers in Your Homeschool (without losing your sanity)

Looking back on our early homeschool years, I remember it was a daily struggle to keep my preschooler happy while teaching the older children.

I’m sure I am not the only homeschooling mama that has faced this dilemma of keeping the little ones somewhat quiet and happy so their older siblings can learn with minimal distractions.

I found that including the preschoolers in “school” instead of just trying to keep them away from the older kids worked the best for us.

Here are some suggestions for things preschoolers can do alongside their older siblings, which make them feel like they are also “doing school”.

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Including Preschoolers in Your Homeschool

Some of these activities have small pieces.  Please make sure any activity you choose is appropriate for your child’s developmental level.

The secret to making this whole scheme work is that your early learners are only allowed to play with these items while they (and the bigger kids) are “doing school”. These toys and items should only be used for a short time each day and must remain novel and special, or they lose their appeal.

Math:

• Geoboard
• Magnetic Numbers
• Magnetic Tiles
• Felt Shapes
• Sort Duplos by color and size
• Tesselations
• Number Tracing
• Ruler to measure things
• Self-correcting counting puzzles
• Puzzles (my family loves Melissa and Doug wooden puzzles!)

Science:

• Build with Science–themed Duplos
• Engineer a big tower or bridge of Duplos or Magna-tiles or Connectix
• Collected items from a nature walk can be sorted by texture, shape, or size
• Sort scraps of textured items (sandpaper, velvet, lace, satin, etc.)
• Texture Tubs aka Sensory Bins
• Explore Magnets
• Science picture books, like Fun with Nature, one of my kids’ favorites
• Small World Play
• Sort animal flash cards or plastic animals by habitat

Language Arts:

• Letter Tracing
• Audio Books – Hoopla is free through our library card, see if it is for you too. My family loves Hank the Cowdog Audio books!
• Magnetic or Felt Letters
• Make Letters with a Lite Brite
• Letter Matching (My kids loved this self-correcting wooden phonics set)
• Letter stamps
• rhyming games
• basic concepts file folder games
• Explode the code phonics workbooks (Start with the Get Ready, Get Set, Go set–don’t worry about the teacher book, you won’t need it)

Social Studies:

• Social Studies picture books, like this America the Beautiful book
• Looking at maps and an Atlas
• Build a town with blocks or boxes & cars
• Learn about and dress up as community workers or historical figures
• Map Felt Board
• Picture Books, like Me on the Map by Joanne Sweeney
• Small World Play

Art and Sensory

• Sensory Bags (learn how to make them at Mimosas and Motherhood)
• Bins (Find out why they really are worth the mess!)
• Let them explore their creative side with these open-ended art activities for preschoolers
• Use the Come Look with Me book series to explore and examine classic art
• Include them in your regular learning with Family-Style School Units
• Are your preschoolers obsessed with scissors and wanting to cut paper like the big kids do? Use these tips for teaching kids how to use scissors.

Make all of these things for school time only so that they are new and fresh and therefore more interesting.

Here are even more ideas for keeping your preschoolers busy while their older sibling do their lessons

My youngest three kiddos really enjoyed playing with these magnetic geometric tiles (and the off-brand ones are just as nice as the name brand MagnaTile). Here are 15 free magna-tile ideas for your preschoolers and how to store magnetic tiles.

Learn all about geoboards and how to use them for math with these math geoboard tips.

Wikki Sticks are a great addition to your preschoolers education because they can be used in many ways. Get a bunch of educational wikki stix ideas here.

Getting your preschooler into a daily routine of updating a preschool calendar will help them learn independence with their school and chore checklists later on. Use these free printable preschool calendar activities.

Still need more ideas for your 2 year old? Paper Heart Family has a list of 11 things to do with your preschoolers.

Is your preschooler not the youngest in your family? Are you trying to wrangle a preschooler AND an infant? Check out these infant development activities for babies under 12 months old.

I hope this serves as inspiration for you to try to find ways to include your preschooler in learning along side their siblings as well as only teaching preschool as you begin your homeschooling journey.