Homeschooling your preschooler should be fun, as well as educational. By homeschooling preschool kids, parents can help foster a love of learning while building a foundation for future academic growth. Preschoolers learn from almost everything in their environments, and they particularly enjoy a variety of hands-on toys and other materials to supplement their homeschool curriculum. In fact, a formal curriculum is strictly optional at this age, as there is so much that a young child can learn just from being provided with a variety of interesting materials and experiences. Whether you use a formal curriculum or not, there are numerous resources available, both online and off that can help homeschooling families select appropriate learning materials and activities. Here are just a few:

Articles:

Design Your Own Preschool Curriculum
A step by step plan for building a frugal preschool curriculum that meets your own family’s needs. Includes links to helpful resources.
http://www.learningtreasures.com/design_your_own_preschool_curric.htm

Typical Course of Study-Preschool
This article gives a general listing of scope and sequence materials available for parents of preschoolers.
http://homeschooling.about.com/cs/learning/p/coursep.htm

Love at Homeschooling-Preschool Activities
This short article gives activity ideas for homeschooling preschoolers.
http://www.loveathome.com/homeschool/littleones.htm

Services:

Letter of the Week Preschool Curriculum
A popular free curriculum for teaching the alphabet and letter sounds to preschoolers, with connections to art, music, science, social studies, and more.
http://www.letteroftheweek.com/preschool_age_3.html

Abecedarian Academy-Homeschooling for Preschool
This website offers lots of useful information on homeschooling preschool-aged children and includes a skill’s lists for ages two through four.
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Forest/2468/skillslist.html

Homeschooling Adventures
Most of the links to lesson plans, worksheets, tips, activities, and more for the preschool child listed here are FREE.
http://www.homeschoolingadventures.com/preschool.html

Before Five in a Row
This gentle, inexpensive, curriculum uses picture books as themes, and then suggests discussion topics and hands-on activities to go along with each book selection.
http://www.fiveinarow.com/B4FIVEINAROW.html

Letter Sounds
To learn beginning phonics, this website has an educational alphabet game that can be played online or downloaded for FREE.
http://www.yourchildlearns.com/lettersounds.htm

Books:

Homeschooling: The Early Years: Your Complete Guide to Successfully Homeschooling the 3- to 8- Year-Old Child
Linda Dobson
Parents can use this book as a tool when choosing to homeschool young children.

Playful Learning: An Alternate Approach to Preschool
For parents who want to keep their preschooler busy, this is a resource that offers all sorts of activities.

Mommy, Teach Me!: Preparing Your Preschool Child for a Lifetime of Learning
Barbara Curtis
This book is a user-friendly guide filled with hands-on exercises that help develop the preschooler’s independence, sense of order, concentration, self-control, and other basic skills.

Entertaining and Educating Your Preschool Child (Usborne Parent’s Guides)
Robyn Gee, Meredith Sue
While its emphasis is on fun and filled with play activities and ideas, this book also contains invaluable information about the importance of various play activities in the learning development of young children.

Additional Links:

Preschool Activities
This site offers a wealth of information and resources for teaching preschoolers.
http://www.shirleys-preschool-activities.com/index.html

Ideas for Homeschooling Toddlers
This website collects tips and advice from homeschooling families on the types of strategies and materials that have worked best for them.
http://www.unitstudyhelps.com/preschool.shtml

DLTK’s Crafts for Kids
This site features a variety of fun, printable children’s crafts for teaching preschoolers ABCs, shapes, numbers, and includes coloring and activity pages as well.
http://www.dltk-teach.com/

Why Music Is Important in Preschool
This article focuses on the importance of using music as a teaching tool for preschoolers.
http://www.abchomepreschool.com/PreschoolEducationBlog/2007/07/29/music-in-preschool/

Notes and Advice:

If parents choose to acquire curriculum when homeschooling preschoolers, they should look for programs that are fun and flexible, and that use a variety of interesting learning techniques and methods. Themes and Unit Studies are often popular for teaching preschool children, as they can help guide the teaching process and make learning fun and playful. The focus should be on play, using toys and other tactile objects, as well as books, to instill the idea that learning is fun. Music is also a natural part of learning for preschoolers, so incorporating it into your learning activities often helps to keep learning enjoyable for them.

Parents should carefully select materials that are appropriate for the child’s developmental level. Once parents find something that works for them and their situation, sticking with it as long as it productively works is advisable. At this age it is important to avoid causing the excessive stress and frustration that comes from pushing children beyond the point that is developmentally appropriate for them! There is plenty of time for formal academics in the years ahead, but inadvertently crushing a young child’s interest in learning is a mistake that can be difficult to recover from. By all means, provide your child with a stimulating and interesting environment. Take him or her out into the community to explore parks, children’s museums, stores, and more. Get lots of good exercise, and remember to approach learning together as an adventure!