Whether you chose to go with a full on curriculum or learning through play there are certain tools that will help your child learn and grow through the preschool years. “Must have” is a matter of opinion of course, but these are the items that I consider invaluable when teaching preschool at home. These are 11 Must Have Items For Preschool Homeschool.
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Laminator- These are a great tool for mom no matter what age you are teaching. For little ones working on learning letters,numbers, and working on fine motor skills it can be such a blessing! Print off the oodles of adorable tracing pages, playdough mats, and worksheets you can find on Pinterest and laminate for long term reusable fun and learning.
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Paint- Fingerpaint, watercolors, poster paint, paint pens- they are wonderful for fun, color identification, color mixing, art projects, and free play.
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Paper- Every sort, size, and color! Keep plain white printer paper, construction paper, writing paper, watercolor and drawing pads on hand for free art or planned lessons. Creativity is one of the most important skills to grow in your child and offering a good variety of art mediums
construction and doodle
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Games- Not only are games fun they can be very educational and build skills like- fine motor, taking turns, or being a graceful winner/loser. Many teach colors, numbers, shapes, and more. Here are a few of my fave’s
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Manipulatives- These can be anything, and used in so many ways. You can go with traditional animal shaped counters like these or Unifix cubes. Manipulatives are great for counting, adding and subtracting, sorting, measuring, weighing, and just simple open ended play.
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Scissors- Every preschooler I have ever know loves to cut, with a purpose or just for the sake of cutting. These scissors are perfect for preschoolers with a safety blade, blunt tip, and lever that opens the scissors back up after a cut.
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Books- You are probably already on board with this one right? You may already have a good headstart. At this age for school I love to have a lot of books on hand that emphasize the alphabet like these…
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Blocks- Lego, Duplo, wooden,etc.. Blocks of all shapes and sizes can help build up fine motor skills, spatial awareness, hand eye coordination, and imagination.
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Puzzles- Puzzles that offer your child a little bit of a challenge will help them with problem solving, fine motor skills, hand eye coordination, and memory.
10. Play dough- Sensory activities add another wonderful aspect to play and learning. The rolling, kneading, and shaping children do help strengthen hand muscles for writing. You can use playdough to teach letters- roll to form the shape of each letter, make impressions with alphabet magnets, use marbles to form letters and numbers,etc…
11. Calendar- Kids love changing the days, weeks, months, and weather on calendars like this. Using it in your daily routine really helps children get a sense of time.
What a terrific list! Thank you, Alana!
What a great list! I would add that I LOVED having pattern blocks around. Now that my kiddos are older I still can’t seem to part with them. My preschoolers would build towers with them, complete pattern pages that I laminated, work on making letters with them, sort them by color, practice counting, etc. No matter what we did for preschool, these always seemed to come out. Thanks for sharing. 🙂
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Pattern blocks are a great idea! There are so many great resources now that it is hard to choose. Thanks for sharing this.