Early Learning & Preschool
Children learn from birth, so the concept of homeschooling a preschooler is easy to contemplate. Get information on how to make early learning fun and enjoyable for you and your child.
Homeschool Preschool Curriculum
JumpStart Free Math Curriculum
Homeschooling parents will find that when it comes to choosing the curriculum for math, there is a huge variety available. In fact, the number of math curriculums available to choose from may make choosing the right one difficult. These supplemental math activities for grades K-5 are fun ways to incorporate more math into your homeschooling.
Alpha Omega Publications Mathematics Resources for Homeschoolers
These workbooks help teach pre-K concepts such as time, counting, and more.
Five in a Row
Five in a Row provides a step-by-step, instructional guide using outstanding children's literature for children ages 4-8. Unit studies are built around each chosen book. There is a series for preschoolers called "Before Five in a Row," along with other volumes for older children.
TouchMath
This pre-K homeschool math unit download includes an implementation guide, module guides with instructional strategies, student activity sheets, answer keys, progress monitoring, and vocabulary. Designed for ages 3-4, it covers counting and number sense, comparing and classifying, sorting, graphing, patterning, 2-D and 3-D shapes, coins, and representing quantities and shapes.
Everyday Mathematics
Everyday Mathematics is a comprehensive Pre-K through 6th grade mathematics curriculum developed by the University of Chicago School Mathematics Project and published by McGraw-Hill Education. Everyday Mathematics is a research-based and field-tested curriculum that focuses on developing children’s understandings and skills in ways that produce life-long mathematical power. The Everyday Mathematics curriculum emphasizes:
- Use of concrete, real-life examples that are meaningful and memorable as an introduction to key mathematical concepts.
- Repeated exposures to mathematical concepts and skills to develop children’s ability to recall knowledge from long-term memory.
- Frequent practice of basic computation skills to build mastery of procedures and quick recall of facts, often through games and verbal exercises.
- Use of multiple methods and problem-solving strategies to foster true proficiency and accommodate different learning styles.
Life of Fred
This set of books is unlike any other textbooks. Each text is written in the style of a novel with a humorous story line. Each section tells part of the life of Fred Gauss and how, in the course of his life, he encounters the need for the math and then learns the methods. Tons of solved examples. Each hardcover textbook contains ALL of the material – more than most instructors cover in traditional classroom settings. Includes tons of proofs.
Written by Dr. Stanley Schmidt with the intent to make math come alive with lots of humour, clear explanations, and silly illustrations that stick in the mind. The student will learn to think mathematically.
Completion of this series prepares student for third year college math.
JumpStart Free Preschool Curriculum
Preschool is a time of rapid growth and development. While the preschool curriculum is designed keeping in mind the physical and intellectual developmental characteristics of 2 – 5 year olds, there are certain milestones that most preschoolers should achieve before they begin kindergarten.
Living Math
Early exposure to real mathematics in natural settings, without requiring mastery of arithmetic on a set timetable is a key to the ease with which kids attain mastery when the time is right for them. Math literature and history humanizes math, makes it come alive, and provides a context to enjoy and retain learning. This wonderful site offers a literature-based approach to math learning, with book lists, lesson plans, and more.
Numbers Plus - Preschool Mathematics Curriculum
The Numbers Plus Preschool Mathematics Curriculum is a comprehensive set of detailed plans for small- and large-group early childhood mathematics activities, with ideas for extending learning throughout the program day. What’s special about Numbers Plus is that children’s mathematical learning is sequenced within activities — each activity has a built-in progression so children of different developmental and ability levels can participate together and have a positive and meaningful learning experience. By actively engaging young children with materials and ideas, Numbers Plus builds on the latest knowledge from research and practice about early mathematics learning and how adults support it.
Math on the Level
Math on the Level is a flexible, maturation-based, homeschool math curriculum with a very effective review system. It's unique approach is designed to turn your home environment into a rich, real-life learning experience and make math education meaningful and fun for your whole family.
- Teach when it is easy for your child to learn
- Use everyday activities to make math real
- Review for long term retention without busywork
Resources
Pattern Blocks and Boards
This set of 10 simply designed colorful wooden blocks and pattern boards includes 100 blocks in six different shapes and colors. They help develop shape recognition and spatial relationship skills. The contents store neatly in a durable wooden case. This games was awarded the Scholastic Parent & Child's 2004 "Top 22 Toys that Make Kids Think" award.
Bob Books
Bob Books are organized into sets that progress in level as your child learns. They have cute stories and darling illustrations. These books are perfect for children ages 4 to 8.
Happy Phonics
Happy Phonics uses games to teach early reading skills. Simple yet entertaining and educational, these phonics games are printed on colorful, sturdy cardstock ready to cut out. Included is a mother-friendly guidebook which contains details on how to teach phonics and reading, how to pronounce and teach the phonics sounds, how to make your own simple beginning readers, and step-by-step teaching information for each phonics sound. Happy Phonics covers beginning to advanced phonics.
Explode The Code
Explode The Code provides a sequential, systematic approach to phonics in which students blend sounds to build vocabulary and read words, phrases, sentences, and stories. Frequent review of previously learned concepts helps increase retention. Each workbook in this series contains exercises that incorporate reading, writing, matching and copying. The consistent format of the books helps facilitate independent work. This series includes primers—Get Ready for The Code, Get Set for The Code, and Go for The Code—which introduce initial consonant sounds. In addition, Beyond The Code provides a comprehension component introducing basic comprehension skills with phonetically controlled stories. You'll find product information here.
Bead Sequencing Set
Stack the durable, brightly colored wooden beads on 5 hardwood dowels in sequence to match the design on one of the pattern cards. Builds complex reasoning skills as well as sorting and coordination. Includes over 45 brilliantly colored beads, 5 dowels, and 10 patterns that increase in difficulty.
Preschool/Early Learning Games and Activities
75+ Math Activities
These simple early learning math activities teach skills like number recognition, counting, simple addition and subtraction, sorting, sequencing numbers, and measuring.
Place Value with Beads
Learn the concept of 10s with these simple bead and pipe cleaner manipulatives.
Montessori Spindle Box
Make this counting spindle board with simple materials from around your home. Teaches counting and grouping.
Number Chants and Counting Songs: Teaching Early Mathematics Skills, Shapes, Money and Telling Time
A selection of songs and lyrics from a variety of different albums teaching how to count, recognize shapes, use the concept of zero, use units of measurement and money.
Sort and Count Bottles
Use old bottles and pom poms for simple counting and sorting maths games and motor skills fun! With lots of ways to play and learn, these are a great addition to the maths area at home or school.
Preschool Math Activities with Duplo Legos
Counting and learning about patterns is fun with Duplo blocks. These easy activities can be put together in no time at home.
5 DIY Manipulatives for Preschool and Kindergarten
These manipulatives are easy to make at home. They provide early learning supplies for anyone on a budget.
20+ Fun Math Activities for Kids
Wonderful collection of math games and activities that you can create at home.
20 Preschool Math Activities
Children should gain an understanding of math concepts at an early age. This can best be done through every day life experiences and through play. these are great ways to introduce math concepts to kids in fun way. Many of the activities are also appropriate for kindergarten and the early elementary years.
Pom Pom Math Activities
These fun math games help encourage counting and color matching using pom poms.
5 Simple Games for Teaching Number Recognition
These number recognition games are simple, don't require any fancy materials, and preschoolers love to play them.
JumpStart Math Activities
When it comes to math, a good foundation is essential. With these fun math activities for kids, numbers become friends and the basic foundation for the subject is established at an early age. Different math activities for kids of different age groups can be effective in teaching them basic but essential math concepts.
Here are some interesting grade-based math activities that parents and teachers can use to make math a whole lot of fun!
PBS Kids Math Games
This is a huge collection of online math games for preschool and elementary aged kids.
20 Ideas to Practice Measuring
There are so many ways to practice and teach the science and math skill of measuring. Here are some ideas for fun ways to practice measuring.
Sort the Mail: Pretend Play and Number Recognition
Kids love to pretend and test their limits within boundaries of make believe. Combining pretend play with math is a great way to challenge your kids without making them feel like it’s a test. Pretending to be a postal worker gives the task of sorting meaning and with that meaning their learning is deeper and better retained.
Preschool Math Idea
The best way for preschoolers to learn math is through lots of fun and creative games that let them explore and discover new concepts about the world of numbers.
Adding Fun
With just a few inexpensive supplies, you can make this simple adding activity for your preschooler.
Free Printable Ten Frame Cards
Learn 10s with these free printable cards that offer a fun way to practice. Read about different ways to use the cards for enjoyable math games to teach this concept.
Lego Challenge Math Activity-Free Printable
Practicing math skills like spatial awareness and geometry can be fun, especially when the math activity involves Legos! Here’s a free printable math challenge for kids using Lego or Duplo bricks!
Board, Card and Dice Games for Learning Math, Logic and Strategy
This list is a great start to incorporating fun activities and games into your homeschool math curriculum.
Preschool Worksheets and Printables
Free Printable Ten Frame Cards
Learn 10s with these free printable cards that offer a fun way to practice. Read about different ways to use the cards for enjoyable math games to teach this concept.
Making Learning Fun Math Ideas
Fun and free printables that are great for preschoolers. These activities make learning fun!
Preschool Math Worksheets and Printables
Preschool math worksheets help your young learner develop essential early math skills. From number recognition to counting to addition, preschoolers learn a lot about numbers in one year. Our collection of preschool math worksheets is designed for kids who want to build skills that will prepare them for kindergarten and beyond. These preschool math worksheets help present new number topics to kids in a way that's fun and easy to understand. Help foster a culture of learning by doing these preschool math worksheets with your child.
Free Printable Preschool Worksheets
Free printable preschool worksheets for learning to write the alphabet, numbers and bible memory verses, plus free printable colouring pages and more!
Preschool Math Printables
These printables are free and help provide extra support for teaching preschool math. You'll find calendars, number tracing cards, number mats, patterns, and more.
Making Learning Fun
This early childhood education website is filled with free printables designed to make learning fun.
Lego Challenge Math Activity-Free Printable
Practicing math skills like spatial awareness and geometry can be fun, especially when the math activity involves Legos! Here’s a free printable math challenge for kids using Lego or Duplo bricks!
Support for Parents of Preschoolers
CharlotteMasonKindergarten
A group for Charlotte Mason Mom's using the curriculum outline suggested in Karen Andreola's summer of 93 Parent's Review titled, "A Formidable List of Attainments for a Child of Six", and also trying to complete the Kindergarten Skills list as described in Catherine Levison's book, A Literary Education.
Homeschoolers Teaching Kindergarten
This discussion list is for homeschoolers teaching preschool and kindergarten. Topics include curriculum selection (whether necessary or not), teaching tips, creative learning ideas, time management, unit studies, homeschooling books, neat craft ideas, cooking tips for all occasions, support those who have homeschool burn out, or those who are just starting to homeschool.
CM4primaryyears
To discuss the Charlotte Mason method of homeschooling elementary age children, and to share the joys and concerns of everyday life.
Field Trips 101
Field trips can inspire your child to study a topic, give him further insights into his current studies, or provide closure to a completed unit. Is there somewhere you’d like to take your children to reinforce a topic this year? Or just want to visit because it would enrich their lives? If you let your support group (or even just a few other families) know that you are planning to go and they are welcome to tag along (think: group rate)—voila! You’re planning a field trip!
Homeschooling Preschool Teaching Tips & Ideas
Preschool Math: Mastering Number Recognition and Counting
Learning about numbers is a preschooler’s first step toward becoming a budding young mathematician. And in preschool, math learning is all about counting, number recognition, and one-to-one correspondence. If a child doesn’t ace these seemingly simple skills in a timely manner, don’t fret: even math whizzes need time to blossom. But with age appropriate techniques, helping your child to master these math milestones will be as easy as 1, 2, 3!
Why Preschool Shouldn't Be Like School
houldn't very young children be allowed to explore, inquire, play, and discover? Perhaps direct instruction can help children learn specific facts and skills, but what about curiosity and creativity—abilities that are even more important for learning in the long run? hile learning from a teacher may help children get to a specific answer more quickly, it also makes them less likely to discover new information about a problem and to create a new and unexpected solution.
Math Play: How Young Children Approach Math
Mathematical experiences for very young children should build largely upon their play and the natural relationships between learning and life in their daily activities, interests, and questions.
Readiness
This article takes a look at one mother's coming to terms with her daughter's readiness, or lack thereof, to learn to read.
Preschool Math
There are many natural ways to teach preschool math. Everyday activities, like cooking and grocery shopping involve mathematical concepts.
Preschool Math--Counting by Tens/Odds and Evens
This youtube video demonstrates some great strategies to help preschoolers learn counting by tens and odd and even numbers.
Homeschooling Kindergarten Math
Teaching math to young learners at home can be successful if you respond to your child. Children learn best when they aren't forced to learn. Introduce them to ideas, books, educational television, and most importantly, show them how this stuff is used in everyday life. they will catch on and learn it at their own pace.
Pre-K Smarties
Pre-K Smarties is a preschool education resource for parents teaching preschoolers with tips for early reading using phonics, parenting articles, family freebies, and deals on the best educational toys.
Teaching Young Children at Home
How do you teach young children? What do you do all day? How do you provide a "stimulating environment"? These questions are asked frequently by parents of young children who understand the immense magnitude of what it means to take responsibility for their child's education.
A Homeschool Curriculum for Preschool and Kindergarten
"Can anyone recommend a curriculum for pre-K and kindergarten? This is a frequent question homeschooling bulletin boards and email lists. It's a perfectly reasonable question, but some of the responses can be confusing to new homeschoolers.
We all come into homeschooling with some common preconceptions of what the program should be - but many who have been at it for a while or raised homeschool grads are likely to strongly suggest not setting up a structured study program for young children. This is where some misunderstanding can come into play.
Saying that a structured study program for a young child is inappropriate is not at all the same as saying that learning is unimportant during the early years. It's simply that many experienced homeschoolers and other educators feel there are certain kinds of activities that are much more important and appropriate in early childhood than studying the 3 R's - and that to establish a structure that emphasizes the 3 R's at that age can actually be detrimental. If a child is asking to learn to read, of course, that's a whole different matter - but it's simply a question of helping that child learn to read, which is very different thing from setting up a curriculum.
Preschool Math: Exploring Patterns
Patterns are all around us, from the clothing we wear to the repeating patterns found in nature and everyday routine. Patterning is also a basic math skill upon which many mathematical concepts are based. Times tables, addition and skip counting all require an understanding of and proficiency in patterning. In preschool, identifying and creating patterns is just the beginning of the mastery of life-long mathematical skills.
Board, Card and Dice Games for Learning Math, Logic and Strategy
This list is a great start to incorporating fun activities and games into your homeschool math curriculum.
Preschool Math: All Sorts of Sorting
Parents may think counting and recognizing numbers are the nuts and bolts of preschool math. While these are important skills for young mathematicians to master, building a foundation for complex mathematical thinking begins in the early childhood years. Sorting and classifying objects helps children begin to notice how items are alike and different, and creates an awareness that is vital for math learning.
Instill a Love of Math
Parents are bombarded with messages to read with their children, but it’s rare to hear about the importance of doing math with them. Here are some helpful tips on why and how to instill a love of math in your children.
A Poetry Unit for Preschoolers
This free unit study for preschoolers features poems found in Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends as a text for 10 poetry lessons. Each lesson refers to a poem (so it helps a lot to have access to that book), includes an activity suggestion, and instructions for a writing project (mostly poems). You can use all the lessons, or just a couple.
Pre K Teaching Strategies and Early Childhood Education
Young children are unique creatures who love nothing more than to experience everything from tactile, hands-on items to feeling the wind in their faces as they jump off a wall. They are all about hiding under blankets to see what happens if they walk through the house like a ghost or playing safari and taking pictures with their imaginary camera.
Design Your Own Preschool Curriculum
Teaching your preschooler at home can be accomplished several ways. There are three options: 1) Purchase a program from one of the preschool curriculum providers, 2) Read to your child from great books, and explore the world together paying attention to what interests your child or 3) Design your own curriculum for free using the internet and the library. Any one of the three options should work fine. But if you prefer a plan laid out in writing and you are on a tight budget, option three is the way to go.
Developmental Milestones for Preschool Mathematics
Children’s ability to understand mathematics takes a big leap forward in the preschool years. Their strengthening ability to represent using manipulatives, symbols, and signs opens up many new possibilities. Children also make strides in algebra and patterning. They can sequence events in time by age three. By age four, they can re-create patterns or make their own repeating pattern. During the preschool years, the child’s ability to problem solve takes on a new zeal. Children’s ability to classify objects is more developed; they can sort and organize objects into different categories and tell which pile has more. This chart details the skills that children can exhibit at different ages.
Mathematics Teaching Strategies
As a teacher, you can foster the development of early mathematical skills by providing environments rich in language, where thinking is encouraged, uniqueness is valued, and exploration is supported. Teachers support young children's diligence and mathematical development when they direct attention to the math children use in their play, challenge them to solve problems and encourage their persistence.
Field Trips 101
Field trips can inspire your child to study a topic, give him further insights into his current studies, or provide closure to a completed unit. Is there somewhere you’d like to take your children to reinforce a topic this year? Or just want to visit because it would enrich their lives? If you let your support group (or even just a few other families) know that you are planning to go and they are welcome to tag along (think: group rate)—voila! You’re planning a field trip!
Featured Resources
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Pass Your California DMV Test Guaranteed! 50 Real Test Questions! California DMV Handbook
This book contains the 50 most common questions and answers to the California DMV Written Test. Written by a former DMV classroom instructor and test creator, this straight forward book tells you the most likely questions and answers that will appear on you exam. Typically, at least 70-80% of the questions you encounter will come from these high frequency questions. Pass your test today!
These Rare Lands
If a picture's worth 1,000 words, this book--with its hundreds of breathtaking photos of America's National Parks--is a well-stocked bookstore. Accompanied by the words of poet laureate Mark Strand, These Rare Lands is a perfect coffee-table book for anyone who has enjoyed the wonders of nature's wildest places. From a storm over Sequoia National Park in California to the otherworldly stalactites and stalagmites of New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns and an Atlantic sunset in Maine's Acadia, th...
Learning Styles: Reaching Everyone God Gave You to Teach
This book offers helpful and practical strategies about the different ways that kids acquire information and learn, and then use that knowledge. Kids' behavior is often tied to a particular learning style and understanding that fact will help parents respond to their child in ways that decrease frustration and increase success, especially in a homeschooling environment.
Teach Your Own: The John Holt Book Of Homeschooling
The classic work on teaching children at home, updated for today's new laws, new lifestyles, and a new generation of homeschooling parents. Today more than one and a half million children are being taught at home by their own parents. In this expanded edition of the book that helped launch the whole movement, Pat Farenga has distilled John Holt's timeless understanding of the ways children come to understand the world and added up-to-the-moment practical advice. Rather than proposing that pare...
100 Top Picks For Homeschool Curriculum: Choosing The Right Curriculum And Approach For Your Child's Learning Style
The key to successful home education is determining your educational philosophy and linking it to your child’s learning style. Then you can make an informed decision in choosing the right educational curriculum for the child. Homeschool guru Cathy Duffy can help you accomplish these critical tasks, with her top choices from every subject area, approaching everything through a Christian worldview perspective.