RAQ: How can I do Pre-K at home?

A dear friend recently asked me for some advice on at-home Pre-K.  There are SO many options out there, but I do have a few specific suggestions!

First, I suggest that you look up the curriculum guidelines for your state/region for Pre-K/preschool AND for Kindergarten.  This will give you a good idea of what the public school is being held accountable for teaching the kiddos and usually lays it out by subject and skill set.  I look at ours often to make sure I’m on the right track and probably will continue just using that as a checklist as the years go on…I always use these type things as a guideline to make sure I’m doing “enough”, ykwim?

As far as what I plan on doing with Michael (my own 4 year old) this year, I am using a Singapore math workbook with him and I may do the free 20 problems a day on ixl.com – that website will hook you up with grade appropriate math practice for your state’s curriculum, too.

We’ve also started The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading and are just a few lessons in. He likes it and the first 26 lessons are literally just about the letters and their sounds, so it doesn’t start out super hard core. That’s what we used to teach Grace to read. 🙂

For handwriting, I don’t know what we’ll do for sure. Starfall.com is excellent as a web phonics resource and they also have a coordinating handwriting journal you can print out, but it’s kind of hard for Michael as a boy. Grace had no issues with it pretty early on though. Honestly, for handwriting, I liked to just practice on plain white paper first, then go to the lined stuff (I just picked up a tablet at Dollar Tree) and write a letter a few times at the beginning of the line and have the kid copy it a few times.. it’s all about introducing them to it, not being crazy strict, ykwim?

Another thing that I really loved was getting the magazines from Scholastic. The Clifford magazine and the Scholastic News (1st grade) and Let’s Find Out were awesome for social studies/science/holiday/history studies. They’re a little more expensive to order them outright (not as a teacher) since you’re just getting the one subscription and they mail it out monthly, but it’s well worth it.
http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/classmags.asp

We also loved having a subscription to the magazine Click! for Science. We do as many field trips as we can… we count everything we can… we find letters and shapes and colors everywhere we can.. we work on patterns when we can..

A good book to check out from the library would be “What Your Preschooler Needs to Know” by the Core Knowledge Foundation. Their book for Kindergarten is excellent as well and I don’t think it’d be too hard for this age group at all. That book is great because it’s written TO the child and includes all subjects…

The Brainquest workbooks are also awesome.

Theheadoftheclass.net is a good website with some great free resources.

What do you think is a good resource for pre-k at home??