Preschool @ Home

I have been looking forward to writing a series of posts on what we are doing at home for weeks but we have been swamped here with life!! Even though things have been busy I have been getting ready for "school" let me assure you I use that word lightly considering my kiddo is barely 3, but she is eager and ready to learn and enjoys activities and other such things. My biggest goal with "school" is to get us on some type of schedule for doing life together. Right now we fly by the seat of our pants, hopefully come September we will have a routine of sorts. 

Everything I have been told is to relax and have fun, so that is what we plan to do. I plan on lots of trips to the library, books being read, games being played and life being lived. My goal is to be intentional with life, for example Kyla now knows the stop sign is an octagon, now we are working on the fact that the octagon has eight sides :) 

Enough rambling, what I am wanting to share with you today is what we are using for manipulatives and how it can be done on the cheap! 

The above photo is our school area, it has three plastic clip boxes I bought from Dollar General for $3.00 a piece, I will put 3 different activities every few days for Kyla to do.  Currently there is a peg board (which she got as a gift), wooden beads and cord (hobby lobby for cheap), homemade geoboard (all I had to buy was thumbtacks, I got the wood/paint from my parents), and the Melissa & Doug Pattern Blocks and Boards (which I got for 12.99 from TJ Maxx with Birthday Money, regular retail is $14.99). 

Although we are not ready for school (or should I say I am not) she has LOVED and spent HOURS playing with these four various activities. 

Here is the rest of our manipulatives:

I spent the most on the counting/sorting bears and the pattern cards, but she had b-day money so we bought them ($30.00 for both), there are multi-sized pom-poms for counting and sorting, foam dice (9 pack for I think 2.99 from Mardels), homemade lacing cards from a pack of foam ($4.99 for lots of foam from Hobby Lobby and cord I bought to use for the lacing cards and wooden beads - $1.99), Pipe cleaners, beans to spray paint later to use for counting, letter & number cookie cutters (I already had). Some things you don't see that we will use is homemade play dough and colored cheerios or fruit loops.

I made the geoboard from this post ours is 8x8 size, Kyla loves it!!

  

Here is a shot of our school area, that will be changing to a family bulletin board that will include scripture memory, who we are praying for, catechism questions, and probably a mission statement. I think the colors and shapes will be moved around and a calendar and maybe something else will be added. She knows letters and numbers but I think it still will be helpful for awhile. 

If you have any thoughts, suggestions or what works for your preschooler I would love to hear it!! 

Happy Schooling!