Posts
I always have boxes of educational toys, games, books, etc. in shoe box-sized Rubbermaid containers. I switch out the toys/books/games every so often to make the box seem new. The preschooler can ONLY play with these items when I'm doing "school" with the older children. I also utilize educational DVD's since the TV is near the school room. Another idea is to buy one of the $4 preschool workbooks from Wal-Mart for him/her to use to do their own school work. We did this too and it worked well. I just play "round robin" at the kitchen table with all the kids during that seat work time.
There was a GREAT article about "The Pleasures of Preschoolers" in a back issue of The Old Schoolhouse magazine. The author talked about buying a few bags of dried beans and give him measuring cups, spoons, etc. to play with. This seems a lot less messy (if contained to one area on a sheet) than play dough. She also suggested a book that she wrote called "Making the Most of the Preschool Years" by Valerie Bendt. It was $20 and had 176 pages.
Another family in the magazine commented on their day. They have four kids - the two youngest are preschoolers. They start their day with "doing preschool" altogether. This is an idea that we have used in the past. It teaches the older children HOW to teach and to enjoy their younger siblings! This family counts, rhymes, stretches, does exercises, sits in circles and sings and reviews the alphabet. Apparently, this really isn't very time consuming. They, too, use a "school box" (like I mentioned above) and they start projects on their own. Their box contains: simple phonics activities, beads for sorting, puzzles, papers for cutting out shapes. They are organized into small sealable plastic bags. I would suggest some other things too: pipe cleaners (they can spend hours on making shapes with these), blocks, Leap Frog games, play clocks, stackable cubes/cups, etc. A lot of this can be found at Wal-Mart for just a few dollars or less.
Lisa Metzger
0 comments:
Post a Comment