DIY preschool

I don’t get commission on any products I recommend, I just like them.

If your kids aren’t already in some kind of daycare program, should you put them in a preschool at age 3 or 4?

We’ve had mostly in-home care for our kids, so we didn’t want to pay for preschool on top of that. Preschools in our neighborhood are much more expensive than the ones Jeff or I went to, and our city doesn’t have enough preK spots for all the families who want one. We also didn’t want to add another commute to our schedules.

I think it’s possible to cover the main bases a preschool would, even if your child is home with a parent, nanny, or grandparent. I had a leg up because I grew up in a house full of materials from my mother (a career preschool teacher), and I worked or volunteered in a couple of daycares and preschools. But I think most attentive parents could do a good job here. The hardest part might be providing enough contact with other kids.

What skills should a preschooler be learning?

Educator consensus is that preschools should be play-based, rather than academics-focused. So what are children learning in preschool?

  • Getting accustomed to a classroom structure: doing activities at set times, following directions from a teacher, sitting on a rug next to other kids without kicking them.
  • Interactions with other kids: sharing, turn-taking, cooperative games, resolving conflicts, communicating what you want and don’t want.
  • Concepts like colors, numbers, and letters. (Not just rote reciting them, but number sense like counting items accurately, and pre-reading skills like taking interest in the sounds that make up a word).
  • Physical skills like holding crayons/markers and using scissors.

Other ways to get social time

  • Siblings and cousins.
  • We live near a park and spend a lot of time there. At various times we’ve had a routine of going to the park at the same time of day and spending repeated time with other kids with a similar schedule.
  • A nanny share with another child.
  • Storytime or music time at the library, which gives some practice at a structured activity with other kids.
  • Our city runs some free or low-cost playgroups or preschool-esque programs.

Some kids need more socialization than is happening from the home arrangement, even with things like playgroups. For a kid with autism or other stuff going on that makes it harder to make friends or interact with other kids, getting more time with other kids early on might be really helpful.

Put effort where your kid needs it

One of my kids was a natural at holding and using a pencil, and another was not. When you realize your kid is behind in an area, you can find resources specific for that. There are a lot of sites out there about what skills kids should be developing, but as far as I can tell most children develop most of the skills without special intervention.

Readiness

Even among smart parents, most kids won’t be precocious in most areas. It’s cool when a child learns a skill on the early side, but most won’t.

If you realize that your child is interested in more number games, or more reading, or whatever — sure, go for it! But I wouldn’t push if they don’t want to. My three-year-old is interested and proud to try sounding out three-letter words, but she gets mad if I ask her to try reading a string of multiple words. That’s my signal to back off and let her practice individual words for now.

See also: Most children of smart parents will be pretty ordinary

Asking another caregiver to cover material

If your child is home with a grandparent, nanny, etc, how can you get them to include things that are important to you? Ask them to plan for the week to include things like

  • Taking them to spaces with other children (play group, library storytime)
  • Reading to them
  • Outside play
  • Other things that are important to you

A preschool doesn’t have all the same materials out at a time; they rotate toys and materials. I try to rotate in some new materials so they’re more interesting to both kids and caregiver:

  • Puzzles they haven’t seen in a while
  • Craft materials or kits
  • Box of playdough with rolling pin, cookie cutters, etc 
  • Toy trains and cars, and cardboard tubes to use as tunnels / ramps
  • Other stuff listed at the end of the post

(I definitely don’t feel like I’ve figured out this area; it feels like all of our caregivers either had their own areas they wanted to cover with the kids, or don’t really want to cover anything.)

You won’t have time for all the activities

There are a million cute preschool activities online, but they’re mostly aimed at preschool teachers or full-time parents who are homeschooling preschool. After a workday, Jeff and I don’t have much time for preparing an activity, supervising it, and cleaning up afterwards.

Literacy

A lot unlocks once kids can read, and I feel like you might as well give them the chance to learn early; I like Kelsey’s piece on this.

But “give them the chance” is not the same as “it will definitely click early on.” Reading came easier for some of my kids than others, and it wasn’t proportionate to how much effort I put in.

I did a pretty work-intensive (for me) process for my first child with paper materials I made or printed out, and predictably I had less time with the subsequent kids. By the third child, we finally tried a tablet app for learning letters. It was way easier than keeping on top of little paper cards, and I wish I’d done it sooner. Reviews of learn-to-read apps and programs. One thing to consider is if you want something the child can do on their own to some extent. Nora ended up doing a fair amount of “letter practice” while Jeff and I helped the older kids with homework and such. DuoLingo ABC was ok for this; she ended up doing some amount of randomly pressing buttons to get past screens she didn’t understand, but still learning more than she would have.

There are lots of sites that outline how to introduce letters, if you want to do it without an app. Rather than going in alphabetical order, you can start with the letters in their name, or other sets of letters that combine to make a lot of words. They can start putting letters and sounds together before they’ve learned all the obscure letters like W.

The main physical material I still use is some kind of physical letters to move around. My kid just seems more interested in moving objects around than in letters I wrote on a page. You could use scrabble tiles or something. I use baby food jar lids with letters painted on them, because apparently that’s a thing I decided to spend time on making at one point. Magnetic letters on the refrigerator also allow for this kind of playing around with rearranging letters. 

Workbooks

I came in thinking worksheets were the enemy, but some of my kids liked books like “My first book of tracing”, “Scissor skills activity pad,” and “My first learn-to-write workbook.”

A lot of workbooks aimed at preschoolers strike me as boring and ill-suited to skill development. A writing workbook shouldn’t start immediately with letters, but with making deliberate marks (lines, zigzags, circles, etc).

I liked the “What your Preschooler Needs to Know” activity books. They build up skills slowly and in a sensible way, and you can skip areas where your child is already solid. The two workbooks (one aimed at age 3-4 and one at 4-5) provide a nice array of different skills and suggestions for activities outside the book.

Materials

Yard sales, thrift stores, and children’s resale shops often have good materials. When I need an idea for grandparents to give my kids for birthdays, I often suggest something from here.

Books 

  • Concept books about colors, shapes. Examples on colors, example on shapes, example on numbers.
  • Books with rhymes — noticing rhyming is one pre-reading skill. Nursery rhymes, Dr Seuss, Sandra Boynton, whatever.
  • Any books that you and your child like to read. Just spending time with books conveys concepts like how to turn pages, that letters on the page have sounds, and that books are enjoyable.

Number sense

  • Everyday objects (how many grapes are left on your plate? When you eat this one, how many will be left?)
  • Talking about places in your house where numbers are written: the clock, the microwave, a ruler, etc
  • Materials to count or sort (by shape, size, color, etc): colored dry pasta, buttons, pompoms, etc.
  • Board games with moving a piece a certain number of spaces, etc.
  • Example of extending math and science from picture books — use books as conversation starters, not just text to read verbatim.

Pre-writing

Children under age 5 generally aren’t working on handwriting per se. But they can build the physical and conceptual skills that get them ready for writing later.

  • Physical play for general core, shoulder, and arm strength (needed to sit at a table later)
  • Materials for making lines and shapes beyond pencil and paper: chalk, shaving cream on a baking tray, paint on a cotton swab, etc
  • For hand strength and dexterity: crawling, monkey bars, legos, clay, tweezers, lacing activities like stringing a shoelace through beads, operating zippers and buttons
  • Markers, crayons, pencils, and paper for drawing
  • Stickers
  • Moveable letters
  • More ideas

Spatial skills

  • Blocks — our favorites have been duplos and magnetic tiles.
  • Puzzles
  • Pattern blocks

The physical world

  • Cups and containers for water play in the bath, at a sink, or outdoors
  • Things that roll: toy cars, balls, marbles, etc. 
  • A flashlight
  • Magnets (big enough none of the kids in the house will swallow)
  • Shells, pinecones, and other objects from the natural world
  • Books from the library or your home about how things work; I like the “Let’s read and find out” series.
  • Online pictures or videos about questions that come up; some questions like “what is a hedgehog” are best conveyed through pictures or videos. 
  • Just talking about how stuff works. Today at our house it was seeing our shadows, and finding some drowned ants and talking about if they breathe air like us, or breathe water like fish.

Practical / pretend

  • Toy food, play kitchen
  • Dolls / stuffed animals
  • Costumes
  • Cleaning supplies like a brush and dustpan. I like the Melissa & Doug set of play broom, mop etc (and I see there are many similar sets).

Gross motor

  • Balls
  • Objects to balance on like stepping stones, or a board to use as a balance beam
  • Swings
  • Tunnels for crawling
  • A space to do tumbling/rolling play (grass, a mat or mattress on the floor)
  • Scooter, tricycle
  • More ideas

Arts and crafts

  • Scissors sized for small hands
  • I find most coloring books kind of frantic; it took me ages to realize they make simpler ones with names like “first coloring book” with simpler pictures for younger kids
  • String and yarn
  • Stickers
  • Washable paints
  • Watercolor sets; everything gets kind of greyish brown after a few uses, but the cheap sets are fine.
  • Brushes

More

Write a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *