Birth to School Age

Toddler/Preschool/Kindergarten 

Resources for children who are younger who are sitting in on lessons for older children - At this age, my daughter made a palate on the floor and pulled out a busy bag and puzzles and coloring page and was in the room, entertaining herself while we did lessons. Within a year she was participating and excited about school.

Kids Educational Toys Resources

 

This is a great time period to start teaching with tales, fables and legends. See how to do that here and find some great resources for that here.

Ways to teach children birth to school age without formal lessons.

  • Pre-reading = constant chatter! Speak to babies a lot. Speak outloud when you're playing with them in full sentences so that they can pick apart sentence structure.
  • Read whenever you have a moment! Ask questions about what happened in the story.
  • When they can speak, teach them the alphabet. Sing it all the time for fun! Read Alphabet books and watch alphabet YouTube videos.
  • Teach the individual letter names.
  • Teach that each letter makes a sound, just as cow says "moo" and dog says "woof".
  • Teach which are vowels and consonants.
  • Let them trace counterclockwise loops.
  • Let them write letters in sand or rice.
  • Count as often as possible. Start with fingers and toes. If they are incessantly bringing you pinecones as a gift or acorns, count them!
  • Once they  can count,  count by 2s, 5s and 10s.
  • Count backwards from ten.
  • Start working with math sums up to 5, then 10.