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Homeschooling a preschooler can feel a bit overwhelming. How will you create educational and fun activities for them over the course of one year? There are so many great ideas available and finding them when you need them does not need to be challenging. Using One Year of the Best Pre K Homeschool Hands-On Activities from Homeschool Mastery Academy will help you plan each day, week, month, and even your entire preschool year for your homeschool. Reviewing the activities from Homeschool Mastery Academy with our daughter has been so much fun!
There are monthly themes, book suggestions for each month, a calendar with activities for each day of the week, and two printables per month. There are 53 pages of educational things to do with your preschooler that ranges from arts and crafts to development of fine motor skills and pre-writing. You could use this in your homeschool for a relaxed approach to preschool or to supplement another curriculum.
Monthly Themes
January – Arctic Animals
February – Snow
March – Spring Animals
April – Rainbows
May – Flowers
June – Time for a Picnic
July – Under the Sea
August – Summer Fun
September – Woodland Creatures
October – Fall Leaves
November – Windy Weather
December – Winter Fun
How We Used One Year of the Best Pre K Homeschool Hands-On Activities
As I was reviewing this product, I started with the month we currently were in (April) and also picked out some projects, worksheets, and book suggestions from other months. We completed about eight projects during the review period. As they are not just all print and go worksheets, we needed time to gather materials and set up the crafts and experiments. (Personally I like that it is not just an eBook full of worksheets to color or cut. This helps develop more than just pre-writing skills with our daughter. She was able to put on her thinking cap during several projects as well as use some of her favorite craft supplies.)
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| Preparing for the month! |
Please note: One Year of the Best Pre K Homeschool Hands-On Activities is in full-color but I needed to print out the worksheets in black & white.
An Overview of One Year of the Best Pre K Homeschool Hands-On Activities
In January, you and your child can study about arctic animals together by reading Owl Moon by Jane Yolen and create a glow-in-the-dark mobile. During the month of February, as the snow falls, you can read The Mitten by Jan Brett and retell the story of the animals squeezing into the mitten.
With spring arriving, March, April, and May lessons focus more upon the changing of seasons, insects, and new growth. We spent the majority of the review period completing activities as suggested in April. The theme for April was Rainbows and our daughter was very excited to try to create her own rainbow in a jar. I gathered together all the materials necessary and my husband and I worked on the experiment with her.
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| Measuring the water |
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| Adding the sugar |
While we were not able to achieve the desired results of the experiments (our colors kept mixing – I think we may have needed to have added more sugar to the water), our daughter was very excited to mix the colors. She probably would have spent hours just mixing the colors. I love finding activities that provide her with entertainment and education at the same time.
Knowing that she loves using dot paints, I printed out one of the rainbow pictures from the link provided in the April calendar. We lined up the colors in the correct order for the rainbow and she happily 'painted' away.
We also used the two printables provided for April – Rainbow mini-booklet and R is for Rainbow capital vs. lowercase letter R sort worksheet. The cutting and sorting worksheet was a big hit with her. When I asked her why she liked doing the cut and sort worksheet, she said: "Cause it is cool. I had much fun."
With flowers starting to bloom in our own yard, we completed one of the activities from May so we could talk about how seeds grow. We read The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle and completed the Life Cycle of a Plant Booklet. Our daughter was also very happy to pick out daffodils for the house so we could compare them to the flower in the booklet.
Another activity from May is that of the Play Doh flower mat. I printed out the mat for our daughter and let her use another favorite supply - Play Doh. Unfortunately, she did not make petals for the flower but that is to be expected with a preschooler. Plans will need to be changed and adjusted (and that is another reason why One Year of the Best Pre K Homeschool Hands-On Activities is good: because there are so many options available to pick from for your preschool).
We also completed two projects from September (although I modified the Fall Yarn Wrapping from the calendar). Our daughter really likes learning about numbers so printing out the Cut, Count, and Sort printable was obvious for me. We also worked on yarn wrapping but instead of a fall object (like a leaf or pumpkin), she used a bunny that I cut out of cardboard. She had fun wrapping and unwrapping the bunny over and over. I asked her what she liked about the yarn wrapping project and she said: "the wrapping of it (while mimicking the actions)."
Final Thoughts
This is a solid, well-planned eBook with lots of fun activities for you and your preschooler. Our kindergartner also had fun joining in on some of the projects so if you don't get to finish them all in one year, you can complete it the next year. As our daughter gets a little older, I will ask her for some guidance on which activities she would like to work on during each month. I look forward to the summer months to explore picnicking and under sea activities!
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Love this! Looks like you are having a great time!
ReplyDeleteYes - it is a lot of fun!
DeleteI will share this with my daughter. She is working with her youngest now
ReplyDeleteVery cool!
DeleteI am so impressed when families make the decision to home school.
ReplyDelete