Need ideas for homeschool activities for preschool and kindergarteners to use while at home during illness, inclement weather, or other events.
As a certified K-5 educator who taught kindergarten and first grade, I am more than happy to share what we are doing in our home to stay on top of curriculum while quarantined at home.
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Preschool Homeschool Activities
There are so many activities that can be done at home using traditional school supplies and other items you probably already have on hand. Here’s a list of 10 activities that my children enjoyed and that I highly recommend (with free downloads)!
Supplies You May Need for These Activities:
- printed activity pages (linked below in each activity description)
- cardstock
- plain printer paper
- dot markers
- markers
- highlighters
- scissors
- stickers
- desktop pocket chart
- portable whiteboard
- pointer sticks
- cheese crackers!
Spring Kite Craft
To start our day, the kids cut out templates to create a kite craft. This is a great way to engage them right off the bat and work on those fine motor skills. Scissor skills are definitely a must-have for the preschool crowd!
Since we’ve been studying spring weather, I wrote spring weather words in the cloud recording sheet in highlighter. They traced over the words in pencil.
You could use this craft for any number of things – from recording letters, spelling words, vocabulary and more! Make it work with the content.
Math Activities
DOWNLOAD: HIGHLIGHT-A-NUMBER:ZERO
Today, we continued working on the number zero. Though it has everything to do with multiplication and nothing to do with quantity, we watched Zero the Hero by Schoolhouse Rock for no other reason than they sing about zero and it’s entertaining.
We followed it up with our Highlight-a-Number activity. Insider tip: using highlighters makes an activity infinitely more engaging. Trust me.
The complete math curriculum for numbers 0-20 can be found here! So many good resources for teaching early numeracy!
Incentive Chart
DOWNLOAD: DAILY INCENTIVE CHART
We are still using a daily incentive chart. The reward? iPad access. Works like a charm.
Brain Break
Today, we watched and learned about Fiona the Hippo from the Cincinnati Zoo! They have lots of great videos on their page. Your kiddos will probably be just as engaged as mine!
Sight Word Work
The focus today was building sentences using the word a. We’ve been working on a all week, so they were already familiar with the structure of the sentences.
I modeled the first sentence and then they put the remaining sentences together. (Since they are emerging readers, these sentences are super simple and repetitive.)
Count Your Home
Every day, my son’s preschool teacher (whom we love and adore – Faith had her last year), has been posting a daily challenge on her class Facebook page. Today, she wanted them to count different objects in their home. I LOVED THIS!
This was a great way to get them up and moving around and practice counting! I made a recording sheet to go along with her instructions, including a blank template and an option for counting items in your pantry/fridge, too.
FYI: We only counted the items on our first floor to simplify it a bit! I think it would’ve been hard for them to keep track of otherwise!
Letter of the Week: V
Continuing with the letter of the week focus on Vv, we dotted words that began with the /v/ sound. Say the name of each picture aloud, and if it begins with the /v/ sound, dot it!
These are the daubers we use, by the way! So many fun colors to choose from. And, along with highlighters, make activities a little more fun!
Also, the full Highlight a Letter pack that includes six activities per letter can be found here! I’ll be pulling from it frequently over the next several weeks.
Review Activity with Train Tracks
To review the skills that we’ve been working on this week and get in some building, I had the kids build a circle using train tracks. (If you don’t have train tracks, tape on the ground would work just fine!)
Around the track, I placed sticky notes with numbers, letters, words, and our phone number on them. They chose a train and placed it on the track (a car would work, too). I called out something on the sticky note and they would drive their train to the right note. Here’s what it looks like in action:
Bruce’s Big Storm Read-Aloud
Lastly, we concluded our time together reading Bruce‘s Big Storm! If you haven’t read book about sweet and grumpy old Bruce before, I highly recommend this series! Always frowning, but always loveable.
A great choice when studying spring weather, too, of course!
Up next…
I’m planning to use this fun activity in our math lessons soon! You might like to use it, too! Plus, FOOD! Who doesn’t love to learn when cheese crackers are part of the curriculum?!
I hope this post was helpful in sharing homeschool activities for preschool and kindergarteners! If you do something at home or in your classroom, please share it with me by tagging me @babblingabby on Instagram!
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