From Life Take 1
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Ideas:
Fingerpainting with yogurt, pudding, whip cream
Play-doh
Sandboxes and dirt. Make mudpies. Yummy!!
Watertables -- can be filled with water, rice, sand, feathers, hay, anything just be creative. Use various things to play with such as utensils, measuring cups and spoons, funnels, tongs, sifter,... Remember to include somethings that won't work to further enhance the experience.
Nature walks -- sit and watch the ants, look for birds in the trees and new plants sprouting up. Look for changes in the colors around you, weather changes, and more.
Hand rhymes and songs
Lacing shapes, string wooden beads, and puzzles
Chores and basic hygenie
Legos, wooden blocks, lincoln logs,
cutting paper
coloring
magnetic letters with a lap size magnet board (you can use an old cookie sheet for this)
Stickers
Notebooking
own homeschool stuff, as much as possible. including a notebook to draw/write, own pencil box with whatever drawing implements she is permitted (if they can be different or new from her usual drawing materials, so much the better), safety scissors (they make somethat only cut paper, not hair or clothes, if you think that's an issue.) and glue stick.
own "worksheets" at the pre-K level matching, coloring, etc - there's lots of printable stuff on the internet, just do a search for printable worksheets
special math manipulatives, counters, bears, linking cubes, pattern blocks etc. My younger son's favorite was real coins, used with supervision, of course.
craft stick games - get a bunch of craft sticks and use markers to color designs on them in matching pairs, using different shapes, colors or numbers of dots. mix and let her match. Or turn over to blank side and playmemory. or make a set with ascending numbers of marks, and order them.
Old deck of playing cards - let her do what she wants with them, or suggest ideas like sorting, or use with playdough to build structures rounded point toothpicks and playdough - if you are really ambitious, you could draw some simple designs on index cards (2D) or make samples (3D) for her to try to copy.
a 9 x13 baking dish or jelly roll pan with a thin layer of flour or cornmeal in the bottom for drawing with a finger OR spray shaving cream on a baking sheet and draw, shape, etc.
A coloring book with large, simple line drawings for mosaic fun - fill in the drawings with small pieces of colored construction paper (cut into squares or tear; paint sample cards free from your local home store is great for this) glued on with glue stick.foam letter and/or number puzzles. for usual use as well.
relief rubbings (put a sheet of paper over the piece and rub with a crayon)a large bin (like the Rubbermaid underbed storage kind) filled a couple of inches deep with rice, and a set of measuring cups and spoons. Put a sheet down on the floor first for easy clean-up, or let her clean up with asmall dustpan and hand whiskbroom.
Push a stepstool or chair up to the kitchen sink and let her "wash" a selection of plasticware. OR find a small pitcher and let her pour into small cups (like small sippy cups without lids) and bowls. Fill the sink with water or use a large bowl full of water in the sink to dip thepitcher into to be filled. In the other sink put a baking dish or large food storage container with short sides to hold the cups to be filled. If you don't have another sink, put the pan on the counter next to the sink and monitor the spill level in the pan, or you could have quite a mess
Encourage her to pour the filled cups back into the reservoir (sink or bowl). Can use measuring cups and spoons here, too.
Take a sheet of paper and draw some coin sized circles on it. Let her cover the circles with counters or coins. Have some sheets with more circles and some with less. To make it harder, use different sized counters or coins and make the circles different sizes too.
Take several colors of construction paper or card stock, and cut different shapes - circles, squares, triangles. Sort or line up by color or shape. Make it harder by making more than one size of each shape, or adding more shapes, or more colors. You can use these when she is older (or with older children) by making patterns in the lineup and having her figure out the pattern and choose what comes next. Or making rules to follow in building the lineup - the next piece must have one thing in common with the one before, or two things in common, etc.Paperclips, regular or large size, to chain or lump together, or whatever.
A set of large stencils - the ones with small designs are just frustrating for little kids.
A hole punch and/or staple remover. My younger son went through a period of fascination with the staple remover at about 4 yo. He used it to "bite" paper. He named it Fang, and he played with it every day for long periods of time. He still loves to hole punch (he's 6 1/2 now).
shelling salted peanuts- and then when a large enough amount has been shelled (and not already consumed) you can put them in the blender with a dash of vegetable oil and make peanut butter. Then the younger one can spread the pb on crackers, and have snack during the next lesson period.
On a similar vein- using cookie cutters ( stars, hearts, etc.) to cut out pieces of bread. Then spreading cream cheese on with a butter knife and decorating the surface with raisins, nuts,olives etc. ( if you use a circle as a cutter-they can make faces- and use sprouts or cut up vegetables too.)
spice paintings- using white glue on contruction paper and then using any old spices out of your cupboard as "glitter".
Good old ooblek ( cornstarch/water/food color)- try making two or three colors and filling "honey bears" plastic squeeze bottles with them. Then give her a rectangular cake pan to squeeze them into. ( A plastic table cloth laid down first is a really good idea.)
Sorting buttons and beads. Stringing beads in simple patterns. Attaching buttons and beads to styrofoam blocks with old fashion hair pins (like bobby pins but with thinner wire)
Speaking of wire- playing with twisteez (plastic coated wires -- twisteez are for all ages!) and playing with pipe cleaners- the more the better.
Using eye droppers to mix colored water. Fill an assortment of small plastic cups with colored water (I use liquid watercolor from discount school supply- but food color will also work) Make sure the colors are fairly diluted- then give one small cup of clear water and let the color mixing begin.
Taking the kernels off Indian corn.
And in case you happen to have a hand crank wheat mill around- grinding wheat berries into flour. (I know - most peole don't have a wheat grinder- but if you do, it should keep your little one entertained for a while. Especially if the goal is enough flour to then make pretzels or pizza for lunch)
Using the Handwriting Without Tears laminated letter cards and playdough or pretzel dough to form the letters.
Using mini cupcake tins, and cookie cutters with playdough along with an assortment of plastic gems for decorating with.
Using measuring spoons to move colored pebbles ( the type for aquariums) from one container to another. Add colored sand to the pebbles, pour the mix into a tub and a use sandbox sifter to separate them. (again Discount School Supply has the colored sand)
Dover Publications has a bunch of reusable sticker sets - some with imaginary scenes and some with scenes from different environments and different times in history. I'm going to try to get some that correspond with some of the subjects my older child is working on and see if they keep my littlest one engaged.
as a different approach- sometimes we move the "schoolroom" into the back yard. Then my littlest can play while my older one has lessons. Granted this works best for either me reading to him- or his reading to me. But we have also managed to do math lessons out there. I have also taken to giving my older one a break between subjects by reading aloud a book that both he and my 2 year old will enjoy. This seems to help too.
The main thing to remember is to keep whatever activities you choose special for school time only, not other times. Anything that looks like or is what big people use is fun and special.
Products:
ABC Bingo (Trend Enterprises, available at teacher stores)
Numbers Bingo (Trend Enterprises, available at teacher stores)
Lacing Tracing Cards (Lauri Products, or Trend)
Puzzles (floor puzzles, wooden peg puzzles, lauri puzzles -- any kind basically)
Math Manipulatives (Kitty Kat counters, Pattern Blocks, Cuisenaire Rods, Multilink Cubes, and Attribute Blocks. I also have pattern block animal cards and the cuisenaire rods alphabet book. And a scale. For a long time,I just let her play with these however she wanted or directed her play toward counting/math activities but lightly.)
Scissors (I started with a blue pair that is one continuous loop and really easy for toddlers. I also used the Fiskars "My First" pair. These are neat and both are available at Teacher Stores.)
Construction paper.
Runny glue, stick glue, pasty glue
Craft supplies
My old calendars to cut up.
Trend Trace and Erase Workbooks (one is called Before I Print, one is Counting Fun, one is Shapes and Colors. Available at office stores or teacher stores. Kids love them because they are markers.)
Lacing Beads and Cards
My First Uno and other games
Cocentration (we had the Veggie Tale cards, now we also have the Blues Clues cards.)
Go Fish, (Thomas Train cards, and works also with the cards listed above; plus there is a new Veggie Tale set like the ones they used in Jonah.)
Baby Einstein Flash Cards. (I used these more with my son, who was talking in complete five to eight word sentences at 18 months. He loved these cards. They are big. They are bright. And they are very sturdy! They have 3 sets now; and I just go the third for my baby's "school" this year.(animals, nature, and basic objects. Can't remember the official titles.)
Website Resources
Before Five in A Row (B4FIAR) is an excellent unit study that works for many families. It didn't work for ours though. The plan is to read one story each day for five days and to do activities to enhance the child's comprehension of the material.
Letter of the Week has activities for various age ranges including preschool and Kindergarten (as well as younger) to teach the name and sounds of the alphabet. Best of all -- its free!
Zip Lock Bag Activities
Teaching Resources
Preschool Readiness
The Preschool Busy book, The Baby Busy Book, and The Toddler Busy book by Trish Kuffner.
The Play and Find Out series by Janice Van Cleave
Slow and Steady, Get Me Ready by June Oberlander
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