25 Amazing Homeschool Preschool ideas
Homeschool Preschool Activities
No matter why you’ve decided to do preschool at home or want to supplement their learning at home you may feel overwhelmed at trying to figure out what exactly to do.
What should your kids be learning? What sort of schedule should you keep? What activities can you do to teach these various skills?
That’s why I’ve gathered these 25 amazing ideas for preschool at home to help you come up with homeschool preschool activities for your child. We’ll also cover schedule ideas and a list of things your child should be learning at preschool age.
Just remember that every child is different so you will need to adapt things to your child’s learning style and where they are at developmentally.
Homeschool Preschool Lessons/Curriculum
Preschool age is definitely a time when the focus is play rather than academics. Kids actually learn a lot of important skills through simple open-ended play.
However, there are some things kids will ideally know by the time they finish preschool…and only some of them are academic! These include:
- How to wait their turn
- How to sit quietly for short periods of time
- How to put on their own shoes
- How to put on/take off their own coat
- How to use the restroom independently
- How to wash their hands properly
- How to cover their cough/sneeze
- Recognize their own name
- Recognize letters A-Z
- Recognize numbers 1-20
- Count to 20
- Basic cut/paste skills
- Basic Shapes
- Basic Colors
- Sort/Classify items in various ways
- Fine motor skills (important for later writing)
- Gross motor skills
Homeschool Preschool Schedule
These schedules are just a place to start! Definitely edit it based on your own kids & lifestyle. This is your child’s first introduction to learning so you want to keep it fun!
Some days they may be more interested and other days you may have to cut learning time short if they’re just not into it.
Keep learning times short and work learning into other activities whenever you can so they feel more like play than actual learning. For instance, an art project or sensory bin are both great ways to sneak in a little extra learning.
My 3-year-olds current favorite activity is to make a “project”. She gets a piece of paper and cuts, colors, and glues it into whatever she wants. To her, it’s just fun but she’s also working on her cutting and gluing skills at the same time…and learning to clean up her mess afterward!
Click the button under the image to print the sample schedule and your own blank copy.
Homeschool Preschool Ideas & Activities
When I went to put this together I thought it would be easy to find 25 ideas that I thought were good and could consider using with my own preschool age child…I was wrong. It actually took me quite a while to sift through things and settle on these 25 homeschool preschool ideas.
They cover a wide variety of learning categories and I’ve grouped some together into categories where appropriate.
A fun & easy way to start teaching your kids the days of the week and help them to know what to expect each day.
Where Do I Live? Kid Activity – Introducing Geography and Teaching Kids Their Address
I love this idea! Teach your while where they live in easy manageable pieces.
Lots of ideas for working on gross motor skills with your kids. Gross motor skills are large movements like running and jumping.
Learning how to identify and process their own emotions and the emotions of others is an important life skill. Here are various ways to talk about emotions with your preschooler.
Name Games
Your child may not leave preschool being able to write their name by themself, but they should at least be able to recognize their name. Here are ideas for working on learning their own name.
The first letters that preschoolers and toddlers learn are the letters in their names. Here are some fun ways to learn those letters! Practicing in several different ways will help to keep kids interested.
Customize this for your child's name and they can practice tracing it. (All children may not be ready for tracing letters yet. Shape tracing is a great pre-writing activity.)
Learning Letters
Eventually, you'll child will learn to read and write. That all starts with letter recognition and learning the sounds that they make!
Kids love stickers. Use them to help practice letter recognition in this easy activity.
Learning upper and lowercase letters? Here are various ways to match the upper and lower case of a particular letter.
Counting and Number Recognition
Another important skill is counting, and eventually number recognition. Although, counting and understanding the concept of a number is more important than simply memorizing what each number looks like.
This easy game uses post-it notes or printable cards to practice numbers in various ways.
Count and clip is great for practicing counting and fine motor skills clipping on those clothespins.
Here's an easy set up involving a toilet paper roll and stickers. This one would be easy to take on the go or stick in a busy bag.
Various fun games to help your preschooler get "number sense".
Sorting
Sorting is another great skill for preschoolers. You can sort in lots of ways! By color, shape, size, category, etc.
I love this idea as you can sort the same items by shape and then again by color challenging them to think of the same objects in different ways.
Which are fruits and which are vegetables? Sort them out in this fun activity.
Cut strips and then sort them into shorter and longer pieces in this fun and engaging activity.
Cutting/Scissor Skills
Kids should also know the basic of using scissors, as well as scissor safety. Be sure to get a left handed pair if your child happens to be a leftie.
This page is full of tips for teaching your child how to use scissors.
Once they have the basics down they can learn how to cut various lines and patterns!
Tracing
Tracing is great for fine motor skills and it's also a pre-writing skill as they prepare to trace letters and eventually write them on their own!
These cute rain cloud cards have various patterns for your child to trace.
Is your child ready to trace letters? It's ok if they aren't, kids develop at their own pace. For those that are ready you can grab this set of 26 letter tracing worksheets.
Preschool Science
Science for preschoolers?! Sure! You can start introducing basic science skills to kids, they love to explore, discover, and learn about their world.
An easy way to start exploring science by learning how to best grow a plant.
Kids will love this experiment involving pennies and ketchup!
This one doubles as an art activity as they learn the various parts of a flower.
Additional Resources
Here are a few additional resources.
If you're open to using apps for some learning check out these 35 educational apps for kids.
Spanish resources and printables — Lorena & Lennox Bilingual Beginnings
Want to try some activities in spanish? Here are some to get you started.
I hope this preschool schedule and activity list help you plan your very own homeschool preschool!
Follow us on Pinterest or Instagram for more great ideas.
