Preschool At-Home: Getting Started {Homeschooling Basics}

September 30, 2012 by Chantilly Patiño 8 Comments

homeschooling, bicultural mom, getting started, basics, beginning, homeschoolers, homeschool, bilingual homeschool, homeschooling bloggers

homeschooling, preschool, pre-k, kinder, at home, school, education, bilingual, homeschooling basics, getting started, for beginners, tips

Preschool At-Home: Getting Started

As everyone else is sending their little ones back to school this past month, I’ve been getting myself ready for homeschooling mi’jita formally.

homeschooling, bicultural mom, bilingual homeschooling, education, at home, preschool, pre-k, kinder, learning, education gamesOver the summer I prepped her with online alphabet games, fun learning workbooks and “school time” sessions.  Lily loves the extra “mommy-daughter time” and it’s been so much fun to see how excited she is to show off all her knowledge.

To start, Lily has several workbooks from Mead’s Preschool learning collection, including their Problem Solving, Math Builders, Learning to Letter and Reading Readiness.  All of these workbooks are available at Walmart in the school supplies aisle, which is where we picked them up.  While they are not a complete curriculum for preschool, they are a great starting point for transitioning your children into at-home preschool or even for getting them ready for pre-school outside the home.

Lily absolutely loves her books and she is always quick to let me know when it’s time for school each day.  She packs her backpack each day before “class”, including the stories that we’re going to read for the day (usually two for each day’s session) and her crayons or washable markers.

We sit down on mommy’s bed and cuddle together while we go over her homework and dole out plenty of high fives.  That’s the beauty of homeschooling…we can do a session whenever and wherever.  Sometimes we’ve even done our sessions before bed, instead in the afternoons…mostly because mommy sometimes forgets.

homeschooling, preschool, pre-k, kinder, at home, school, education, bilingual, homeschooling basics, getting started, for beginners, tips

There are also a number of websites that help to supliment your homeschooling with fun games, activities and printables.  Here’s a quick list…

Educational Preschool Games

You can also view this quick list of educational preschool games that I wrote a while back.

Best FREE Safe, Fun & Educational Online Game Sites for Infants & Toddlers

This Christmas, we’ll also be investing in the new LeapPad2 to add more fun to her homeschooling sessions.  Plus this way, she can do learning activities even when mommy is busy at work.  A great way to interject a little more learning into her day.

Another plan of our is to invest in some bilingual homeschooling workbooks and activities in the future.  For kinder, I would really love to set a solid curriculum and instill bilingualism as part of every lesson.  But more on that later because I’m still doing the research.  If you have any suggestions, I would love to hear them!

I’ll keep up with this series and share tips as we learn them and I hope you’ll also share your tips in the comments below and keep us posted on your own progress.

safe con britax britax latina bloggers britax blogueras britax dealsDisclosure: This is post is sponsored by Britax.

You’re getting Back to School tips on BiculturalMom.com because I am a Brtiax Latina Advisory Board Member!  The Britax Hispanic Digital and Social Media Outreach is in partnership with Mami Innovative Media.  As always, all opinions here are 100% my own. :)

Learn more about Britax and get product updates via Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.  Follow all the Britax Blogueras for the latest giveaways and deals!

signature

© 2012 – 2013, Chantilly Patiño. All rights reserved.

email

You Might Also Like

Multicultural Bloggers
Filed Under: Homeschooling Basics, Promotions Tagged With: , , ,

Comments

  1. Mud Hut Mama says:
    October 1, 2012 at 4:01 am

    We started our preschool homeschool in May and are loving it. I hope it’s as good for you and Lily – judging by the smile in that first photo I think it will be. Wishing you well and will be looking forward to reading about more of your ideas.

    Reply
    • Chantilly Patiño says:
      October 1, 2012 at 6:07 am

      That’s great Jody! Thanks for stopping by to comment. :) I will definitely follow along with you! We started our homeschooling in June and now I want to get more official and start building lesson plans for the year. If you have any resources to share, I would be so grateful!

      Lily has absolutely loved homeschool and while some parents have asked me if she is disappointed that she’s not in out-of-the-home school, she has never lacked anything by being at home. We have regular social days at the park with her friends and tons of fun working on projects together. It has been so much fun! :)

      Reply
  2. Dane @ Preschool Learning says:
    October 1, 2012 at 2:27 pm

    Nice to see your daughter is enjoying her at home preschool learning so much. There is certainly no shortage of learning ideas and lessons you can use to teach your kids. We operate many children’s educational websites which deal with providing resources for parents & early childhood educators. You mentioned some lesson plan ideas. We have some here that maybe of interest to you or give you some great ideas for your own. http://www.preschoollearningonline.com/preschoollessonplans_themes.html

    *if you take a look on our preschool website you will see some great Free learning games like counting games, dress up games and spelling games. One spelling game that comes to mind is:
    http://www.preschoollearningonline.com/SpellingGames/spelling-game-for-learning.html

    It’s always great to see parents take the time to get involved in educating their preschoolers and teaching them fun unique ideas to provide them the best education at an early age.

    Perhaps we can follow each other on twitter..

    Reply
  3. Tara says:
    October 30, 2012 at 11:05 am

    Chantilly,
    I think it is great you are home schooling! Congrats. I know you will be an awesome teacher. Don’t you just love Starfall!?? My son loved playing on Starfall when learning the sounds of the alphabet and learning to read. I wanted to pass along an AWESOME website to you that I recently learned about. My son told me about it. They apparently have it in all Georgia schools. He absolutely loves it. Not sure if you little one is old enough for it yet, but she will be soon! It has TONS of great info. Anyways, you might already know about it. They have free stuff you can click on which changes monthly. You can also sign up to have access to it all the time. It was expensive, so I chose to do the free 5 day trial (no obligation, credit card is not needed, ect… you just sign up with your email addy). I was so impressed that I’m saving up to purchase it. My son spends hours on it now doing just the free stuff. Ok, enough rambling. Please check it out. If you already know about it… sorry…. but maybe your readers would like to know about this site. Anxious to hear what you think of it. They have a lot of cool info about Mexico, Aztec culture, MLK, y mucho mas! The site is: http://www.brainpopjr.com
    Abrazos!!

    Reply
  4. Tara says:
    October 30, 2012 at 11:15 am

    Oh forgot to mention, I think the only way to see the videos for “dia de los muertos”, “aztec culture”, “Martin Luther King Jr.” ect… is to do the free trial. At any rate this site has a wealth of info! Do the free trial when you have plenty of time to play on the site.

    Reply