Homeschooling is a great educational choice for students of all ages—but the sheer number of good options can be overwhelming! If you’re evaluating preschool materials, you’ll want to join Vicki Bentley and Mike Smith, today on Home School Heartbeat.
Mike Smith:
Vicki Bentley, HSLDA’s Early Years educational consultant, joins us again today. And Vicki, what does a child need to learn in preschool?
Vicki Bentley:
Well, Mike, we’re introducing colors, numbers, shapes, size, social skills, emotional development, listening skills, reading readiness, motor skills, things like that. According to Barbara Curtis, there are five qualities we can help our kids develop that will facilitate their lifelong education: those are independence, order, self-control, concentration, and service—so we want to create a learning environment that develops these through, say, sorting, and pouring, and using scissors, and matching, and puzzles, and imaginative play, some foundational math, and nature studies, and some basic science experiments, culture, and geography, and fine arts—and lots of read-aloud time! If you wonder which concepts you should be covering at various levels, check out our article, “What Should I Be Teaching?” and we have suggestions for curricular materials for you to use, in our article, “What To Do with Your Preschooler” at www.hslda.org/preschool.
Mike:
Vicki, thanks for bringing your experience as a mom and home educator to our listeners! And next time, we’ll talk about a great new resource HSLDA is offering to parents of preschoolers. Until then, I’m Mike Smith.
