Teaching Your Preschooler

In our area, many preschools begin their programs for children at the age of three. Four year old programs are still the most popular, but many parents are turning to three year old programs for early childhood education. I spent a good 6 months going back and forth on our choices, talked to a number of parents who had children a few years older than my son and did all my research on every preschool in the area. I figured I needed to know what programs were out there anyway since we were planning to sign our son up for preschool at the age of 4 so he would be ready for the long days of kindergarten. I finally came to the conclusion that I wasn't going to enroll my 3 year old in a year long structured program. From what I heard from other people, and what I've experienced myself with playdates, tumbling classes and storytimes is that it's all purely social for the most part at the age of 3. I decided to keep doing what I was doing at home, which was basically working with my son everyday for a short while to teach him his basics like letters, numbers, shapes, colors, patterns, etc. I couldn't see that enrolling my son in a preschool program at such a young age was necessary since they get to be kids so little before they're off to school all day anyway. To make up for the social time I have a rotating schedule of different classes that my son takes including a creative playgroup and gymnastics class. We also have a number of friends who have boys our son's age and we set up playdates often to keep him around other kids.
Fast forward to sitting down with my son and getting more involved in learning than we were before with the very basics. I needed some sort of resource that I could teach my son from aside from his library of books that we read regularly. I came across the Twin Sister's Productions learning workbook series and found that they're a great stepping stone for teaching your preschooler. While different levels are available, we started using the Preschool level. It comes with a 12 song CD as well that has songs that teach the ABC's colors, numbers, letter sounds and manners. My son loves the songs so much he makes me put it on every morning while we eat breakfast. After we've settled in for the day we get out some crayons and start working on a few pages of the workbook. The workbooks are very colorful and are designed to look more like an activity book or coloring book. Every page is chalk full of information that we can go over together and I can challenge my son with the work on each page.

The best part about the Twin Sisters workbooks is how affordable they are. The Preschool version is only $4.99 with the CD. I've done some shopping around at local bookstores and online to find the best teaching and learning products on the market and I have to say this price point is the best out there. Other books are longer but they don't really cover much more subject matter and the pages don't hold my son's attention as well as these ones do. These books definately make the process of 'homeschooling' my son easier and more fun. It's also been extremely successful as well.