Homeschooling Preschoolers: Do You NEED to? Development, Readiness & Best Curriculum!

Hi, everyone. I'm Manisha, the founder of Modulo. And today we're going to be discussing one of my most favorite topics, which is how to homeschool preschoolers. I was a teacher for about 20 years before I got into homeschooling, and preschoolers are above and beyond one of my favorite groups to teach. So the first thing I want to bring up to you as we start this conversation is that I would like to encourage you to really think deeply about why you want to homeschool your preschooler and what your objectives are. Because many people have some sort of beliefs that they might not have really questioned before they start teaching their preschoolers. And the first belief is that when you learn earlier, you learn better. Now, it's actually not necessarily proven that that's the case. So sometimes parents come to me and they really want their 2 year old to learn how to read or their 3 year old to learn how to read. And the child might not be developmentally ready to learn how to read. And in fact, I would say over 50% of the most profoundly gifted kids I've worked with had some sort of development, developmental delay. And unfortunately, if you do push academic skills on children too early, before they're ready, that can cause them to have a negative view on learning. And in certain concepts like reading or math, their brains aren't actually ready to grasp those concepts. It can take a while before a child can really understand an abstract concept in math like subtraction or addition. So if you have this idea that if your child learns something more quickly, they're going to learn it better in life, that is not necessarily true. So that's kind of an interesting area to start with. Now, the other thing that I want you to think about is the power of play. So children have this incredible desire to play, to connect with you in a playful way, to play with blocks, to engage in games. And, you know, you might say, oh, it's just play. Nothing's happening there. But this natural inclination to play is actually a drive to want to learn. So play helps children develop all of these incredible skills, their cognitive abilities, their problem solving, their creativity. I really encourage parents to leave children to their own devices. You can play with them, you can go to the park and let them play. But if a child is bored, it's often a good idea to resist the temptation to try to entertain them. Because when children do get bored, that's when the real creativity starts to emerge. I really recommend that parents try to come to peace with their own discomfort around children being bored. And in the same light, you know, playing with your child all the time can be kind of boring and annoying sometimes. And so if you do bring your child to the park, it's perfectly fine to sit there and say to your child, you know what? I don't really feel like playing right now, but you can go off and play and I'll be here waiting. And that can be a really great opportunity for the child to develop their own creativity. So I want just to relieve you of this huge pressure that you have to entertain your child now. Being with your child and connecting with your child, especially in early childhood, is so vital to their brain development and to their social skills. Building that secure attachment with you. Younger children really do need lots of time with a primary caregiver, ideally you, their other parent, if there is another parent or a caregiver, grandparent. But just having that really highly focused one on one time is so valuable for learning. So now that we've gotten that out of the way, I just want us to dive right into homeschooling preschoolers. And when I, you know, if you post about, oh, I want to homeschool my preschooler on some Reddit or Facebook group, you might get a lot of angry people saying, no, preschoolers should play. Kids in Finland don't learn to read until they're seven. And so I'm kind of in the middle with that. I think it's really awesome and wonderful for kids to simply play until they're seven and start learning reading and math then. But if your child does show a huge interest in learning how to read or write, or you just feel like they're ready, they're starting to notice sounds and numbers, or they request that, then by all means follow that natural inclination. But in terms of this idea that if they read earlier, they're going to read better later on, that's just not true. I mean, once you know how to read, you're off to the races. It doesn't matter if you learned when you were 7 or 10 or 2, you're going to, you know, when you're 40, you're going to read just as well as when, depending on when you started. Now, that is a little bit different if you're learning a foreign language because the brain is so highly plastic when you're younger that it really does pick up new languages very early on. So if there's some way that you want to give your child a head start having a bilingual au pair or learning language together as a family, or speaking your own language, that is one of the rare skills that children will learn more quickly and then otherwise, it's really just about exposure, Entertaining their questions with them and allowing them to play in the way that comes so naturally to them, and then modeling being a learner to them. You know, if you don't want your child to spend a lot of time on screens, don't spend a lot of time on screens. If you want your child to be a reader, read books to them. Let them see you read. So now that we have that out of the way, the first thing that I like to look at when I'm thinking about any age group is academic readiness and developmental milestones. Children develop differently, especially in the preschool years. But I want to give you kind of a basic sense of whether your child is on track. And I'll just preface this by saying that the most important way to see that they're on track is you. If you feel like they're doing well, that they're thriving, don't worry. If you have a concern, There are ways to check and see if they're on track. So. So this just to start us off, I'm going to share a resource with you that I absolutely love. It's called Understood.org and it's just a really, really helpful tool for understanding developmental milestones and academic readiness. All right, so this is Understood.org and this is an article by one of my favorite learning specialists, Amanda Morin. Skills that children might need going into kindergarten. And again, this is just to give you a general benchmark of what other children your child's age might know before they start kindergarten. And some children so, for example, knowing how to count to 10, holding a pencil and using scissors, we call those fine motor skills. And then having the ability to get dressed and go to the bathroom themselves. Generally, at this age, children can speak in complete sentences. They can express what they want or need with words such as, I need to go to the bathroom. I am hungry. They would understand two step directions. That means, for example, honey, first you need to put on your coat, and then we're gonna go outside. They would be able to compare relationships. So, for example, they could say that momm coat is big and their coat is little over or under the table. Now, in terms of reading readiness, they might already enjoy listening to stories. Perhaps they can recognize a stop sign if you're reading a book together. They know how to turn the page. They would be able to potentially recite the Alphabet and most letters, know their own name and recognize words that rhyme with cat and bat. Again, these are skills that they need before going into kindergarten. So if you're thinking about a traditional school, and so these are kind of things that you might want to think about developing when they're at a preschool age, they might know the names of shapes. They can make comparisons such as, there is more water in that glass than in my glass. They know the colors in a box of crayons, and they can arrange objects in order. Again, that's relative to their comparison skills. And this is, this is not things they need to know before they start preschool. When their preschool age, these are more things that they would need to know when they're going into kindergarten. So using the bathroom, getting dressed on their own, or it's normal that they might need a little help, say their first name and last name and age. And then often once kids are getting into kindergarten, they might feel a little bit more comfortable in being away from you or their primary caregiver without getting upset. And they can pay attention to a task for around five minutes. Use scissors, use a pencil. These are all fine motor skills. They might be able to put together a puzzle. And then the gross motor skills that are usually developed by kindergart age are running, jumping, hopping on a foot, climbing stairs, bouncing a ball and trying to catch it. And you know, you don't need to be worried if your child doesn't have these skills mastered. But if you are just kind of wondering where your child is at in general, these are the basic academic readiness skills that a child might have before going into kindergarten. Now another, this would be even earlier if your child is ready for preschool. So these are some of the skills that your child might have before they start preschool or before they're turning three or four. So pretty much it's just being potty trained, having a little bit of independence. They don't have to do everything with you. They might be able to solve a problem or do a puzzle on their own. And in also to be ready for preschool, it is good if your child can express their basic needs, especially if they're going to be away from you. Concentration can vary a lot among preschoolers, but essentially it means that your child would be able to pay attention to a book for around 10 minutes at a time, follow directions, and then most of the other skills are just really around their character. Are they emotionally ready? Can they say goodbye without much anxiety? Now I will say that understood it a little more focused on school skills. And part of the great thing about homeschooling is your child doesn't have to say goodbye until they're ready. And we don't necessarily believe that social anxiety that we push kids into, that crying and sadness when school starts is something that's necessarily healthy. So if your child isn't ready to be separated from you, maybe it's a good thing that you're homeschooling them instead. And last but not least, children do need a bunch of energy to attend a typical preschool. So if they are thinking, if you're thinking about their nap time, you know, typically kids who have a routine already are a bit more ready for a preschool program. So those are kind of the skills that are needed for entering preschool. We talked about the skills that are necessary for entering kindergarten. Now, in addition to academic readiness, the other aspect of this we talk about is developmental milestones, and this might be more relevant to you as a homeschooling family. How is your child's brain developing? There's such a huge variety of this in terms of toddlers and preschoolers, that I'm sharing this not for you to be concerned, but to have more of an understanding of where your child is relative to their peers. And you know, what you might want to talk to a doctor or a specialist about if it does seem very behind. So when you're a toddler, it's a time when you're learning a lot more words. You're starting to learn how to get along with others. You're learning skills like walking and running. And so these are just some of the basic things that a child who's a toddler might, you know, master around two years, they can see if you're hurt or upset. So there's a certain empathy. If someone starts to cry, they might pause and take that in, whereas a baby would not really notice as much. If you're in a new situation, let's say you meet someone new or something funny happens on the street, they would look to you and see how you're reacting. That's a social skill. They're becoming a social creature. And then they start engaging with you more in terms of language. So if you're reading a book together and there's a giraffe, a giraffe in it, and you say, can you point to the giraffe? They would be able to potentially identify the giraffe. So they're engaging in the book with you. Again, that's not something a young baby can necessarily do, although some babies can. And you can, you know, for example, you can their nose, their toes. A baby can really just wave high. But a toddler will be able to do more complex gestures in terms of their learning and thinking. This is what we call cognitive milestones. And we talked about how play is so vital for developing these cognitive milestones. They are more able to interact with mechanical things like knobs on a door, buttons, a toy. They can also play with more than one toy at a time. The toddlers can be much more capable of this kind of multitasking than a younger child might be. So you see these have, they're such great developmental milestones and academic readiness in Understood.org and you can explore those more on your own. Three year olds start to have some more milestones than preschoolers. And this is just giving you kind of a sense of the depth and breadth of cognitive milestones and a really different way of looking at how your child is doing rather than just can they read or not. They start asking questions, they recognize the first names of people, they are careful about touching hot objects. They start just being more capable of doing physical tasks like putting on their clothes and putting beads together. And again, every child learns at their own rate. If your child can't do these things, it's not necessarily cause for alarm, but hopefully this might be able to put you a bit at ease. 4 year olds really start developing more into little people at this point. So some of the changes between ages 3 and 4, they start helping around the house more. They might be asking and requesting to play with other children more or not. They start doing pretend play and developing an imagination. You can see this abstract thinking is starting to develop. Typically at this age, we're looking for children to be able to say sentences with four or more words. They might be able to remember some words from a story or, or a song. They can talk about things that happen during the day. I went to grandma and grandpa's house. They also start to be able to identify colors, body parts. They might be able to fill you in on what happens next in a story that they've read before. And then there's also those movement and physical milestones. This is when they might be able to start catching balls. And maybe you're going to be excited here because your 3 year old or 2 year old can already catch a ball. And you get a sense of how children develop at different rates. Some 2 year olds are already stringing together long, complex sentences when they're age 2 and others are at this normal stage of being able to say four or five word sentences. And at this point they do get a lot better with those fine motor skills such as buttoning, holding crayons and pencils. And again, just remember that children do develop at different rates. So this is a great article. I'm going to put it in the description about develop milestones for preschoolers. I know that all of you really want to know about curriculum, and I wasn't trying to hold it out on you, but I just really wanted to bring it home that you don't have to teach your kids these academic skills when they're in preschool or really even when they're in kindergarten. It's up to you to understand where they're at relative to their peers, to their own potential, and really kind of look deep within you at what you feel. They're craving, learning and need to know. But there is absolutely no rush unless it really feels natural and right. So when you go to modulo, we have a whole section on preschool, modulo up all resources preschool. You can find the preschool category here and you can see all of these fantastic resources for preschoolers. We have forest school books, math, lots of math, nature based curriculum, foreign language coding, all of these great choices for your preschooler if your preschooler is really starting to be ready. So first of all, I want to say that if you're thinking about preschool and academic skills, you might want to just start with early math and early reading. So I'm going to walk you through a couple early reading programs. And again, there's some really amazing reading instructors who have told me, do not start your child on reading until they're age 5 or even age 7. And I'm not really in that boat where I feel like you have to wait. But I certainly don't think you have to rush now. If you do notice that your child is starting to learn word sounds and they seem excited about reading and are on board, here are a few resources if you're looking for something free. Teacher Monster is a really fun, incredible free app to learn how to read. Every kid that I've ever tried it with loves it, and it's based on the science of reading. And so if your kid, you know, is already using apps, you know, it's up to you if you really want them to have that much screen time when they're a preschooler. But Teacher Monster is a really great free app to start learning how to read. If your child has dyslexia, a really wonderful app is Nessie. It's designed for children with dyslexia. I recommend kids start when they're around age 6, but you can start in preschool. It's fun, it's adaptive, kids love it. For me it's the best resource that I've seen in terms of teaching kids how to read. That's an app if they're dyslexic. Now teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons is probably the most famous book on how to teach children to read. It's based on the science of reading. It's highly structured. It's explicit phonics based approach. If your kid can sit for 20 minutes a day and listen to a somewhat boring lesson, they will learn to read using this book. The only problem is that it is a little bit dry and tedious. So your kid just has to really love being around you or really committed to learning how to read. It works. It's good. It's just a bit dry. I would say it's probably the most popular reading program at least in modulo. So this is a good option if you don't want a screen based program and you're ready to teach your child how to read. Now I do want to go over some more all in one preschool curriculum, you know so you can. If you're looking for a more comprehensive curriculum that's available to you. The first resource is for people who are willing to put in a little more time curating their children's education. Teachers pay teachers is just an amazing resource. We're going to go up here to grade. Look at preschool and you have all of this incredible curriculum designed by teachers that's for preschoolers. If you're looking for an activity or you want your child to learn a specific subject, you can go here and you can find curriculum in almost anything. Also fun filter freebie free. These are just a ton of amazing free resources. You can see ratings. Looks like 2000 people have used this handwriting practice. There's just a ton of great resources here. The only thing that can be a little bit challenging is just sifting through it all and making sure that your curriculum is does remain kind of sequential and mastery based and isn't just totally random learning a little here, learning a little there. But that's fine in preschool. This is just a really amazing wonderful resource if you want to teach your kids. There's so many cool subjects. Let's holidays. You could do something around Black History month for your preschooler. Look at. Let's look at some of these other great. Yeah, all of these. Spring Hispanic Heritage every. I don't think we can find pre calculus for preschoolers. If you want to learn a language. Let's say you want to teach your kids. I don't even American Sign Language. There are some resources for preschoolers on America. I think we have to deselect some of the other filters. That's good to know if we want to find specific American Sign Language. So let's see here. There we go. So Alphabet sign language printable. I might use that for myself. So that's super useful. And maybe you can even explore this site with your preschooler if they express an interest in learning something in particular. Now, Khan Academy Kids is the best. It's the app version of Khan Academy. It just goes pre K through second. It's all of the skills you need to learn for preschoolers. If state standards for learning are important to you, these are integrated here. The it's an adaptive learning path, which means that the app will change as your child completes activities. So that assures that they're moving forward at their own pace. There's all kinds of very cute little characters that they can choose. Kids can learn independently. Although with preschoolers, if they are using screens, I do recommend that you engage with them as they're learning. That is a really healthy way to develop a active relationship. An active relationship to screen time, not a passive one. To have a parent sitting with you asking questions and kind probably the best approach is to just sit there with your child and if they have problems, don't tell them what to do. Ask them questions. And I always recommend to parents who are teaching preschoolers or any age group to give lots of time after you ask a question. Occasionally you'll ask a question to a preschooler and you'll be met with a really long period of silence. This is a moment where their wheels in their brain are turning around and around and around. They are actually learning how to think. And unfortunately, I think it's because we went to traditional school. Most parents will jump in and say, oh, you know this honey, or try to help instead of just allowing that silence. And you'll be surprised. Maybe the next day or a week from then they might have their aha Moment. But if you push them and you try to jump in and help, you really interfere with that natural learning process and their ability to develop grit and push through problems until they solve them and develop better and better problem solving skills. So one of my big tips for preschoolers is allow the pauses and focus on questions rather than answers. Even if your child says I really want to learn about frogs, consider going to Google together and saying, well, what questions do you have about frogs? Should we type something and see and then see where that question leads instead of feeling like you need to be a dictionary giving answers to everything. Really try to avoid the phrase, oh, you know this. You already know this. It can be almost condescending for a child to hear that and frustrating and produce anxiety. So just remember pauses and time is so, so fruitful for quality learning. Your children needs to, your child needs to feel really safe and that they have the time. A really key component of mastery learning. We talk a lot about mastery learning, which is learning at your own pace, one on one, or independently. And a lot of research has shown that children who are able to learn at their own pace learn so well. In fact, Angela Duckworth did a small cohort where a big, a bunch of children were supposed to learn a certain concept and they all moved forward at their own pace, but they all arrived at mastery around the same time. So having that ability to slow down and speed up and challenge your brain to develop is so, so key. So really, really resist that impulse to rush your child. I know we all have it and we all need to cultivate patience. Okay, so I want to talk about Oak Meadow, which is a little. It says it starts at kindergarten, but if you feel like your child is ready to start sooner, then you can go for it. And this is a good option for families who are looking for more of a structured curriculum. And it is a nature based, project based program, but it's very much aligned with school standards. And you can do the online school or you can do a self paced homeschooling curriculum. One of my absolute favorite apps, brainpop has Brain Pop junior which is available in Spanish and French. And I think it's really one of the best apps out there for a comprehensive adaptive learning app that's totally open and open and go again. I think children are ready for screen time at different ages. I would kind of wait until age 4. I think 3 is really early to be using these apps and you have to really watch your child and see, okay, after they're on the screen, do they feel tired or are they energized? What amount of time is good for them? But this app is just so well designed. It's one of a lot of times with all in one programs, the math isn't that great. But Brain Pop does just a fantastic job with every single subject. So highly, highly recommend Brainpop Jr. If your child is a little bit younger, ages 2 or 3 and you do think, okay, they like these apps, they like videos, they are ready to go. Homer is a wonderful place to start. It has early math, early literacy. I think it's one of the best apps for starting to learn how to read. And it's adaptive. There's art activities. I would just say again, if you're going to do an app with your younger child, engage with them. Either sit there with them while they're doing their app or maybe find a babysitter or an older sibling who can work through it with them and just be present with them. You don't even have to say anything, but it's just about kind of making sure that it remains an active activity where they're thinking and using critical thinking skills and not just being entertained. But Homer is just fantastic. Now if you're not into screens, which, you know, I think for me personally I probably would not choose a screen for a child that young. But so if you would like more of a workbook based approach, I am a huge fan of the Critical Thinking Company. It's designed for gifted children. But really what that means is it's designed to help each child thrive and reach the their full potential. If your child does really well with workbooks, coloring books, that type of activity, Critical Thinking Company is awesome. I mean, I think we can all agree people need more critical thinking skills. In this world where there's just so much information being thrusted on us all the time from every which way. How do you sort through it all? How do you become a critical thinker? This is just a wonderful program. It's, it's won over 200 awards. They've been around forever and one of the oldest homeschooling curriculums. I just really love their language arts and it's, it's a really great way to start preschool. The math is okay again with most full curriculums. I do recommend a math supplement, but this can be a great place to start. Now here are I. You know, it's really hard to choose a favorite, but I love Blossom and Root. It's a nature based curriculum. At an age where kids need so much play and being in nature and arts and hands on activities, I mean you really can't find a better choice than Blossom and Root. It does take a little bit more involvement on the part of the caregiver or the parent. But you can do this with your kids. You can absolutely use it as an activity for a babysitter or, or even a small playgroup. Kids can do this together and there's just a huge load of fun activities. It's a literature based curriculum. So there's also going to recommend books that you can read with your child and don't feel overwhelmed by the number of books. There's just really, it's the option that you can choose which books that you want to read. But I think that, you know, if you are looking for a program that's really going to nurture that play based learning, which I believe is so important for a preschooler to develop cognitively, Blossom and Root is a wonderful program. It's also written by a homeschooling mom, Christina. I've entered her, interviewed her on my podcast and it's just, it's a simply beautiful, beautiful curriculum. Another literature based curriculum that we love and is a really, I would say if your kid just loves listening to podcasts and music and is really auditory and if they absolutely love, love, love when you read them stories, stories is their favorite thing in the world. Torchlight is fantastic. It has those audio components, it has an amazing selection of literature and every parent I know who's used this program just loves it. So this is a really great place to start. And even if you're not really that interested in academics yet and you just want to find good reading material for your preschooler, this is such a, such a wonderful choice. We really love Torchlight for preschoolers. Another fun element of Torchlight is that if you're going on a road trip or maybe you're in your car a lot, you're doing deliveries or whatnot, you can actually listen to some of these lessons in your car or on your road trip. So we call this kind of learning car schooling. And this is written by a teacher. It's beautiful. It's so loved in the homeschooling community. So Torchlight may be my favorite choice. Although again, choose what's right for your child. So just to wrap it up, if your child does love literature, if they love listening to podcasts, if they're really excited about learning, I would just choose Torchlight. If they are more. If they love to play outside, if they're artsy, I think Blossom and Root is just the best choice. If they're more of a kid who's kind of, you know, more intellectual and really obsessed with puzzles and, and perhaps workbooks. And they just, and there's just these kids who love a good workbook, I think that critical thinking company is such a good choice, especially if those critical thinking skills are really key for you. They especially shine in their English language arts program. So it's definitely something to consider. And then if you want to go with super easy open and go adaptive learning app, you just can't go wrong with Homer or Brain Pop. And probably the best Way to start is just to test some of these curriculums out. But you know, if you don't want to do a full preschool curriculum, which is totally unnecessary, you can just start with one of these great reading programs when your child is ready. There's also a lot of fun YouTube videos that your child can watch. We really like number blocks, alpha blocks. Those are so fun for just exposure to early math and early literacy. And you know, there's just a ton of different options. Montessori can be a great choice. So I would just say if you are thinking about homeschooling your preschooler, start by saying, why am I doing this? Do I think that my child is going to learn things better because they learned them earlier? And really question that assumption. Make sure you put a lot of value on unstructured play that is so, so vital for their learning. And last but not least, modeling, your child is going to be watching you all the time and learning from you. So in order to really support their cognitive development, spend as much time with them as you possibly can. You don't have to be talking with them all the time. It can just be sitting together, it could be reading a book, could be talking, could be having them help you around the house, maybe cooking together, but just these real moments of presence are so valuable for your child. And if you do see things you're concerned about, such as anxiety or perfectionism or frustration, I always say parent to parents, the best place to look is yourself. If you're feeling anxiety that might be rubbing off on your child. And for your child to watch you address your own anxiety and focus on your self care is such an amazing lesson to them. It's absolutely extraordinary how much children learn through just copying you at this stage. And you might not be aware of how huge an impact you have on your child. I'll leave you with one recommendation. I did a beautiful interview with Dr. Gordon Neufeld who talks about this attachment, this attachment between a parent and a child that's so strong and so powerful. And when you nurture this attachment that you have with your child through spending quality time with them, you create someone who feels safe and has a secure foundation for learning. And by homeschooling your child, by, by spending that quality time with your child, you're just creating this extraordinary foundation for that natural drive to learn, to thrive. Well, I hope that this has been a helpful start to you in thinking about homeschooling preschoolers. If you have any questions, please drop them in the comments. I respond to every single comment you can also browse the Modulo website for more great homeschooling preschooler tips. We'd love to connect you with other homeschoolers who have preschoolers. My great hope is that this has put you at ease and given you a greater level of comfort that you can let your child play and they're going to be learning so much. But I do look forward to hearing additional thoughts and questions. Every child is so different. Every family is so different. And whatever you're struggling with or you're excited about right now, when it comes to homeschooling your preschoolers, whether that's trying to figure out how to communicate with your child better to work on healthy eating, to learn how to read, to know when to start reading with which curriculum, or simply how to take better care of yourself when you have this huge job of raising a little sweet child or a little mischievous child, as the case may be. In any event, we are here for you at Modulo. Ask us your questions and we will hold your hand till you get to where you need to go. And if you want, you can help us out by subscribing, liking and sharing this video. Have a wonderful day, parents.