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Preschool and Kindergarten Homeschool Tips
Buying Quality Literture Early Insures You Have The Best For Your Baby
Children begin their life learning. From the moment you bring your new baby home from the hospital you have become a homeschool parent. Talking, cuddling, singing and laughing with your baby are teaching the warmth of love, sound of language and the joy of laughter. Homeschool is a lifestyle, not a practice. Once you begin to interact with your newborn infant, you have in fact begun an informal curriculum of homeschooling. As your infant grows and becomes more interactive with the surrounding world, he or she will learn which actions bring about in which reactions. As the primary parent begins to read picture books, sing songs and talk to the infant, the child will respond by making sounds. These basic interactions are going to become the foundation upon which all other learning will be based. Many new parents don’t realize how important each interaction with their newborn infant actually is in the overall development of their child, but every day is a new opportunity to teach and learn together. Now is a great time to purchase the Level A learning package from Sunlight Curriculum®. In the years ahead you will be tempted to purchase different children’s stories, what better way to prepare your child academically than to purchase an entire collection of classic literature handpicked by professional educators that specialize in preschool and kindergarten curriculum planning. These books are classics that you may remember your parents reading to you. Investing in the Fiction, Fairy Tales and Fun for Little Learners, or “Level A” package will provide hours of fun and a great educational head start for your little one.
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The Toddler Years Should Be Filled with Snuggling, Story Time and Music
Toddlers are a challenge for even the most patient and loving parent. Children that are suddenly mobile cannot be held back, as adults we have forgotten how exciting it is to suddenly be able to go wherever our eyes can see. Toddlers are designed for exploration, down to their pudgy little fingertips and toes. It is important to protect this time in their young lives while not limiting their curiosity. As your baby progresses into the toddler era, make sure that your house is “baby safe,” electrical outlets blocked, poisons and cleaners on a high locked cabinet in the garage and all other potentially dangerous items are well out of reach. Before turning your young one loose in the house, get down on all fours and look at things that might fall, trip, crush or otherwise endanger your baby.
Once you have secured the premises, let your toddler have freedom to roam and interact with your home. Be sure that you remain in the room with he or she at all time, watching, talking and training as questions are asked. When you talk and interact with your toddler, get down on the ground, look your child in the eyes and speak clearly. Remember, while very simplistic, this is a homeschool environment for your young learner, model behaviors such as curiosity, imagination and shower your child with love. Whether you decide to homeschool long term or just during the first five years of life, remember you are your child’s first teacher. Now is a great time to visit Sonlight.com to purchase their Fiction, Fairy Tales and Fun for Little Learners. This package is a fun and exciting way to introduce academics without actively teaching a homeschool program. If you begin to implement the basic concepts of literature and music in your toddlers daily life through quality Christian preschool homeschool curriculum you will soon discover that as your child grows, so will his academic abilities and interests.
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Sonlight®. Com Offers Valuable Christian Preschool Curriculm To Introduce to Your Little One
Toddlers and Preschool children love to interact with their environment in a physical manner. The early learning years are intended to be informational, with children gathering information through sensory exploration; movement, touch, sight, smell and taste are very important parts of the toddler homeschool curriculum. The important role as the teacher within the preschool homeschool curriculum is to make sure that the environment is safe, that the child does not put unsafe items into their mouth and that the freedom to explore is filled with many different opportunities for learning. If it is possible, provide multiple learning opportunities for your child to encourage the learning process. Offering water colors, finger-paint, children’s sewing cards, puzzles, stringing beads, blocks and other small motor skill focused toys will allow your child to work on building his small motor skills. Additionally, offering physical activities for large motor skills such as riding toys, balls, outside play equipment and other games will encourage a healthy movement and the building of large motor skills. Toddlers enjoy learning about textures as they begin to explore the world around them, offer opportunities to explore and discuss items that have various textures such as soft, rough, smooth and hard. Provide different opportunities to revisit this concept to enhance comprehension. Use these terms as your child shares different items and investigations with you, increasing his vocabulary and beginning the important process toward academic excitement. As you and your child begin this wonderful learning adventure, remember to offer plenty of free choice time, as this will help your child to use to learn their imagination and will introduce the concept of independent creativity, an important independent life skill. When your toddler begins to slow down, use this time to introduce the Bible and God by reading stories from your Family Time Bible. Young children are fascinated with God and the stories from the Bible, the sooner you introduce these stories, the more comfortable your child will be in their faith. If you do not have the Family Time Bible, it can be purchased online at www.sonlightcurriculum.com.
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Children Actively Learn When They Are Having Fun
Every homeschool mom will explain that meaningful learning is best done when the kids are having fun. Singsong poetry, academic lyrics to children’s songs, educational videos delivered by personified frogs; children love fun and learn best when they are having fun. In the academic circles it is often referred to as “engaging” the learner, finding a hook that can suddenly make a difficult concept crystal clear, a sequence of numbers or shapes can suddenly make sense if either of the patterns begins to sing or dance to a little tune.
As you begin to shop for the Christian preschool or kindergarten homeschool curriculum you want to use in your home, remember that at this age, the true objective is for the child to have fun and spend a bit of time actively engaged with academics. The academics should not be formal but rather colorful picture books, pattern blocks and beads, number cards for game play and other concrete concept tools used for the purpose of introduction and play. As you shop for the perfect curriculum, a wonderful new program that focuses entirely on the academic learning styles and patterns for most preschool and kindergarten learners is the 3 & 4 program available through Sonlight Curriculum®. This remarkable preschool and kindergarten curriculum is filled with quality children’s literature, manipulatives, writing tools and other age appropriate academic products for children ages 3 and 4. Fiction, Fairy Tales and Fun for Little Learners is designed to provide a variety of educational opportunities within a fun format, providing enough curriculum for the school year, but not so much as to overwhelm a young mind. Many of the books and supplies are intended to be enjoyed by parents and children alike.
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As You Do So Will Your Child, How To Create A Lifelong Leaner
Toddlers learn a great deal of their initial information through the observation of mom, dad and siblings. If you want your child to learn to live a peaceful and loving lifestyle, you will need to model those same behaviors. As you begin to adopt the Christian preschool homeschool curriculum, it is important to realize that modeling the behaviors of curiosity, kindness, think aloud and communication will encourage similar behaviors in your young student. Plan daily learning activities that are age appropriate for your child. It is best to keep tasks simple and fun for the very young learner, adjusting and adapting in difficulty as the child grows. Daily story time should become a habit with your child. Babies love picture books and toddlers will request to hear the same story over and over again until you think you might go crazy. Do not despair, with every reading of any story, your child is learning. Read aloud story time, teaches such basic skills such as language sound, vocabulary, color (from the illustrations), how to track print, how to “read” a book, simple small motor skills required for turning pages, which way a book is held properly, each of these is a fundamental foundation skill that will be built upon in the days and years ahead. If you purchased the Level A collection when your child was born, at approximately age 4 it would be a wise investment to purchase the Level B collection. This level is appropriate curriculum for your child from the ages of 4-6 years. As your child continues to grow through the Sonlight Curriculum® programs, your continual introduction of this literacy rich curriculum will create a lifelong reader.
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Invest In Your Child's Academic Future, With Quality Christian Preschool Curriculum From Sonlight Curriculum®
Toddlers learn through visual, auditory and sensory stimulation. Music is a joyous way for toddlers to sing, dance and express pleasure through freedom of movement. Filling your house with songs from children’s CD’s, children’s dance videos and simple dancing for joy in your own home, you will create a friendly and heartwarming learning environment for your child. Children celebrate the little things in life with extreme joy, creating a joyful environment encourages the uplifting attitude in everyone. If your child enjoys comedy and silly play, create a puppet theatre out of a large cardboard box and provide plenty of puppets for your toddler to choose from; have your child perform for you and other family members. Story time and sing-alongs are a fabulous way to expose your toddler to a wide vocabulary and to academic growth. Counting songs, the ABC song, and other popular children’s songs provide fun and excitement to the educational process; children don’t even know that they are learning academic concepts. As your child sings counting songs along with you or a compact disc, they are learning the concepts of numbers, counting forward and often counting backwards as well. If you don’t have any children’s music in your house, purchase the Level A complete preschool curriculum from Sonlight Curriculum®, their musical collection will have your child dancing and singing and immediately learning number concepts, number songs, patterns, the alphabet and other complex concept set to music. Once you began to incorporate the Level B Kindergarten curriculum from Sonlight Curriculum®, your child will already have a clear grasp on the basic concepts and ideas that were presented within the music.
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Sincere Praise Pleases Even The Youngest Learner
When a child is immersed in a safe learning environment that encourages play, the academic benefits are immense. As the teacher/parent within your homeschooling experience, it is important to recognize and verbalize the different positive things that your child accomplishes. There is a saying in educational circles, “Catch Them Doing Something Good” which is very powerful. Teach your child the importance of making the correct choices by recognizing them with sincere praise. Many parents get caught up with the idea of having to reward their child for every correct action that they make; this isn’t always the correct way to recognize your child. If you teach your child the personal satisfaction of having done the right thing, they will grow into adults who do not define success through the positive feedback of others, but as children who can stand strong by their own faith and determination. Independence is a key component in the homeschool environment, teaching your child to be accountable for his or her actions will teach integrity and character. The Bible is a wonderful compass for anyone as they journey through life. Teach your children to seek guidance, counsel, comfort and support in God’s word. If you do not have a children’s Bible, consider purchasing one from Sonlight Curriculum®. Additionally, there are many different verbal and physical signs of support, encouragement and praise that the parents can use when recognizing good behavior. Using these forms of recognition and rewards will go a long way in the success of your young child. As you praise your child, encourage and recognize who they are and what a great job that they are doing, make sure your comments are specific and sincere. Your child will see through a phony compliment immediately.
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Aventrues In Learning Provide Answers For Life
As you begin to implement your preschool homeschool curriculum, it is important that you create an environment that encourages a variety of learning opportunities in one space. For the early learner, everyday is a day of discovery and knowledge acquisition. It is through manual explorations that children learn about the world around them. Toddlers and preschool children grow and change at an alarming rate, ask any mother how quickly time passes as she is watching her first born son leave home for college. Activity or learning centers are a great opportunity for young children to move around a room visiting different learning concepts and still being free to explore without boundaries. The different learning centers need to be simplistic, free roaming and have unlimited access. A young child will move from center to center like a butterfly in a flowerbed. Many ideal learning centers have one general theme or concept that is being introduced through a variety of different mediums placed on different tables or flat surfaces around the room. Creating centers such as dramatic play or housekeeping, a puppet center, music or listening center, a reading cubby or quiet spot, math center, science center and an art center are all equally valuable to have available for your young student. The more available these different concepts are, the more comfortable your child will be in exploring them. Young learners take time to explore a concept, however the exploration takes place in broken time frames throughout the day. Don’t be in a hurry to change your themes too often. Children love to have time to play. If you pay close attention to your child’s interaction with the different centers, you will know immediately when it is time to change. If you are unfamiliar with planning and preparing preschool or kindergarten curriculum, the Christian curriculum company, Sonlight Curriculum® has many valuable resources available; exciting games such as memory, alphabet BINGO, pattern building activities and many other games to entertain and educate your child.
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"Make Believe" is the Childhood Place of Fantasy and Fun, Why Not Go There With Your Child Today
“Make Believe” is the fantasy world of childhood; where crazy things can happen and silly things usually do, where imagination runs wildly in pursuit of reality. Children “become” when they play make believe. Using the basis of make believe in the academic classroom is a wonderful way to encourage play while learning, allowing for the stigma of such subjects as science and math (yuck! How do they learn this so young?) fall to the wayside when dressed up as a crazy math magician or mad scientist. Hang up a picture of Einstein and provide crazy hats and wigs, plastic eye glasses and long white men’s dress shirts make perfect “mad scientist” coats. Discuss with your child what a mad science might look like, then fill it up with plastic beakers, magnifying glasses and other scientific props (often picked up at Goodwill), you can create a science lab for little or no money at all. Science experiments with non-toxic items can make a marvelous display of color and bubbles without cause for worry about a youngster ingesting anything harmful. If your science lab is lacking science experiments, go online, enter the keyword children’s science experiments or some other variation of the phrase, and see what the Internet delivers. As you progress into your make believe science world take the time to discuss scientific concepts and ideas that are being studied in a playful manner so that the mood is not disturbed but introduction to scientific language and concepts are explored through play. As your child imagines other fantasy locations and activities to enhance and extend the academic learning in your homeschool kindergarten, don’t be afraid to follow where the road leads. You never know what you will learn in the land of “Make Believe”.
