Category: Preschool

Teaching preschool to my four year old has been such a rewarding experience. The amount of growth that happens between 4 years and 5 years is incredible, and to be able to witness that in our homeschool has been such a privilege and joy.

I’ll admit I was terrified at the beginning. This was my first year to homeschool preschool because my oldest daughter completed pre-k at a school while I was still teaching.

We were basically starting from scratch. When my second daughter was three, we briefly practiced letters, but they didn’t stick. She knew how to write her name and could recognize the letters in it, and that’s about it. I knew the alphabet would need to be a focus of ours, so that was my goal. I would teach her to recognize her letters, write them, and learn their sounds.

This post contains affiliate links. If you follow one of my links, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my blog!

My daughter’s personality is not the type to sit at the table for a long period of time to complete something.

As a result, I didn’t want to buy a ton of workbooks. I planned to encourage a lot of play – imaginative and learning based. I also wanted to go at her pace while still challenging her to put an effort into completing a little something on paper each day.

In this post, I’ll be explaining what we started with at the beginning of our preschool (4 years) and how it changed throughout our homeschool year.

We started with Learning Without Tears for writing.

I felt like this was a great choice for us because it starts off very easy with the first book. The workbook is called My First School Book.

There are no lines or boxes to stay in. It’s simple tracing of a shaded letter. The book begins with color review and then introduces one letter at a time. The letters are not introduced in ABC order. The book also introduces writing numbers. I did not purchase any teachers guide or any of the extra supplies, and we completed one page per day.

Since the lessons were so short, this was the perfect way to start challenging my daughter to complete something in a workbook. It took very little time and she felt successful and confident.

I wish I would’ve bought the set that comes with My First School Book plus My First Lowercase Book.

It’s only a couple dollars more, and you can not buy that specific lowercase book separately. So, when we finished My First School Book we had to move on to the workbook called Kick Start Kindergarten.

The Kick Start Kindergarten workbook begins with capital letters. This time the letters must be written inside of a shaded box. This made me nervous at first, because I thought it would be frustrating for my daughter. However, once we practiced a few times, she understood.

Once the capital letters are reviewed, the book moves into writing lowercase letters. These are learned on the two lines that the Learning Without Tears program is known for.

I enjoy that the lessons are short and so does my active daughter. I also like how the lessons in the workbook include pictures and words that start with the letter practiced. This allows me to introduce and practice letter sounds as we learn to write them.

I haven’t decided if I’ll continue with Learning Without Tears for Kindergarten next year. I love their program starting out, but I am definitely a fan of the old fashioned three lines. I’ll always do what’s best for my daughter, so I’ll need to test that style out with her first. I’m also not a fan of the Learning Without Tears cursive style, which I know is a few years from now, but I still like to think ahead as we start the handwriting process.

I purchased one other workbook from Singapore Math for our preschool year.

The book is actually called Essential Math Kindergarten and there are two books in the set. I was able to purchase Book A on its own from our local homeschool store. I’m glad I only bought the first one, because we did not make it very far into this book before stopping.

Although the book states “kindergarten”, it’s actually perfect for Pre-K4. It starts off very simple and moves slowly. I bought it because it came highly recommended by an experienced homeschool mom. She had used it for multiple children at age 4 and loved it. We did not feel the same in our house.

To be frank, the book is boring.

There is no color on the page. My daughter never wanted to sit and color the pictures. Some days it took us 4 seconds to complete a page, and I felt like saying…”That’s it?”

At the bottom of each workbook page, there are activities that you can do with your child to help practice the concept, but we never really looked at that.

I just felt like the book was a waste of time. The focus was on early math skills: shapes, counting, patterns…We can experience so much more learning with a bucket of play dough or a puzzle and have a lot more fun! We made it about half way through Book A and stopped. At this point, I knew I wanted a new plan for practicing math skills consistently.

My goal for the preschool year was to teach the alphabet and the letter sounds.

I’ll be honest, after a couple months into the year, it was not going well. The handwriting pages gave us some review, but I was having a hard time being consistent. My daughter needed repetition and I wasn’t finding it anywhere. Scratch that – I always got lost in the internet world trying to find the perfect solution.

At this point in our year, I knew what I needed: daily, consistent alphabet practice + preschool early math skills.

Enter the Alphabet Workbook…

This is the curriculum that changed our school days. The Alphabet Workbook allowed us to practice the math skills we needed (shapes, numbers, counting, etc…) while also learning the letters each day of the week.

It’s set up to be engaging, fun, and consistent. It’s the perfect resource for learning a letter per week. Every letter has four completely different pages of activities to practice recognizing, tracing, and writing. Coloring, dice games, graphing, cutting, ten frames, dot markers…this is just a glimpse into the variety!

The activities are fun for my daughter and flexible for her learning style.

It can all be completed at my daughter’s pace. If she seems really focused and eager to work, I can encourage her to complete the “challenge” listed at the bottom of many of the pages.

If she’s having a rough day and not willing to focus as much, we can take it slow and complete as much as we can on the page.

When we started using the Alphabet Workbook, my daughter was finally able to recognize and remember her letters.

When our year started, she only knew the letters of her name (most days). Once we had more consistency by using the Alphabet Workbook, my daughter was finally remembering her letters! It was such a relief! She was even recalling the letter sounds thanks to the pictures and words included in the workbook.

We are almost finished with the workbook at the time I write this. Now that it is in our routine, she is even starting to do many pages independently. She recognizes the patterns of the pages and completes some on her own. It’s been amazing and such a joy to watch her grow and mature like this during the year.

The confidence I gained from her success and the consistency of the workbook gave me so much peace in planning our homeschool.

Many people tell you that when you homeschool preschool all you need is PLAY. Ok…I support this thought. Play is so important for young children and we do a lot of it at our house, but hear me out…

As the mother (and teacher!) of my children, I do tend to question if I am doing enough. Maybe you’ve experienced those same feelings.

This is why I love the Alphabet Workbook so much. It is not rigorous. It is fun! It’s engaging and playful and colorful and easy to complete. It helps my brain and my sanity to know that she has completed something. I do a lot less questioning of myself knowing she has done this one small task.

The fact that it actually works helps too!

So, as a recap the only books I am using solely for my preschooler now are Learning Without Tears Kick Start to Kindergarten and the Alphabet Workbook.

Now that she knows her alphabet and sounds, she has shown an interest in reading!

We purchased ABC, See, Hear, Do and it’s absolutely wonderful! The book is set up to learn the sound of a letter along with a physical action. It’s colorful, adorable, and easy to follow!. The day we got it, she read her first word within minutes. I was shocked! Completing the book means reading 55 words – such a fun accomplishment for a little one!

Once she starting blending sounds together, I knew she was ready to start reading a little more. Honestly, I don’t think I was ready…. (ha!) So, we are going the slow route. I purchased the first set of the Bob Books to start reading with her. We do this VERY slowly. I help her get through a book and we read it over and over throughout the week. She is gaining confidence but also practicing reading skills.

I am not expecting her to learn to read this year, but she shows a ton of interest and is ready to start so we are having fun with it. I try to have her read with me a few times a week. Since she is still so young I do not push it. If she starts to complain, I simply say, “Let’s try this again a different day!”

Everything else that we complete in our school day involves all of my children.

I’ll explain these briefly if you are interested, but I won’t go into too much detail as I only expect my preschooler to really “tag along” for these things.

We are in a Classical Conversations Community.

We attend Community Day once a week for half a day. Each day of the week we spend about 20-30 minutes practicing memory work that covers Math, Science, History, Latin, English, Geography, and the Timeline. We do a lot of singing for this. At age 4, it’s laid back and fun.

You can read more about how we add it to our day HERE. If you are considering joining Classical Conversations and have some questions, check out THIS post.

We love reading novels together and enjoyed completing The Read Aloud Experience this year.

Sitting together with my children and reading a good book is my favorite thing to do. I love it even more when we can do simple activities that relate to that book, even if it’s a small discussion, simple craft, or a recipe to follow!

The Read Aloud Experience is a fully planned, FREE novel unit that provides all of the activities that go along with the story. We had so much fun doing these units and it gave us something to look forward to each day! We read The Secret Garden and Mrs. Piggle Wiggle.

The Secret Garden is absolutely wonderful if you have older children as well. Mrs. Piggle Wiggle is hysterical and fun for all ages! Check out the FREE Read Aloud Experience for each book: The Secret Garden and Mrs. Piggle Wiggle.

Our family devotional allowed us to add a little extra science into our day.

I chose “Indescribable: 100 Devotions About God and Science” for our daily devotion. At the beginning of the year (before I had a baby and before Classical Conversations began) I used our library to gather books related to the science topic in the devotional. It was so fun and such an easy way to add science lessons in at this age.

This devotional is great! It is easy to read and interesting to both my children and me. Every devotion has a scripture verse, a biblical lesson, and a science lesson that relates. With a little planning ahead and a library card, I was easily able to add science into our week.

Some of the other devotionals we completed and enjoyed were seasonal. These included Truth in the Tinsel at Christmas and Resurrection Eggs for Easter.

The last thing I want to share is the digital resources that have been the most helpful for us this year.

These were specifically created for my four year old to help us practice what we are learning. You can see all of these preschool resources in my shop. Be sure to go ahead download the free ones: Early Addition Math Mat and Capital Letters: Trace and Find.

Our favorite resource that we use every week alongside the Alphabet Workbook is the Alphabet Play Dough Mats. It’s so much more than just making a letter out of play dough. These mats allow my daughter to write, trace, and find the letter in a group. Now, there’s even a set of Lowercase Play Dough Mats that we plan to use for Kindergarten!

Many of the things we complete in our homeschool day involve our whole family.

I love that so much about homeschool. We read together, play together, and learn together. Our big success this year was learning our letters and their sounds. We are excited to take these skills into our Kindergarten year! I can’t believe how fast the time is going with these little ones – cherish every moment!

Have you used any of the curricula mentioned above? Tell me about it in the comments. Or, share something you love for preschool!

When it came time for me to teach the alphabet to my second child, I ran into a few obstacles. I was new to the alphabet game, and I was working with a completely different personality. I really enjoyed trying new things to help her succeed, and I was also learning in the process!

We’ve had our ups and downs as we learn the alphabet together, but I definitely have my list of favorite tools that have worked for us. I hope by sharing them, it may give you some ideas to try at home. After a lot of trial and error, I was even able to create an alphabet curriculum that has worked wonders. I will share that in this post, as well.

I listed these tools in time order. We started at age three with a more playful approach (#1-6). I knew at that time she wasn’t ready for something intense. We gradually added a few different tools at age four that really helped her to succeed.

This post contains affiliate links. If you follow one of my links I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my blog!

1. Alphabet Spiral Notebook

When Joanna was three, I was pretty laid back for a couple of reasons. One, I didn’t think it was necessary to get super serious at three. Two, she didn’t sit very long! I didn’t want to push it, so we tried something I called the Alphabet Notebook.

Each week, we went through a letter of the alphabet. The first day, we crafted the letter out of construction paper into a cute animal or object. Next, we glued it into a spiral notebook. The following days of the week, we would use the next page or two in the notebook for writing practice. Sometimes I would glue different letter worksheets in there as well.

The one pictured is handwriting practice pages from Super God Not Super Mom on Teachers Pay Teachers. We didn’t use it all year, but it was a cute resource, and it’s great for early handwriting skills. (It’s a lot more expensive than I remember…I’m wondering if the cost went up.)

This was great for us. We really had the freedom to do whatever we wanted with it. It was low-key, easy to plan, and it’s so cute I can’t get rid of it!

My oldest actually did it with us for Kindergarten, and she really enjoyed it as well! If you follow me on Instagram, I have a whole Alphabet highlight where I show all of these pages. @simply.learning.together.

I hope to one day put together a blog post of my favorite, EASY alphabet crafts. We found almost all of them on Pinterest!

2. Sensory Learning

Sensory learning is great as it is, but my Joanna loves it! She wants to touch everything. So, I made sure to add in some sensory play with letters. Play-doh was a huge hit and a tool we used often (I’ll get to that more below). We also love shaving cream. She has so much fun with it. I always let her play in it for a bit and then we practice writing her name and letters.

I did try a salt/sugar tray once for her to make letters, but I spent most of the time trying to get her not to eat it!

3. Cardboard Letters

This one sounds odd, but it was a huge success for learning her name. At the beginning of the year, I cut out BIG cardboard letters for the letters of her name. We spent a couple days painting them and decorating them. Then, I would just play games with the letters.

We would lay them out on the floor and trace them with our finger. We practiced calling out the letter as if they were a flash card. Our favorite was a scavenger hunt where I’d hide the letters and she’d find them and spell out her whole name. These were so fun!

This could definitely be a great tool to teach the alphabet at home, as well. I’d suggest cutting as you learn them so you’re not having to cut 26 cardboard letters at once. Don’t forget to make them fun and decorate! You could display them in a play room/homeschool space…they’re really so cute! And the best part – FREE. She loved these and they’re so easy to pull out and play with.

4. Books

Books are always helpful, but I will say that some books don’t work the same for each of my children. My oldest’s favorite was “The Sleepy Little Alphabet”. She was recognizing the letters at a very young age in this book. It has a catchy rhyme to it and a cute story.

We purchased “A is for Apple” this year, and I loved how it encourages the child to touch the letter and trace. I knew that would be so helpful for Joanna.

There are so many alphabet books out there, but my all time favorites are the “A to Z Animal Antics”. There’s one book for every letter. We found most of them at our library, but I know you can find them online as well. The books go beyond just learning a letter. It tells a story using tons of words that start with that letter, so the sound is repeated over and over. At the end of the book there’s even enrichment activities to take learning even further. These books are fun, well written, and helpful when it comes to learning about the alphabet.

5. Magnetic Letters

I love having magnetic letters to teach the alphabet. We’ve practiced finding our name or finding a specific letter. Now that we are working on lowercase, we can match the capital to the lowercase. You really can do so much with these. The set that I’ve linked is just like the one we have, but it must be updated. This version actually comes with an e-book series that has 40 different activities you can do with your child!

I know it’s so fun for my girls to be able to pick up the letters, touch them, and move them around. Their favorite game is to put random letters in a line and ask me to “read” it. The words make absolutely no sense, but they sure do giggle – and I’d say we are getting good practice with letter sounds!

6. Play-Dough Mats

This falls in the sensory category, but we had our own special journey with play-dough that I wanted to share. I love using play dough to learn. It was especially helpful for Joanna because she loves sensory play. I knew play-dough mats existed, but I didn’t really want to pay the price. I also felt like everything I saw was just the letter on a piece of paper, maybe with a cute picture.

I didn’t think it was necessary to have to pay for that, so when she was three I would just write a big bubble letter on a piece of paper and slip it into a sheet protector. That was our play-dough mat, and it was perfect! No printing, no cutting…easy. If you are just starting out learning letters, I highly suggest this easy, free method!

When Joanna turned four, I needed more of a challenge. I started hunting around to find play-dough mats but was unhappy with the result. To me, they weren’t worth the money. Most of them had the letter and maybe a tracing prompt or two. I wanted more practice for her. I wanted something that I could take out and work with her one on one each week. Building one letter on a mat didn’t help me very much. So, I created my very first resource – Write and Play Alphabet Mats.

Joanna LOVED them. She could make the letters, trace them, write them, color them, find them…it was so much exposure to one letter in multiple ways. The best part, they’re designed so that your child can choose to write or play! We switch it up all the time. Sometimes she does a mix of both.

These mats were just what we needed to add a little fun, and it really helped me see where some gaps were. Suddenly, I started realizing she could recognize the letter easily, but she still struggled to write them…so I worked on that more. By having multiple skills on one page, I could easily assess her progress.

The mats are all set up the same, so eventually she was able to complete them independently. We still use these today, and they have been incredibly helpful for my daughter!

7. Alphabet Workbook – Preschool Alphabet Curriculum

After a few weeks of using the alphabet play dough mats, I started noticing that repetition was really helpful, but we obviously couldn’t do the same play dough mat every day!

This led me to create the Alphabet Workbook. I wanted consistent, repetitive letter practice. We were working on a specific letter every week, and I wanted her to have practice with that letter each day. The thing is… I didn’t want to have to go and search for multiple worksheets each week. Plus, most of them looked the same! I wanted variety.

The Alphabet Workbook is set up to do just that. There are four practice pages for every letter. Each page has different activities. There’s dot sticker/dot marker activities, dice games, ten frame practice, an optional painting activity, and color by number. That’s just a few of them listed. The focus is around one letter while so many other preschool skills are being practiced: shapes, counting, numbers, patterns, graphing, and more!

I have seen tremendous improvement with my daughter after using this Alphabet Workbook. She is finally starting to recognize her letters. She is learning the letter sounds. She can write almost the entire alphabet now. Most importantly, she is enjoying it all in the process! She has fun learning and doesn’t complain about completing a page in this book.

8. Puzzles

I love educational puzzles. It’s kind of like good books to me. I could buy so many, because I think they’re incredibly useful and so helpful! We have a couple of giant alphabet puzzles – the ones that are about 10 feet long (Click here to see one we have). These are great to practice with and I’ll explain how we’ve done it in the past.

You may have to adjust this depending on your child, but it should give you a good starting point of how to play. I organize about 10-15 letters and line them up nice so they are easy to read. I don’t want them upside down, and I don’t want it to be overwhelming by looking at the whole set of pieces.

Next, I ask her to find the letter, and I give hints as needed. (It’s on this side…it’s at the top) Once she chooses the correct letter, we practice writing it on a mini dry erase board. I make her dotted lines to trace if she needs it.

Then we add the piece to it’s correct place in the puzzle and move to the next letter doing the same thing.

Remember, go at the pace of your child. My oldest would’ve loved to play this game multiple times in a row. The first time I played with my second daughter, she made it through about half the letters, and then I could tell we needed to wrap it up. So, I cut out the writing portion, gave her a few more hints, and we finished. The more we played, the more I could challenge her to go a little bit further. Every child is different.

9. ABC, See Hear Do

I can not say enough good things about these books. We have the “Learn to Read 55 Words” book, and all of my children love it. My oldest already knows how to read and she even thinks it’s fun. My 2 year old can actually turn the pages and “read” the sounds. When my 4 year old opened the book for the first time, I helped her read through the first few sounds. That same sitting, she read her very first word – instantly! The book is incredible. Worth. Every. Penny!

Now, I use it as a supplement as we practice letter sounds. The book actually encourages you to introduce it before you learn letters, but we were past that by the time I found it. As we practice letters, I pull it out to practice the sounds and motions. The movements stick and really help my preschooler to remember the letter sounds!

There is a whole set of books that advance as you work through, including blended beginning sounds, blended ending sounds, sight words, long vowels, and more! We do not own them all yet, but I know many will become part of our collection soon once we master all of the letter sounds. You can learn even more about their program and products by visiting their website.

10. Screens – Movies/Apps

I don’t really like to have the TV on much, but I’ll be completely honest, having it on at certain times during the school day helps me get certain things accomplished easier. While I make lunch or while I work with my oldest, I will try to pick something educational or related to a topic we are studying.

There are some great alphabet shows that we’ve watched and probably more for us to discover. So far we have loved Leap Frog Letter Factory and Alphablocks (on Netflix) as well as Super Why (Free on PBS). Catchy songs and fun characters make learning letters fun and easy to remember.

Leap Frog Letter Factory focuses on the letter and its sound. Alphablocks is all lowercase and the shows are very short (10-15 minutes). Super Why covers letters, sounds, spelling, and early reading skills.

I also downloaded a free alphabet app on my phone. It’s called ABC Alphabet Phonics. The point of the game is to select the letter that is said out loud. It’s very basic and it costs nothing. It was playing this game that I realized my preschooler could identify a letter when it was said out loud, but struggled to call out the name of the letter when asked. So, although it’s not the fanciest game on the planet, it really helped me to easily assess her knowledge of letters. Make sure to play with the settings a bit. You can change it to lowercase, sounds, and add helpful pictures.

Every Child Will Learn At A Unique Pace

As I mentioned before, my first two children learn very differently, and I’m sure when my younger two are ready, I’ll have new ways that work better for them. I don’t believe there is ONE right way to teach the alphabet. What works for me, may not work as well for you. However, I do believe it’s important to try new things to discover that special tool that helps your child grow.

So, what are your favorite tools to teach the alphabet? Have you seen success using something that’s not listed above? I’d love for you to comment and share with me what has worked in your home. I’ll be saving ideas for my next two littles as they get older!