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How to make preschool learning stations
When you’re homeschooling preschool a common question is “What do I do with this little guy when I’m working with the other kids?” Now, this is future Ticia 2019 writing an update and my comments on our preschool learning stations, so I’m gonna say I had three kids in preschool at the same time, and occasionally I needed to work with one of them while the other two were working on their own. That is what the preschool learning stations were for in our homeschool preschool.
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Step 1 to creating preschool learning stations: Raid your home
Pretty much everything I used for our preschool learning stations came from our home. So, go through your house and look for learning items:
- puzzles
- stickers
- workbooks
- picture books
- blocks
- learning toys
How I set up our preschool learning stations
In our school room, I set up different learning areas. We had my husband’s desk from childhood, as well as his sister’s desk (because she didn’t want it), an outgrown toddler bed, and kid-sized folding tables, and baby blankets. These were all to create distinct learning areas, so they knew where to go during their “official preschool time”.
I have about five different preschool learning stations set up in our school room at a time, so things are being rotated around fairly often.
Some of our preschool learning stations
This first station is using the Melissa and Doug dress up bears. This was such a popular station I ended up buying more dress up type puzzles.
This alphabet matching puzzle is a great one. I’m linking to a similar puzzle from the one I had, but I like the one I linked to better because it’s wooden and pretty cool. It’s very important not to put out more than a few letters to match up, then you just get frustrated kids. Of course, as they learn it better, you can put out more puzzles at a time.
Stickers are a great fine motor skill, and when the kids were in preschool I’d pick up all the clearance stickers I could.
I also bought a few of the reusable tracing books. The kids love tracing numbers and letters and then erasing them. I also put Kumon workbooks in this station.
Of course, I turned the toddler bed into a reading station. I used a magazine file to hold a small stack of picture books, like one of these book lists, that were rotated out each week. I also used a Tag reader, which my kids loved when they were in preschool.
I sometimes pulled out some Montessori inspired preschool learning stations. This particular one is an empty (washed) Parmesan cheese container they are feeding spaghetti noodle pieces into. Other popular ideas: spooning pom poms into a milk carton (I made it look like a pig); seed sorting. There are entire blogs dedicated to Montessori learning stations. Or just look over on Pinterest for some great fine motor skill activities.
Finally, this particular station is working with Mom. I’ve got some preschool workbooks and some crafts we work on together.
Some more preschool learning stations I don’t have pictures of
- Playdough!- this could be as simple as a can of play dough and some cookie cutters, or it could be some of the fun playdough toy sets, or maybe even some kitchen utensils.
- Puzzles– I bought so many puzzles when the kids were little. SO many puzzles
- Pattern blocks– There are millions of free pattern block patterns on the internet, including some printable pattern block sets. I had some fun foam pattern block sets from when I was in college learning to be a teacher
- Building Blocks or Legos- so many great things to learn from this. You could just make this a building station.
- School toys- special toys they can only play with during school time, Little People or something else. I had a special set of Little People toys for eating out at restaurants during this time.
- Magnet station- but that hasn’t been as popular recently, so I might change that around. I pick up the magnet sets that Target has in their dollar aisle and put those up there along with the LeapFrog Fridge Letters.
More fun preschooling ideas!
Comments
2 responses to “How to make preschool learning stations”
Do your kids argue over the stations? or do you assign them each to a specific station and then rotate? I would like to try stations. We love Kumon workbooks, especially the book of cutting and the amazing mazes.
There’s a little bit of arguing, but it works itself out because there is a little bit of free/enforced rotation. If there looks to be too serious of an argument, as in they’re not going to settle it by themselves, then I step in and assign a station.
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