Marianna turned 2 last month and I decided to start a very relaxed early preschool with her. I have always tried to incorporate age-appropriate educational activities into her day. I figured that it was time to start something slightly more formal once she started sitting down more often for storytime and showing more interest in numbers, letters, colors, etc.
Homeschooling a 2-year-old looks a lot like activities that you are already doing. The differences now are that I have a list of learning goals and tasks for each day, I introduced worksheets and coloring pages, and we do more sit-down activities.
Daily Goals
In addition to playtime, we read from her children’s Bible, listen to a chapter of the audio Bible (the New Testament Douay-Rheims on the Bible App and the Old Testament on YouTube), have storytime, and do some kind of art, lesson, or outing. The lesson can be a letter or number worksheet, a coloring page, flashcards, or playing musical instruments together.
The worksheets are a hit or miss at this age, but coloring pages paired with a related book work much better for her. The other day, we did a dinosaur lesson with the Rex coloring page from Answers in Genesis and I read Little Creation Books: Dinosaurs and Dinosaurs: Stars of the Show to her while she painted.
Worksheets and Curriculum
For the worksheets, all I want is for her to identify the number or letter and then she scribbles on the paper. Scribbling is a very important pre-writing skill so I definitely encourage this! However, because of the scribbling, we are holding off on paid curriculum until she’s older. I really like All Saints Play for paid curriculum. For free curriculum, we have been loving the alphabet and number worksheets from That It May Go Well by Lamp and Light Living and we do one of each a week.
Books and Reading
I cannot stress enough the importance of reading to your little ones! We keep her books in plastic bins that she can easily open by herself. Don’t hesitate to read the same book a million times because it has been shown to improve vocabulary acquisition and understanding.
I want to take an opportunity here to mention that books are a great way to introduce faith and general knowledge concepts. I see them as baby textbooks. The same can apply to educational screen time as baby video lessons, but that could be its own blog post. Our favorite books include titles from TAN Books, the Augustine Insitute, Catholic Sprouts, Catholic Book Publishing, the Essential Heroes, Lovevery, Earthley Wellness, Answers in Genesis, and the Institute for Creation Research. We also love new and classic children’s stories.
Arts and Play
Sometimes I read to her while she is playing since we want her to spend most of her time playing. Most of her toys are Montessori-aligned (mainly from Lovevery and I have a video about some of their play kits here), but not all of them. I set out about 5-10 activities at a time, depending on size and complexity. These toys are a great way for her to work on her critical thinking and fine motor skills. Another great fine motor skill activity is coloring. We spend a lot of time with thick and thin crayons and also recently introduced paint sticks and Crayola Color Wonder markers.
Music is another art to introduce early! You can use items that you already have at home to make music and listen to it throughout the day. We listen to both Latin and Byzantine chant, but we also love all kinds of music.
Life Skills
Along with play, we incorporated dress-up since she started showing a strong interest in dressing herself. This is a preschool readiness skill, as well as toilet learning and handwashing. You can definitely start early with the toilet learning and I mention that in this video.
I hope that this helped other moms with littles! If you have any ideas for me, feel free to share them here!
Thank you! God bless you!
tradcatmaria 