Preschool is a very peer-driven experience for many parents. The circle you happen to socialize with will pressure you to put your child in the best private preschool around, be relieved to drop them off at the public preschool offered through the local public school district, or keep them home and home school them for preschool.
To be fair, many parents do not have the financial ability to make much of a choice here, and either keep them home or send them to public preschool. It is time, though, for parents to step out of that peer-driven society and decide what is best for the child. For some children, this means going to preschool outside of the home.
Choosing to Homeschool for Preschool
If you chose to homeschool your child for preschool, I challenge you to first research all the alternatives available to your child. Not being ready for your child to grow up is a bad reason for keeping her home and may in fact do more damage than good in a society where kindergarteners have all been to preschool. It is important to allow a child the chance to be a kid, but learning does not have to strip the childhood away from a child.
Now that you are sure you still want to home school your child for preschool for the sake of learning, you need to choose what preschool you would pay to send your child to. This sounds counter-intuitive but let me explain.
I am currently homeschooling my preschooler – we are enjoying our second year of learning at home with one more year of preschool to go before we start kindergarten. Last year I did everything I assumed was important. We learned a letter at a time, doing all sorts of arts, counting and phonics-type lessons surrounding each letter. My daughter loved it and would ask to do school each day. I figured that was proof enough that I was doing it right.
In putting together a project for myself, I went back to pull out some work samples from the preschool portfolio I had pieced together the previous year. I was ashamed that I could not find any descent work samples that showed creativity and the opportunity for my daughter to explore learning outside of the “structure” of worksheets.
Teach Preschool How You Would Pay Someone to Do It
I would be willing to pay for Montessori style preschool if I had to choose, and yet I realized that I was not doing that at home. So I changed my methods of homeschooling. If you want to home school your child for preschool, consider first how you would pay someone to do it – not just how you think it should be done. Find inspiration among the many preschool blogs online. Find inspiration through interest.
Never be satisfied with an activity if you feel like you have to control the outcome in order to make it into something that your child is not. In the end, you won’t like the finished activity a year later when looking for a work sample.
Don’t forget that preschool is a chance to introduce a child to the world she lives in – a chance to love learning and to become interested in so many things. Take advantage of her energy and interest. Let her get messy, teach responsibility and character, and your portfolio will be filled with creativity and learning.
Jennifer Wagaman - Jennifer is a mother of 2 and has both public, private and administrative experience in the education field.
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