 Hey you guys, my name is Brittany and welcome back to my YouTube channel. You guys, in today's video, I am going to share all of my favorite preschool resources. So you guys, my preschool resource video is one of my top videos here on my channel and I wanted to make an updated version of all of my tried and true favorite preschool resources that I have used in my home school over the past years. If any of you guys are new here to my channel, again, my name is Brittany. I'm a homeschooling mom to three girls ages 11, 5, and 3, and I'm in my third year of home school. So you guys, I'm so excited to share with you all of my favorite preschool and resources. I have put all of my resources in categories. So it'll be easy for you to figure out all of the different tools and manipulatives that I use and teach in specific skills. So I have broken it down into reading and literacy, logic and puzzles, math, letter, letter stands, phonemic awareness, and then I'm going to wrap it up by sharing with you guys my favorite math and my favorite preschooling curriculums. Okay, you guys, before we get into all of the resources that I'm going to share with you, I want to give a special thanks to knowledge crates for sponsoring today's video. So you guys, I have family made my decision as to what I am going to be using like my extras, my science, my STEM for my youngest two in our homeschool the upcoming year and it's going to be knowledge crates, you guys. So I'm going to flip you guys around and we're going to check out everything that is inside this spring knowledge crate box. Okay, you guys, this is actually my knowledge crate. This is my preschool crate. This is the spring crate. Right now the spring crates are sold out, but you can go ahead and pre-order the summer crate. This is the big quarterly crates that you get that has 20 activities, five preschooling books, and everything you need for that specific season. So this is how your knowledge crate box will look when you first get it. And you have a cute little thank you note and you guys, everything is in here, all of your 20 activities, your five preschooling books, everything you need. So here is my activity guide for my spring crate, my preschool one. Here is all of the books that comes with this crate. You guys, this is so cute. I cannot wait to get started with this spring crate with my kids. So each crate, like I said, has a theme to it. This is the spring crate. And then it has all of the things that I need to do, all of the activities that are pre-written in here for me. It's no guessing. It's no thinking. Everything is all laid out perfectly for me to do these activities with my young kiddos. This particular crate is the preschool crate, which is for ages three to five, and they do have a school age crate, which goes for like the older kids and my daughter, they're the fall school age crate, and she absolutely loved it. So I'm so excited to continue using knowledge crates throughout this whole homeschooling year for my younger kiddos. And I know they're going to be so excited with all the books and the activities that we get up to in our homeschooling year. Okay, you guys, the first category that I'm going to go over is reading and literacy. And my favorite book that I use for pre-reading and literacy definitely has to go to core knowledge is what your preschooler needs to know. This cute little jam packed book is full of literature, songs, music, history, science, everything that your preschooler needs to know before entering into kindergarten. And I really, really love this resource. It is so handy to have downstairs. My kiddos love when I go over the songs and the poetry. And this book right here, if I would recommend anything to you guys starting off preschool, this is a great resource to have. Another great resource to have is this book right here from Mother Goose. My speech therapist actually gave this to me for my middle daughter, Leah, who was in speech therapy. And this just goes over different poetry and rhyming. And it's so funny how rhyming definitely is a great skill for your kiddos to know in preschool. And this is just a fun book that I use in teaching my daughter different rhymes and nursery rhymes and things like that. She definitely loved this one. And it actually helped out with her speech. So these are my top two right here books that I definitely recommend you have in your home school when teaching your preschooler. Now some of my favorite like nursery rhyme books that actually help with my daughter's speech and speech therapy as far as like literacy and things like that was definitely these type of books. And as you can see, they definitely have a lot of love on them. It's like these books right here, Rain Rain Go Away, Five Little Monkeys, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, a lot of the Eric Carle books. And here goes another one of our favorites, I'm a Dirty Dinosaur. Any type of books with like rhyme and repetition are great for the early preschooling years, especially for me in my case with my daughter with a speech delay, having her go over these books with these rhyme and repetitions actually helped her with her speech a lot. So these are just a few of my favorite preschooling books. However, my top two resources that I loved in this category reading and literacy is Mother Goose. And what your preschooler needs to know. Okay, you guys, my next category as far as my preschool and resources has to be fine motor skills. So in starting your kiddos off with teaching them those fine motor skills, Play-Doh is such a cheap and inexpensive way for you guys to get those hand muscles going as far as getting them prepared for writing. So I definitely love using Play-Doh in my home school. I start using Play-Doh as soon as the kids stop putting things in their mouth. So as soon as I know that I can leave them without them eating it, we are good to go and start in Play-Doh. So like again, you can grab Play-Doh, it doesn't even have to be the name brand and just get your kiddos going as far as working those hand muscles. After you start to notice that their hand muscles have strengthened, I will go ahead and have the kiddos learn how to color in the lines. And these are just coloring books that I get from the Dollar Tree. And I just have my kiddos practice coloring in the line. This is how my five year old is coloring right now. And she's doing an excellent job. And I definitely just have them just use their crayons and just color every single morning. And as we are coloring, I sing a cute little song side to side and back to back, we stay in the lines. That's actually one of JDA songs. And it definitely works in teaching the kiddos their fine motor skills and how to color within the lines. Some of the coloring crayons that I love to use are these just big jumbo crayola crayons. You guys, I have tried so many crayons, they all break. But at the end of the day, these are just my favorite. And this is just a precursor to fine motor skills that will get your kiddos going as far as just getting that pencil grip. And this is just an easy way to do fine motor skills. Without really having to think about it, you can just add these type of things within your daily day, especially when working with older kiddos in your home school. These are easy things for you to pull out. And right now, my three year old, you guys, she's coloring in the lines as well right now, just because I always have crayons, Play-Doh, everything just ready and accessible for them to work on those pre and those fine motor skills. Now, once the kiddos get past this phase where they're doing really, really great with their pencil grip, I will go ahead and start doing cutting and pasting skills. These are my absolute favorite cutting and pasting books. And as you guys can see, this is my middle daughter, Leia. She has really gotten good with the scissors skills. And I really love this one because they're cutting and pasting cutting variety of shapes. And she definitely loved using this one. Here goes another one of the Kuman cutting books, first cutting books. And this is a skill that I definitely will work on, especially when they have passed the phase of being able to hold a pencil, holding tools and things like that, then we will go into cutting skills. Okay, you guys, my next category and my preschool and resources is puzzles and logic. So when starting off the kiddos with puzzles, I definitely will start them off with these big chunky puzzles from Melissa and Doug. These are great Christmas gifts to add for your kiddos because you can get long lasting wear out of these. You can go over shapes, colors. You can do a lot of things with these puzzles right here from Melissa and Doug. As they graduate from these bigger chunky puzzles, I will graduate my kiddos to these puzzles right here. It's called match it. I actually picked these ones up from my local grocery store, Aldi's. And these are just three part animal, three part animal puzzles that they go together really, really easily, especially for those little kiddos who are still working on their fine motor skills. This is like the second phase that I will go to as far as their puzzles and logic. Right now, my middle daughter, Leia, who just turned five, she has just graduated into doing these bigger 12 to 24 piece puzzles. You guys, these are great Christmas gifts to get to give for your kids because logic and puzzles really helps the kids with focusing, concentration, critical thinking. These are great things to do to keep your little kids' hands busy, especially when you are working with an older kiddo. You can definitely set them up pretty easily with a puzzle. Another one of my favorite puzzles that Leia is actually using right now, my middle daughter, are these logic puzzles right here. This one is again from Melissa and Doug. And she got this as a Christmas gift from one of my family members. And these are great puzzles in teaching the kiddos about logic, critical thinking. And this is like the last, these are like the last phases that your kiddos will go as far as like their puzzle and logic skills. So they definitely will start off with something easy and then they will graduate to like these geo cubes and these bigger puzzles that my middle daughter Leia is using right now. Okay, you guys, now we are into letter and letter recognition. So you guys, you can definitely use flashcards, puzzles, whatever you would like to use to introduce the letters to your kiddos at a preschool level. This is definitely my tried and true as far as teaching them letters. As you can see, my youngest one definitely ate the cube because we use this so many times in a variety of different activities. Some of the activities that I would do in teaching them letters would be to have a picture of something zebra zebra and then have them match it, especially as they already were able to recognize some of their letters. So these are just some of the different ways that I will teach a letter recognition, even the letter sounds, we will kind of go over each of the sounds by using the puzzle. So I will say, can you pass me a and then they will pass me the puzzle a. So even before my middle daughter Leia when she was in speech therapy and teaching her letter sounds to help her with her speech, she wasn't saying the letter sounds to me. I was just saying them to her like Leia passed me and she would pass me like the letter C before she actually was saying it. So these were definitely fun ways in teaching a letter, letter recognition, letter sounds to my middle daughter Leia and my youngest one, Alana. She just learned it inadvertently from seeing me working with Leia so much using just this simple cheapy puzzle. And again, I believe we got this from Christmas from one of our family members. As the kiddos got more fluent in learning and matching like their letters, their uppercase to their lowercase letters, using different flashcards, I will pull out my little cute these are these little what pin clips. I forgot what they're called close clips. I actually purchased these from the section the what is it the target five and below section during back to school time. They always have these cute little clip letters. And these are really, really good for teaching the kids fine motor skills. And what I will have my kiddos do is match the letter with whatever the picture is. So this is yarn, yarn, and then they will match it with a Y. And then again, they can match it as far as the recognition to see if they got it right. So these are just fun ways that I went over letters, letter sounds, letter recognitions, uppercase and lowercases, just by using these two or these three things, which is my clips, my letter flashcards, and also my puzzle. So these were the simple ways that I taught letter recognitions, uppercase lowercases and letter sounds. Now that my middle daughter is actually getting ready to read, I went ahead and I laminated my all about reading level one, all of the letter sound cards. So we are actually working on our letter sound cards by using these right now. So she can kind of get used to using the flashcards before we get into the program. So this is kind of like what I'm using right now as far as reviewing over those letter sounds before we get into all about reading level one with my middle daughter. And as far as my youngest daughter, Alana, we have already been doing fun activities like this as far as her letter sounds, letter recognition, and matching a picture to what the beginning sound of the picture is. Okay, if you guys are not new here to my channel, you already know how much I love using these counting bears with all of my kiddos and teaching them like pre skills, like as far as like their colors, I would use these printables from totschooling.net. I laminated these, you guys. And these have definitely got some good wear. So we would go over all of our colors as far as like pre math skills. These counting bears actually got them from Amazon and they came in a cute little bag with all of the color cups. But I went ahead and I put it in these mesh bags because they're easier to store. But these are just fun, easy pre math skills, pre color skills that you can do with your kiddos. And again, I definitely have used this several times with all of my kiddos and teaching them all of their colors, early counting, early pattern skills. So these were just fun ways for me to do those pre math skills without actually using a math curriculum just to kind of like get them started shapes and not shapes get them started as far as like colors, early counting patterns. Now you guys, when my middle daughter, she turned four, I went ahead and started preschool math at home with her by Kate Snow. And you guys, I definitely love this program. I cannot wait to start it off with my youngest daughter, Alana, who's three. So you guys, this is just a great and simple guide in teaching your kids all the fundamentals and things they need to know as far as math and really laying that foundation down for them. You definitely need some type of like toys, manipulative, something to use. I have a lot of different manipulatives, you guys. I have buttons, counting bears, math blocks. I have a whole bunch of stuff. You don't need a lot of things. You can continue to use your counting bears and using this program, especially when you feel like your kiddos is kind of past that phase to one to one correspondence. And you really need a little bit more guidance in teaching them math. This is definitely one of my favorite, favorite, favorite math curriculums. It really has built upon a great foundation, especially for my motor daughter Leia. And she just really has breezed and transitioned really, really seamlessly into kindergarten math by using this book, preschool math at home. So I definitely love this book. I love the systematic approach and teaching your kiddos. And I love how fun and simple these activities are. Literally, the activities that you're doing takes like about one or two minutes. So preschool math at home, especially when you feel like your kiddos are definitely ready to learn beyond just counting one to 10 and beyond one to one correspondence. This is a great program to pick up for your kiddos. Okay, you guys, as far as doing calendar skills, I really don't like put that much pressure on my kiddos in preschool for calendar skills, because I definitely know that they will eventually get it. It will click, but a fun way for me to do calendar skills was definitely by using my Melissa and Doug calendar. I love all of them magnetic pieces. I wasn't able to pull this out as much as I wanted to in the earlier phases because my youngest order was still putting a lot of things in her mouth. But now that they're kind of past that phase, this is a fun calendar to use in teaching them their days of the week and teaching them their months of the year, seasons, weather, the temperature, their feelings, different activities that we're going to be doing for the day. So I definitely love using this Melissa and Doug calendar. You definitely don't have to get this calendar. You definitely can use free printables online with dry erase sleeves and teaching them calendar skills. But this is just something fun that I have in my home that I have definitely used more so now that my kiddos are a little bit older between like that three to five age versus like that two age because it kind of like went over their head. But right now we are definitely loving using our Melissa and Doug calendar and teaching all the calendar skills. Now you guys, if you have a kiddo that absolutely loves workbooks and worksheets, these are some of my kiddos, at least my middle daughter, Leia, her favorite worksheets that we did in preschool, which are these huge activity pads from Melissa and Doug. They have coloring and stickers. So these are some of the pages she hasn't done in this letter book so you guys can see. So you will match the stickers with right here at the bottom and then it can color the page. You will go over like the rhyme, which was definitely perfect in teaching her like the rhyming skills that she's actually learning as far as like a precursor to kindergarten. So this is really, really cool that they had these rhymes. A lot of the rhymes we were actually going over with speech therapy with her. And these activity pads, you guys, they're so affordable. It comes in a set of three. I believe I was able to catch this one on self only about 17 bucks, which is really, really good. And the kiddos definitely will love using all of these activity pads. Leia definitely love using them. And I cannot wait to repurchase these activity pads for my youngest daughter. And again, as we were going over each of the colors, these are just fun ways for them to add stickers to color, especially if you have a kiddo that definitely still wants to be at the table and feel like a big kid with all of their sisters and brothers and things like that. And these were just fun ways and fun activity pads that we definitely enjoy using in our home school. And I cannot wait to repurchase these for my youngest daughter, Alana. Now you guys, with all of the resources that I actually share with you guys, you actually can have a full and rich preschooling year without actually utilizing a curriculum. And that is actually what I did when my daughter was two to three. I actually just utilize all of my resources without actually using a full on curriculum until she turned four. However, if you kind of need something all put together, these are three, these are like my top three favorite preschooling curriculums. And I definitely will make a separate video and showing you guys a comparison between all of these three programs that I absolutely love using in my home school as far as preschool. One of my first preschooling curriculums that I use and I absolutely adore is purely preschool by Rachel from where you learned that this is definitely a simple and easy and affordable preschooling program you can do with your younger kiddos. Then my next favorite preschooling program is playing preschool. This is 190 days of hands on learning. This you guys will definitely get you out of your comfort zone. These all these programs are literature based. So you will be reading fun and cute picture books with your kiddos, which I absolutely loved. It really got me out of my comfort zone and reading a whole lot of literature with my kiddos. And my last favorite preschool program that I actually completed this home schooling year with my middle daughter Leia is gentle and classical preschool and these actually pair with a preschool math at home program. And I absolutely adore this program as well. So you guys in a separate video, like I said before, I will be comparing all three of my favorite preschooling curriculums. Thank you guys so much for watching today's video as I share it with you all of my favorite preschool and resources. Now I truly believe you don't need all the preschool things. I really just got carried away, especially doing preschool with my middle daughter for the first time. But hopefully I have shared with you guys some tools that will really help you out in your home school, especially starting off by doing preschool. I really love utilizing a lot of hands on materials versus curriculums. However, as you guys seen, I do have some favorite curriculums. So you guys, thanks again for watching today's video. And as always, I look forward to seeing everybody in my next one. Bye.