One of the homeschool challenges I faced was figuring out how I was gonna teach my 3rd grader while also giving quality attention to our playful and active four-year-old. I found that including him during some portions of the lessons made things much easier. But how do I include a 4-year-old in 3rd-grade lessons? The answer for me was to invite him whenever we read and did history and science class. I realized that he seemed most interested in those lessons, and if he wasn't, he was free to go play with his toys.
In addition, I created a focus board to use during our circle time. We set aside around fifteen minutes (probably less) and we, including my 3rd grader, head over to the focus board to go over the letter of the week, number of the week, counting, days of the week, months of the year, alphabet, and shapes.
Having big brother join made it more fun for both the third-grader and the preschooler. Big brother didn't mind that is was a preschool circle time.
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Preschool Focus/Circle Time Board:
Materials needed:
Normally, people use bulletin boards to display their focus or circle time boards. I wanted to avoid drilling into the walls of our home, and I figured using a tri-fold display board would be a good idea. Talk about a space saver! I love that I can put it away whenever I need to. I ended up buying two 28" X 40" tri-fold display boards, the reason being that I wanted to have one display board in English and the other in Spanish.
After deciding to use a tri-fold display board, I needed to decide what I wanted to display on it. I wanted our weekly focus to be on letter sounds, letter and number recognition, shapes, and the weeks and months.
I created most of my displays, such as the months, days, numbers, alphabet, and others. After printing my creations, I laminated them to help them last longer. I purchased some additional displays such as geometric shape cutouts, colorful letter cutouts, and colorful number cutouts.
I realized that I would need to switch out letters and numbers each week as the focus would change weekly. For that reason, I opted for using velcro tabs, which would allow me to switch the displays on the board
When teaching the days of the week, it is good to go over "yesterday was", "today is", and"tomorrow will be". I made the labels by printing, cutting, laminating, cutting again, and then gluing them to hanger clips.
Here is a list of some of the educational printouts and cutouts I used:
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This is absolutely perfect!! I’ve been looking for ideas and this seems a perfect solution! My 1 yr old will try to tear things off the wall that are too low, so something portable is perfect for us right now with my three year old. Any chance you have a link to the shapes or number words? Id love to have the same font . thank you so much for sharing!! I want to do this and add a weather element!