Home » Education & Career » Pagan Homeschooling » Preschool at Home

Preschool at Home

© Kimberly Moore.

As parents we naturally want the very best for our children. We read books, magazines, watch parenting programs, and even log onto chat rooms to discuss parenting. All too often we can feel that a lack of money is hindering our efforts to help our children become great successes in life. This can become a very acute feeling when our children enter the preschool years, and we begin really thinking about preparing our children for educational success.

For many people, education is seen as the single most important way of achieving success later in life. For parents on a low to middle income, this is the brass ring that will give their child the life they should have. A good childhood educational base followed by college, a great job, a nice house, everything we ourselves dream of. It can be very despairing to try and find a good preschool for our children. Often, we are unsure what we are looking at. Is this just a daycare, or is it a preschool? Should they be playing or doing formal lessons? Sometimes the money just isn't there for any paid outside preschool education at all. There is no need to be in despair. Your child can get a good solid foundation for school right at home.

Parents have been doing preschool at home for generations. They simply did not know it for what it was. Here is a case in point. When I was a young child in the early 1970's, most children my age stayed at home with our mothers. Like most of the other children, I was read to, taught to read and write my name, taught to answer the telephone, how to count, tidy my room, and even "helped" my mother in the kitchen as well as simple chores around the house. I was given paints, crayons, drawing paper, and even chalk and a chalkboard. We did craft type things together such as gluing macaroni shells onto old cigar boxes. Guess what? That is preschool. Sure, it was fit around my mother's schedule, but it was still early childhood education. My mother did those things, and in so doing, prepared me for school. I learned skills that would help me in my journey through life. I did not suffer terribly from not having attended a formal preschool. Well, not unless you consider being tracked into the gifted program suffering.

No one can guarantee that your child will be tracked into a gifted program, however, if you do choose to send your child to school later on in his educational career. My point is that being prepared for school at home is a very viable and time-honored method of early childhood education. It is also a great introduction to formal and informal learning processes that you can use later in your homeschooling journey should that be your chosen path. You can spend a little money as opposed to a lot of money, and still achieve the same results. The key is taking the time to prepare your child. Simply plopping him down in front of PBS is not going to do it for you. While education television is very worthwhile, it is only a piece of the educational experience. Your child needs hands on and interactive learning.