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Preschool at Home

October 5, 2010 By Michelle Barneck 21 Comments

My 34 month old is not quite ready for official preschool, so I decided to make an activity can so we could do preschool at home. This way I don’t have to go through all the work of having a complete lesson plan everyday, but he still gets educational and developmental activities worked in to his schedule. I color coded little sticks and put them in a can so we could pull out activities in a variety of areas each week including: Art/Music, Science, Physical, and Language development.

Preschool at Home Can

Supplies needed:

  • Big popsicle sticks aka tongue depressors
  • Colorful paper
  • Paper cutter
  • Scissors
  • Pen
  • White Glue
  • Fine tip Sharpie
  • Can (mine was an Ovaltine can with a lid from La Choy noodles because I wanted blue not brown)

I was going to glue the paper to the sticks and then exacto knife the edges clean, but then I remembered a 4th grade incident where they handed me a 2 liter bottle and a box cutter and wanted me to make a bird feeder resulting in this scar. I’m pretty sure box cutters are banned from Elementary schools now.

Anyway, I quickly realized that cutting the paper to size first would be way easier and safer.

1. Place a popsicle stick on the back of one of the decorative papers and mark the height. Then, mark the width, continuing across the whole page to fit as many as you can.
2. Using your paper cutter, cut out all the little popsicle stick sized rectangles.

3. Using a squiggle of glue secure a paper strip to the stick. Trim the excess corners with your scissors.

4. Once you have your sticks in four colors (Art/music, Science, Physical, Language), write the coordinating activities on the sticks using a fine tip Sharpie. I got mine from many resources, so I also put the reference of where to find the activity description whether a book, magazine, etc.


Edit: I got many of my preschool at home activity ideas from Family Fun magazine, Utah Family Magazine, and lots from my kid friendly and preschool collections of bookmarks from blogs.

5. Decorate your can however you like and place the completed sticks inside.
6. I figured 4 days a week for preschool at home was plenty so we will draw a different colored stick each day so we get activities in each area.

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Comments

  1. Andrea says

    October 5, 2010 at 3:13 pm

    What a great idea! come on over to http://jadaroo.blogspot.com to see some activities I do with my toddler 🙂

    Reply
  2. Crustacean Queen says

    October 5, 2010 at 4:14 pm

    Very cute…I love it!

    Reply
  3. Rebecca says

    October 5, 2010 at 9:21 pm

    Great idea! My daughter is the same age and I need to be more organized about her education.

    Reply
  4. Andrea says

    October 5, 2010 at 9:56 pm

    Love the idea! I would love to see what activities you put in there. I need more ideas to do with my toddlers! 😉

    Reply
  5. Joy McDaniel says

    October 6, 2010 at 12:03 am

    I love it! I would also love to see what activities you put in there or where I could find some.

    Reply
  6. Steph says

    October 6, 2010 at 1:05 am

    I just let my kids play Elmo’s Preschool… your idea is better.

    Reply
  7. Kelli says

    October 6, 2010 at 8:49 am

    Very cute idea!

    Kelli
    xoxo
    loveoursimplelife.blogspot.com

    Reply
  8. Christina says

    October 6, 2010 at 10:01 am

    Great idea!

    Reply
  9. Amanda K @ Every Crafty Endeavor says

    October 6, 2010 at 10:35 am

    “34-month old!” hahahaha – you crack me up!

    And look at you go! I am totally impressed.

    Reply
  10. Michelle says

    October 6, 2010 at 11:59 am

    I got many of my activity ideas from Family Fun magazine, Utah Family Magazine (http://www.utahdiscovery.com/uf/calendar.php), and lots from my collection of bookmarks from blogs (http://www.delicious.com/Telsee/KidFriendly or http://www.delicious.com/Telsee/preschool).

    Reply
  11. Michelle says

    October 6, 2010 at 12:25 pm

    Super cute ideas! Thanks for sharing.

    Reply
  12. Life with the Lebedas says

    October 7, 2010 at 8:48 am

    I love this idea! Thanks for sharing! Cute!! You should link up to my Craftify It Thursday post!

    http://lebedafamily.blogspot.com/2010/10/craftify-it-thursday.html

    Jennifer @ Life with the Lebedas

    Reply
  13. Ashlee @ I'm Topsy Turvy says

    October 9, 2010 at 3:17 am

    fun! I bet your son loves it! Thanks for linking up to Topsy Turvy Tuesday’s!

    Reply
  14. Kendra says

    October 15, 2010 at 1:22 pm

    Thanks for the resource list ideas – but do you have a list of the actual activities that you chose to put in the can? I love the idea by the way. Thanks for sharing. Kendra

    Reply
  15. cleverlyinspired says

    October 22, 2010 at 7:12 am

    Love the decortation on the can!

    Reply
  16. Curtsay says

    October 22, 2010 at 10:35 am

    That is a great idea. I’ve been trying to think of something to do like this. This helps so much!

    Reply
  17. {Not Quite} Susie says

    March 10, 2011 at 1:15 am

    I love it! My son’s a tiny bit young for it right now {18 months} but I can never think of what to do with him so maybe I’ll have to start one for ME to get ideas! 🙂

    Reply
  18. sarah says

    March 29, 2011 at 3:58 pm

    found you over at tip junky, wonderful idea! I’m homeschooling so this is great : )

    Reply
  19. Niki says

    July 25, 2011 at 3:47 pm

    What a great motivation! He/She will love getting to pick out a popsicle stick…especially when he/she discovers it has fun things to do!!!

    Reply
  20. Linda@CraftaholicsAnonymous says

    July 25, 2011 at 8:03 pm

    preschool scares me! lol my little guy is a few months younger than yours and so not ready either. {but mom isn’t either haha}
    thumbs up!
    Linda

    Reply
  21. Anonymous says

    November 10, 2011 at 9:15 pm

    Stop working so hard, you know you can buy the jumbo craft sticks with the fabric already on them. A company called Roylco sells them in a package of 50, I purchases some for my preschool class here at the rec center. We ordered them from S&S worldwide, they were pretty cheap too! I did not know what I was going to do with them, now i know.

    Reply

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Hi there! I'm Michelle. Mother of three little boys and one little princess. Welcome to A Little Tipsy, a place for exploring creativity and sharing inspiration.

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