First Day of Preschool Homeschool- A How-to Guide Part 2

Planning for a successful first day of preschool is so important that we needed two posts! Welcome to Part 2, however if you have not read Part 1 make sure you do that first. Read on for the best first day of preschool schedule.

The First Day of Preschool Homeschool- Part 1 has the necessary steps to take to set a solid foundation of respect and fun for the entire school year. One could argue that those foundational ideas are the most important part of the first day of school.

After setting up expectations and goals for preschool with your child, now we can get into the more exciting stuff!

First Day of Preschool Homeschool- Part 1 Quick Review

Here is a reminder of what was said in part 1 of this series. Consequently, I hope you were able to make a rough draft plan of how to execute these steps.

1. Morning Meeting
2. Hopes and Dreams
3. Goals
4. Expectations
5. Visual Schedule

You will refer to the above mentioned elements often. Chiefly, Morning Meeting, the expectations, and the visual schedule will be used everyday. You can revisit your hopes and dreams, as well as, goals multiple times throughout the year.

Start the Day

The first day of preschool homeschool will begin with the elements listed above- for more details be sure to check out the last post.

Below is an estimated breakdown of how long each foundational part should take.

• Morning Meeting
  • Greeting: 1-2 minutes
  • Sharing: 3-5 minutes
  • Activity: 5-10 minutes
  • Morning Message: 1-3 minutes
• Hopes and Dreams: 10-15 minutes
• Goals: 10-15 minutes
• Expectations: 10-15 minutes
• Explaining the visual schedule: 5-10 minutes

Therefore, the beginning of your morning of preschool homeschool should take 45-75 minutes. As you can see, that is a huge chunk of your day, but it is arguably the most important.

Preschool Name Activity

After you have laid the groundwork for a successful year of preschool homeschool, you are ready for the fun! It is well known that preschoolers learn to identify and write their name, so let’s get into some of the best name activities.

Children are often proud of their name, and learning to read and write it gives kids a true sense of ownership of their names. Typically, the first word a child learns to read is their first name, henceforth our first academic activity will revolve around their name.

First Day of Preschool Homeschool Name Books

Books are so meaningful in helping children understand ideas and make connections. Listed below are some of my favorite picture books about names.

Starting the lesson with a book can give your child purpose for completing their name activity.

1. Alma and How She Got Her Name by Juana Martinez-Neal
2. Andy, That’s My Name by Tomie DePaola
3. Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes
4. That’s Not My Name! By Anoosha Sye
5. You’re Called What? By Kes Gray
6. My Name Is Maria Isabel by Alma Flor Ada

Furthermore, you will find so many more books about names! Particularly if your child’s name has familial or cultural significance, you will be able to locate books that match these considerations.

Preschool Name Crafts

Young children love to make things and use their hands, therefore I have found some spectacular activities that will help your child recognize their name.

• Chicka Chicka Boom Boom name tree activity
  • Read the book
  • Discuss how many letters are in your child’s name
  • Find the letter stickers that are in your child’s name
  • Glue on coconut tree on paper
  • Fill in the blanks on the writing portion and glue under the tree
  • Stick on the letters
• Stamp name
  • Use letter stamps and ink
  • Use foam bath letters with paint
• Magical appearing name
  • Write your child’s name with a white crayon in BIG letters on a white sheet of paper
  • Have your child color over the paper with a marker to reveal the letters
  • Use different colors to show your little one’s personality
• Name Collage
  • Gather various art collage supplies
    • Sequins
    • Pom poms
    • Glitter
    • Fuzzy sticks
    • Round or star stickers
  • Use liquid glue to write your child’s name
    • It’s best to do one letter at a time
  • Have your child use the art materials to cover the glue and form the letters of their name.
• Rainbow name
  • Write your child’s name with a pen or pencil on a sheet of paper
  • Have your child pick a color to trace over their name
  • Let them choose 4-5 more colors and use each one to trace their name
• Fingerpaint name
  • Pull out a smock for your preschooler
  • Write their name on a large sheet of construction paper
  • Let them choose what paint color(s) to use
  • Your child will use their finger to dip in paint and trace over their name.

There are a ton of name activities for children! Watch out for a post specifically about name activities and crafts.

First Day of Preschool Story

If you haven’t picked up on it, I absolutely LOVE children’s books! Not only are stories fun for little ones, but they also help children develop listening comprehension, hear new vocabulary words and how to use them in sentences, understand story elements, and can even teach specific academic skills.

Specifically on the first day of school, a story can ease your child’s nerves, and they can connect with the characters and how they are feeling.

First day of school stories often include big feelings, and for this reason they are perfect for starting discussions about emotions.

You can also utilize these books to compare and contrast the learning environments in the stories to your own learning space. Just because you are teaching preschool at home doesn’t mean that you can’t read about characters who learn in a school building.

Here are my favorite first day of school books:

• The Night Before Preschool by Natasha Wing
• Pete the Kitty’s First Day of Preschool by Kimberly and James Dean
• How Do Dinosaurs Go To School by Jane Yolen and Mark Teague
• If You Take a Mouse To School by Laura Numeroff
• The First Day of Homeschool by Kaitlin Harris

After Reading

When you are finished reading the story, you and your child can discuss any big ideas that popped up. Here are some ideas of topics of conversation following the reading:

• How were the characters feeling? How are you feeling about the first day of school?
• Does our learning space look like the classroom in the story? What is the same and different?
• Do you think we will do any of the same activities the characters did in the book? If so, which activities?
• Which character do you feel is the most like you and why?
• Did this story bring up any questions you have about school?

To extend the learning from the story, you can have your child draw or paint a picture of their learning space on one side of the paper, and the space from the story on the other side. Next, have your child explain their work.

Gross Motor Activity for the First Day of Preschool

After all that sitting, it is time to get up and MOVE!! Of course, you can just take your child outside and play like they normally would, but if you are intentionally working on their gross motor skills you may want to have a specific activity.

Focus on leg muscles

Here are some gross motor skills that target the muscles of the legs:

• Running
• Bending
• Jumping
• Kicking

As an example, a fun game you can play to work on some of these skills is a type of relay race. Your child can play with siblings or even do this on their own.

The set up

You will need two “end zones” for this activity, with one being where the objects are, and the other “end zone” being where your child will collect the objects.

The collecting end zone will be where your child starts. This area should have a bucket, tub, box, etc. for your child to put the items in.

Between the end zones you can place obstacles your child will have to dodge or jump over such as:

• Flat lying boards to jump over
• Lawn chairs to dodge around
• A folding table or limbo stick to crawl or duck under 

At the other end zone, you will need 3-4 items for your child to collect. Correspondingly, my suggestions are:

• A soccer ball or rubber ball to kick to the other end
• Pool rings to bend down and grab, then run them back and throw them in the bucket
• Sidewalk chalk- they have to squat down and drag the chalk as they go back to the bucket, leaving a chalk line
• A jump rope (if your child can’t do continuous jump roping, have them slowly hop over the rope, swing around in front of their feet, hop over, swing around, hop over, etc.

The how-to

You can choose whether or not you want to set a stopwatch to time your child. Some children like that extra competition, and others do not do well with the pressure. Then, have your child run from the starting point, collect an object, return it to the bucket, run back for another object, etc. until all of the objects have been collected in the bucket.

Of course, your child won’t be able to jump rope under a table, therefore you will need to use your best judgment on how to have your child pass through the obstacles. Maybe your child drags the jump rope behind them as they crawl, or you have them jump around the table.

You will make this activity your own and make it work for you and your preschooler!

Hand-eye Coordination

This skill is so hard, but equally important! Activities that involve throwing and catching are perfect to work on hand-eye coordination, as are activities involving hitting.

With this in mind, here is a list of example activities:

• Throwing and catching a baseball
• Dribbling a basketball
• Putting a golf ball
• Hitting a baseball off a tee
• Throwing bean bags onto targets
• Shooting a basketball into the hoop
• Using a hockey stick and puck

You do not need to know anything about sports to do these activities! Kids love having sports equipment to practice with, and these are some of the most fun and easy ways to incorporate hand-eye coordination into play.

Balance

Another huge gross motor skill is the ability to balance and control your body. This doesn’t always come naturally to children, so they need specific guidance from the adults in their lives.

In order to help your child improve their balance, you can do these activities:

• Hop on one foot from one place to another
• Walk on a balance beam, flat lying board, or chalk line without stepping off
  • Walking forward
  • Walking sideways
  • Walking backward
  • Hopping every few steps
• Place an object on the ground in front of your child, have them bend over while extending one leg behind them, and pick up the object
  • Use a taller object to begin with
  • For a challenge, use a small object such as a pencil
• Do lunges across the room

Pick a gross motor skill you want to focus on that day and choose a fun activity to work on the target skill.

Fun Counting Activity

Everyone knows that preschoolers learn to count. Consequently, start this academic skill on the first day of preschool homeschool with something fun!

Play a board game with counting

My favorite board games that include counting are:

• Happy Bunny
• Chutes and Ladders
• Pop the Pig
• Count Your Chickens
• Hi-Ho Cherry-O
• Feed the Woozle
• Snug as a Bug in a Rug

These are great for children who are first learning to count, because you do not need to know how to count very high to play these games!

Count to match the number activities

Counting to a given number is an important early math skill, and to build upon that, counting out a particular number of objects lays a foundation of number sense.

For example, here are some easy, hands-on activities where preschoolers count out a given number of objects:

• Columns of cars
  • Draw on a piece of paper, cardboard, or even the sidewalk (with chalk) columns with a number between 1-10 written at the top of each column
  • Have your child drive that many toy cars into each column, counting as they go.
• Add flower petals
  • Draw the centers of flowers and put a number (1-10) in each center.
  • Take flower petals that you have cut out of paper, or similarly, gathered from actual flowers.
  • Have your preschooler count out the number of petals written on the center and put them around the center to make a flower head.
• Apple stamp and add seeds
  • Write number at the top of a long sheet of construction paper
  • Cut an apple in half from the stem to the bottom and pour paint out on a plate or tray
  • Encourage your child to dip the apple half in the paint and stamp it on the paper under one of the numbers
  • Wait until the paint dries, and in a moment your child will be able to draw on the corresponding number of apple seeds, or glue on that number of real apple seeds.

Support your child in their learning

It is very likely that your child will not be able to identify the numbers on their own. For this reason, you will point to the number and read it to your child. Encourage them to repeat it after you to build that number recognition.

Ultimately, the possibilities are endless for these types of activities, and kids LOVE them! Be creative and have fun!

Count what you’ve sorted

Young children are drawn to categorizing and sorting things. Therefore, use this natural inclination and extend the learning with a counting activity.

The easiest way to do this is to gather a fairly large number of objects that are similar, but have obvious differences (like colored counting bears). Then have your child sort them into like groups and count how many are in each group.

Math tools

Some typical math manipulatives for young children that lend themselves to sorting are:

• Teddy bear counters
• Pattern blocks
• Unifix or snap cubes
• Colored disc counters

To step up the cool factor, I also like to use items that are not necessarily basic classroom materials, such as:

• Mini erasers
• Seashells
• Multiple sizes of paperclips
• Beads
• Rocks

After your child has sorted and counted the objects in each group, you can challenge them by asking:

• Which group has the most?
• Are there any groups with the same amount?
• What group has the fewest objects?
• Can you put the groups in order from the most to the least?

Again, use your imagination and choose objects your child will be interested in- this activity can be done with a plethora of objects.

Play Time!

This will likely be your child’s favorite time of the day! Therefore, give your child some freedom to choose what they want to play. There are a couple of ways you can structure your child’s play time during homeschool.

1. Legitimate free play
   1. Let your child play with any of their toys or natural materials however they see fit
   2. Don’t encourage them to play a certain way or to do a particular activity
   3. Your child will explore, hypothesize, problem solve, and analyze their play scenarios on their own, and learn through discovery.
2. Set up play centers with materials to practice target skills
   1. The blocks/Lego center will have pictures of structures to build or challenges to try
   2. The kitchen can have a notepad and pencil to practice pencil grip, writing strokes, and the concept of writing a grocery list
   3. Your sensory table/bins will have sandpaper letters to trace, or flashcards with numbers to finger-write in the sand

Depending on your schooling philosophy, you may believe one way is better than the other, or you may want to do a combination. Either way, the act of play is truly the work of young children, so let them have fun and they will learn no matter how you structure their play time.

Read another story

At this point of the day, I like to read a fun story that is not necessarily related to school. If your child is intrigued by the books about school, by all means, read another one. Although, do not feel like you have to just because it is the first day of school.

These are some books that are perfect for preschoolers to read on the first day of school, even though they aren’t about school.

• The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
• Corduroy by Don Freeman
• Caps For Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina
• Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey
• Little Blue Truck by Alice Schertle

In addition to these fantastic books, check out this post about the best books for preschoolers.

Story related activity

To solidify their learning from the story, you can prepare a fun activity that relates to the story they just read. In fact, here are some examples below.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar is loved by so many preschoolers and there are a ton of activities that tie into this story.

• One activity is to draw a caterpillar on the side of a cardboard box (like a shoe box), and cut a decent sized hole for the mouth.
  • You can prepare the food ahead of time by drawing and cutting out, or having your child draw the food. 
  • Your preschooler will then feed the hungry caterpillar the food he ate during the story.
• Make a craft of the hungry caterpillar becoming a butterfly!
  • Paint your child’s hands and press them on paper with the fingers stretching out to make the butterfly wings
  • Use a coffee filter, color with markers or watercolors, pinch the top and the bottom, and wrap with a fuzzy craft stick to make a butterfly

Corduroy is a classic that children have cherished for generations. In case you haven’t read the story, Corduroy is a bear who is looking for his lost button. A couple related activities are:

• “Sew” a button
  • Make small holes in a square of cardboard or thick cardstock paper
  • Get a large button and a shoelace/yarn
  • Have your child “sew” the button into the cardboard or paper
• Make a button collage
  • Use a bunch of random buttons
  • Encourage your child to glue them onto thick paper
  • They can use the buttons to make a design, or just a beautiful abstract piece

Likewise, the other stories have activities that are fun to do with them too! Therefore, you should look out for future posts with fun crafts and activities to go along with children’s books.

Certificate

This day is HUGE in your child’s academic career and definitely deserves a special memento. Accordingly, award your child with a First Day of Preschool certificate.

Check out the certificate template I made or make one yourself. After you have chosen the certificate, think about whether you want your child to color their certificate or print on colored paper.

Of course, you will need a photo of your big preschooler with their First Day of Preschool certificate! Capture that moment and celebrate!

Get the First Day of Preschool Certificate here.

Closing Circle

This is another component of the Responsive Classroom Approach. Just like starting the school day positively with Morning Meeting, ending the day with Closing Circle is equally important.

The Closing Circle is not nearly as long or in depth as Morning Meeting, but coupled with its beginning of the day counterpart, Closing Circle makes a huge impact.

During Closing Circle, ask your child to help you list all of the things you did that day. Particularly, encourage your preschooler to name the books you read, the activities you did, the things you made, and what your child played with.

Next, suggest to your child to share their favorite part of the day and why it was their favorite.

To conclude your learning day, sing a happy song, nursery rhyme, or play a quick game.

Click here for a sample first day of preschool homeschool schedule.

What activity are you going to do on the first day of preschool?