Inside: Thinking about teaching your little one at home? Homeschooling a 2 year old is simple with these educational activities!
Hi, friend!
If you haven’t seen my original post on homeschooling a 2-year-old over on my first blog, you can check it out here:
Last summer, I began homeschooling my 2-year-old daughter, as radical as that sounds. She was thirsting for knowledge, and I was more than willing to oblige. Homeschooling had been on my heart for years, so beginning to teach her just made sense.
What I DIDN’T want to do was make learning a dull experience and crush her blossoming curiosity before it truly got the chance to take root.
So while I gave structure to her interest, we were also careful to keep learning fun. And before I knew it, we had sailed through nearly all of what I’d hoped to complete for the YEAR in only 6 months!
I quickly regrouped, got other (more challenging) materials, and she’s continuing to thrive.
So I want to share with you everything that we’ve used in the past year and how we implemented it.
Homeschooling a 2-Year-Old
Some of these learning activities are things we’ve done all year. Others are things we started in January or have slowly incorporated over time. We don’t do all of them in a day but follow a flexible weekly rotation. I may do a post or video of our general weekly schedule later on.
But these are the activities that we do on a regular basis to keep her engaged, challenged, and happy!
(To see a selection of the preschool homeschool curriculum we use and experience the general gist of homeschooling a 2-year-old, watch this video!)
Psst.. some of the following links are affiliate links through Amazon. That means that (at no additional cost to you), I’m compensated when you click a link and make a purchase. I promise to only recommend products that I personally use and love!
Calendar
Every day, we start off our structured educational time by using our Melissa & Doug calendar. We go over the date, day of the week, season, temperature, weather, any special activities for the day, upcoming holidays, and her feelings for the day.
During this time, I allow her to answer as many things as she can on her own. So for example, she’s usually able to tell me the month, year, season, temperature, holidays (once we’ve gone over them a day or two before), and feelings.
We look up the weather together on my phone. To figure out the date, we count together to see which number comes next. For the day of the week, we sing our song, which you can hear in this video. (Be kind! It was one of the first videos I ever recorded, and I wasn’t used to being on camera.)
I use the activities portion to get her ready for any transition that we’ll need to do later on in the day (like having a doctor’s visit).
The Good and the Beautiful PreK
See my FULL REVIEW on the Pre-K curriculum here.
I am NOT an affiliate for The Good and the Beautiful. Nor is this a sponsored post for them. I make NOTHING from recommending their curriculum to you. But I still recommend it because it’s something we truly enjoy, and I’ve seen my daughter thrive while using their products.
This is something we started in January and are loving!
Before purchasing, I watched lots of reviews and read plenty of blogs to make sure this was something that she could benefit from. After taking the plunge, I couldn’t be more happy.
Arwyn is writing letters, knows the difference between upper and lower case letters, and is solidifying her understanding of all letter sounds.
Plus, the curriculum is open-and-go, meaning I don’t have to plan that portion of our homeschool day. I just write down that we’ll be doing 1 lesson from the Good and the Beautiful on any given day and know that when we get there, whatever she learns will be relevant to what she’s been learning.
You can learn more about The Good and the Beautiful homeschool curriculum here.
Bible
We do Bible lessons a few times a week. At one point, we did them daily, but I felt that the information was getting jumbled for her. So we slowed it down a little and do a quick refresh of each passage on off-days.
This year we used this children’s Bible story book.
I like it for the most part. There are a few things that I found didn’t stick to the Bible story being read, but this happened in only a few instances. otherwise, it was great at telling each story simply while still hitting all the main points and keeping her interested!
You can BUY READ ME A BIBLE STORY 365 HERE
Letter Acorns
These were a Christmas gift that Arwyn got from her pappaw, and they have already proved their worth. Even on days when they aren’t part of my general lesson plan, Arwyn asks to do them.
Each acorn has a capital letter, and the lids have the lower case letter on the inside. They also come with little figures (like a pig, zebra, apple, etc.) that fit inside each acorn.
In the beginning, I had her only practice matching upper and lower case letters while saying the names of the letters. But now she puts the figures into their corresponding acorns too.
It’s a simple learning activity for her that’s also effective.
Toddler Learning Folder
I am NOT an affiliate for this product.
We’ve used this since August last year, and she loved it! It was part of our daily routine, but now we usually stick to 1 or 2 days a week (because many of the activities in the folder are no longer a challenge for her).
This binder teaches letters, numbers, shapes, colors, seasons, fruit, animals, days of the week, articles of clothing, body parts, counting, vowels, visual discrimination, continents, and even planets.
All of the activities are great practice, and Arwyn learned so quickly with this binder! It gave her a great foundation that we’re now building upon. If you’re thinking of homeschooling a 2-year-old, I couldn’t recommend it enough as a starting point!
You can visit Jady A’s site on Teachers Pay Teachers and purchase the printable binder HERE.
Fun printables
While teaching Arwyn, I was often inspired to create what we needed. As her mom, I knew ways to help connect the dots in her brain, and it was fun for me to create with her in mind.
For example, when teaching her one-to-one correspondence with counting, I created a few printables that we could use with counting manipulatives.
And for extra practice with upper and lowercase letters, we used these apple tree printables.
For more information on those, you can check out the posts I wrote to go along with them:
To download the printables, subscribe below! I’ll send you an email with the password to our free resource library, which will be continually growing. It’s where I share printables and other downloads that are helpful for homeschoolers, moms, and homemakers.
Name Letter Unscramble
This is something I created on my own. All you need is an index card, scissors, and a marker.
I cut the index card in half (hot dog style) and wrote her name on the upper half. Then I cut the lower half into 5 smaller rectangles (for the 5 letters of her name) and wrote a letter on each piece.
Every morning, I would lay down the long piece with her name written on it and ask her to match the cut letters. She was able to spell and recognize her own name within only a couple weeks of starting.
Counting Puzzle
This was another Christmas gift for our homeschool.
Some of the pieces are for counting, and others are for basic addition and subtraction. With Arwyn, I’ve just used the counting ones so far. It took a while for her to understand one-to-one correspondence, and I don’t want to confuse her until she’s fully solid with her counting skills.
These puzzle pieces are brightly-colored and great as added practice for counting, addition, and subtraction.
You can BUY THEM HERE.
(It also comes with a spelling puzzle set that the kids enjoy too!)
Wipe-Clean Books
Your little one can practice, wipe it clean, and use it again next time. With young children who are just learning to trace, it’s great to not have to waste paper!
Plus, it’s exciting for them when they get to use colorful Expo markers.
Some of our favorite wipe-clean books are:
Library
We enjoy trips to the library once a week (although we didn’t go every week when it was super cold). So I incorporated library time into our homeschool routine.
For more on that, check out this video:
Arts & Crafts
I know that not every mom is big into arts and crafts ( I get it!), but we do them as much as we can. I used to try to do them daily, but with adding other activities, that’s just not possible anymore. So we usually do a couple every week.
Crafts have helped Arwyn bring letters to life. We do them for every letter she’s learning to write. You can find the templates for our letter crafts here!
Preschool Letter Craft Templates
Help your child recognize uppercase and lowercase letters as well as their sounds with these simple and fun preschool letter crafts.
We also have done paintings or colored pencil drawings to go with Bible units.
Animal Flashcards
We’ve used these since the beginning of the year, incorporating a few animals at a time.
I have the deck separated by ones she knows, ones we’re working on, and ones we haven’t started yet.
When she says the names of the animals, we make silly sounds together and pretend to be the animals. It’s a way to make using flashcards more fun for her, and she often asks to say her animals.
KiwiCo STEAM Boxes
KiwiCo is a company that encourages kids to fall in love with science, technology, engineering, art, and math. With a subscription, you get a crate shipped to your door every month. They’ve sent us crates with space projects, a claw arcade game, rainbows, musical instruments, ocean studies, a kaleidoscope, bug activities, and more.
We LOVE KiwiCo. All of my kids really enjoy STEAM activities anyway, so these crates were destined to be a hit.
We don’t get one every month, but every box that we’ve gotten, the kids thoroughly enjoy. And they’re fairly reasonably-priced.
To sign up for KiwiCo, you can use my link and get $10 off your first crate!
Sensory and Fine Motor
We do lots of sensory as well as little fine motor activities.
One thing that combines both of them is this great Play-Doh Shape and Learn set we got in December. Of course Play-Doh is a sensory medium but this box set also encourages fine motor skills.
For example, after we stamp out some fun butterfly shapes, Arwyn can pick them up with the tweezers included in the box and drop them into one of the beakers while she counts them.
We have the “Make and Measure” set, but Play-Doh makes many other Shape and Learn boxes as well. Any of them would be great to use while homeschooling a 2-year-old.
BUY THE PLAY-DOH MAKE & MEASURE SET HERE
A few other great fine motor tasks are using a hole punch, doing scissor work, and clothespin play. We’ve especially been focusing on scissors lately (i.e. how to hold them properly, what it feels like to cut paper, and trying to cut on simple lines).
For more fine motor activity ideas, check out this post:
It may seem like age 2 is a little early to start practicing with scissors, but there are plenty of safety scissors that are great for little ones. It’s something Arwyn really enjoys and that also helps her.gain more hand-eye coordination.
Books!
We also have a deep love for reading. Usborne is a fantastic resource for beautiful, fun, and educational books. Their quality is awesome, and many titles are under $10! You can check them out here.
Some of Arwyn’s other favorites include:
- Llama, Llama, Mad at Mama
- Pete the Cat
- Amelia Bedelia
- Peppa Pig
- Dr. Seuss’s ABC
- Lovey Bunny
- You Are My I Love You
- Hand, Hand, Finger, Thumb
Interested in homeschooling your 2-year-old? Or maybe you already do! I’d love to hear what other people do for toddler learning activities, so comment below!
Until next time,
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