Homeschooling a 2-Year-Old | Fun Learning Activities for Your Little One

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 last post on homeschooling a 2-year-old over on my other 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 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).

BUY THE CALENDAR HERE

The Good and the Beautiful PreK

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 liked it for the most part. However, this coming year, I’ve decided to basically make my own curriculum and cover all major points of a book of the Bible (or 2, depending on length) within a week. That way, we’ll finish the entire Bible in a year.

I’ll keep you all posted on lessons we do and how the kids respond!

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 homeschool 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.

BUY THE LETTER ACORNS HERE

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.

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 one 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:

• Scholastic Wipe Clean Book: PreK
• Numbers 1-50
• Peppa’s Chalk ABCs

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, but we do them as much as we can in our homeschool! 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.

We also have done paintings or colored pencil drawings to go with Bible units.

And a kid-favorite was our “royal priesthood” day when we picked out special jewels, and all of the kids got to make their own crowns while we talked about who we are in Christ.

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.

BUY SOME HERE

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 very 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).

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.

Some of Our Favorite Books

We also have a deep love for reading. Some of Arwyn’s 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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