Do you really do that much printing?

[joannqn]

My four year old needs something to do and more attention than I've been given him. In looking for a solution, I keep running into preschool or K4 curricula. I don't like playing with preschool toys/games so I tend to default to academics. But it's all a gazillion pages of color printing, laminating, and prep for things you'll only use once or twice before moving onto the next letter or theme next week. That seems like an awful lot of prep time, expense, and effort for so little gain (ie. spending 30 minutes in prep for a 5 minute activity).

 

Do people really print and prep this much stuff? Is there any easier way to do fun preschool academics in an organized, sequential manner?

[Jay3fer]

:iagree::iagree::iagree:

I bought a couple of prepackaged curricula and they were like that. Like, math games I'd set up for hours and then we'd play for 20 seconds. Blah.

 

I think those are mostly (shh...) for people who either have only one kid, or their preschooler is their oldest, so they're raring to get started. Not to overgeneralize or anything. :lol:

 

These days, I will print something if I think it's really appropriate for a particular kid... but otherwise, I'll skip it. I'm doing ZERO prep for ds4 and I don't think he's suffering at ALL.

 

On the other hand, he spends most of his days with his Cars toys and Mr. Potato Head. Which is, I suspect, the way it should be.

 

We do have some workbooks, in case he feels workbooky (rare). And I have TeacherFileBox, so I can print some developmentally-appropriate reading activities for him. And I bought the pre-Explode the Code A, B, C books.

 

In general, I feel like workbooks are a better investment than all that prep and laminating. Because I know he'll probably be ready for them eventually.

 

In the meantime, I'll let him play with Mr. Potato Head.

 

Oh, but wall charts! I have Ruth Beechick's numbers wall chart up on the wall beside his bed. He LOVES it. He's like a numbers groupie. We have another numbers chart, and some addition and multiplication charts up, including one tactile one from the dollar store that he can put his finger in and trace the number.

 

He probably wouldn't go near any of it if I'd actually spent time prepping it, but if all I did was stick it up on the wall, he adores it. I think, like dogs, they can smell how much time you've invested in an educational resource... the less, the better. :-)))

[blondeviolin]

Uh, nope...and my kids are still little. There are a few things that I will print, cut, and laminate, but only if I know that it will get used well (the last one was a hundred's chart). Otherwise, that's a lot to do with not a lot of payout. I'd much rather buy a workbook for them to "do."

[twoxcell]

No I do not. I have tried to do that type of thing in the past and find the papers just sit around, or get done and trashed. I hate busy work and stacks of worksheets. Mostly my preschoolers play. I'm doing LHTH with my 3 year and it requires very little prep or printing so it gets done.

[acurtis75]

Etc books are cheap and require no printing. That's pretty much all I used for pre-k. I discovered mus primer after we were past that age but if I were doing pre-k again I would use that along with their blocks. Hwot pre-k or k workbooks are also inexpensive and don't require printing or prep

 

I tried some other curriculums first and I'm just not crafty & they seemed to require a lot of prep work which felt unnecessary for pre-k.

 

I see all these blogs and posts about pre-k activities and lap books and crafts and workboxes and all this super-cute stuff that people do and i'm impressed but I realized early on that just wasn't my strong suit. We just read & do academics and then she plays and does crafts on her own.

[IsabelC]

We do a ton of printing, but a lot of it is because we are currently doing two math curricula that need all the worksheets printed for each child (and ditto with science last year). It's also because the kids tend to ask for coloring pages, mazes etc to be printed.

 

I don't think it seems very reasonable to spend 30 minutes prepping a 5 minute activity though.

 

What about some math manipulatives that he can play simple games with now and then use again later for more involved work?

 

Or try activities using stuff that you already have around the house and can be used with minimal prep? Many traditional play/learning activities can be varied each time you use them. (Eg you could set up a water play station, and when he gets bored with it you can color the water, or add different toys, measuring cups, funnels etc, or try using warm water, or adding ice cubes, and so on.)

 

Instead of workbooks, you could buy him a big scrapbook and let him draw or paste things in (use old magazines or catalogs for him to cut out pictures). When he wants to write, all you need is one laminated letter and number chart, and he can copy from that. And many K4 level activities are so simple that it's easy to make them yourself in a few minutes. (Eg on a blank scrapbook page, write the number 5, he reads the number and pastes or draws five matching objects in. If that's too easy, write 5 A and he finds 5 things that begin with A to add to that page.)

 

With the toys or games he already has, are you rotating them? I've found my kids are far more interested in their things if we 'disappear' 1/2 of them and then periodically rotate things in and out of sight.

[Jay3fer]

By the way, my ds4 was driving me crazy with asking to print worksheets, etc. He's gone through a few phases: most recently "same/different" and then "cut n paste," where you cut out the parts and stick them together to make... a lion, or a clown, or whatever. He ADORES them!

 

But one day, he asked me to print whatever, and I honestly said the printer was out of paper; there was none left in the house... and the next thing I knew, this kid who'd always refused to pick up a marker had drawn his own stick figures and cut them out himself!

 

He still begs for printouts, but this made me realize we are not always doing our kids a service, though it sure DOES feel powerful to be able to print whatever they request on demand (Cars, Lion King, Ariel, whatever!).

[joannqn]

My kids have never really played with toys all that much. I've tried buying them Lincoln Logs, wooden blocks, megablocks, Legos, hot wheels, Mr. Potato Head, My Little People sets, Tinker Toys, various action figures and animals, wooden train, toy kitchen, etc. My older two went through a period of a couple of years where they liked Webkinz but no one plays with them anymore. Most of their toys sit untouched in their homes and occasionally get dumped all over the floor by the youngest.

 

The typical preschool or sensory activities take so much time to set up and clean up that it's just as bad as the curricula (at least the curricula is less messy). We've done water play on the kitchen floor, bubbles in containers on the kitchen floor, rice on the kitchen floor, gluing beans, "writing" in various materials (shaving cream, sugar, flour, pudding), painting with water colors, cutting index cards, etc. Each of those takes twice as long (or more for the rice, beans, flour) to set up and clean up as the time they spend doing it. And I'm running out of ideas because each activity is only good for 2-3 sessions before they don't want to do it anymore.

[joannqn]

By the way, my ds4 was driving me crazy with asking to print worksheets, etc. He's gone through a few phases: most recently "same/different" and then "cut n paste," where you cut out the parts and stick them together to make... a lion, or a clown, or whatever. He ADORES them!

 

But one day, he asked me to print whatever, and I honestly said the printer was out of paper; there was none left in the house... and the next thing I knew, this kid who'd always refused to pick up a marker had drawn his own stick figures and cut them out himself!

 

Mine doesn't ask for any of that. He can't really "cut out" anything. He's finally to the point where he can cut instead of rip with the scissors, but he's still got a long ways to go before he can cut something out or even cut around something. He'll paste things if I cut them out for him.

 

Your son draws much better than my 4 1/2 year old, and he's never sat down to draw anything on his own. He struggles with holding and controlling the movement of the tool he's using.

[ondreeuh]

My son goes to pre-k for 2.5 hours per day and there is some time every day spent tracing the letters of their names and coloring/cutting/pasting something that goes along with the letter of the week. The rest of the time they listen to books, sing songs, string beads, etc. They use a really nice math program called HighScope that is all play-based. They do things like make "pizzas" out of play-doh and count the candles, or play bowling and count the pins they knock down. I think they get more out of that stuff than the paper stuff, but they are all improving with their fine motor skills.

 

At home, we are using manipulatives to play with math (Saxon K math, Funtastic Frogs, Unifix Cubes) and phonics (white board, letter tiles, LeapFrog Word Whammer), so there isn't really any set-up. I do have some workbook stuff that I put in page protectors (like mazes) so he can write & wipe. The only thing I use that involves laminating is a bunch of file folder games. They are awesome and he likes to play them over and over. Those were worth the time!

[Deniseibase]

We don't print much either. Lots of workbooks. Some toys that only seem to get played with if there are other kids over. What works best for us is a combination of workbooks and general multi-age school supplies - markers and paper, magnets, magnifying glasses, math manipulatives, etc. Yesterday my 5 yo spent half an hour walking around measuring things with a ruler.

[boscopup]

I wouldn't laminate anything that was only going to be used once. I don't mind printing things, since I have the laser printer and basically free paper (thank you back to school sales).

 

That said, I haven't printed anything for my 2 year old and hardly anything for my 4 year old. Now that the 4 year old is doing some workbooks and has completed a couple, I give the 2 year old the completed workbooks. He thinks he's doing the same thing because it's a real workbook! He doesn't care that it's already been written in. ;) So the 2 year old gets out Singapore EM K book A for his "maf", and he's very proud of himself. :D He also has a R&S ABC series workbook (Adventures with Books) that is completed and he can color and even cut that one.

 

Btw, I highly recommend the R&S ABC series. They're super duper cheap. I got the whole set of A-F for about $15, and you can get through I for maybe $20? We've only completed 2 books so far, so it was a good deal. They teach coloring, cutting, pasting, pre-writing skills, etc. My middle son learned his colors and how to count to 10 from those books (he wasn't learning via real life for some reason, despite me pointing things out).

[Ewe Mama]

I'm in the same boat. DD4 really wants to do school. She mainly does floor puzzles, workbooks (love those dot-to-dots!), cutting and pasting with old magazines/catalogs, math manipulatives. I just ordered some more puzzles last night because she does our other ones so quickly. We also read stories, listen to music, and dance. We do her school first in the morning and then she is more content to play on her own while the big kids work. She picks out what she wants to do and we work for 20 - 30 minutes. She'll let me know when she's had enough.

 

All that being said, I did just order a bunch of math programs because she really wants to do math. I know there are a million ways to make it simple and fun without buying a program, but I need much guidance because I am not a math-y person. I get the deer in the headlights look when trying to teach any of my kiddos something pertaining to math. :D

[zenjenn]

Yeah, well, heh, my solution was to send both my kids to preschool. Even once I started homeschooling, I sent my youngest to preschool.

 

I love homeschooling my kids, but the all-over-the-place interest and attention span of a preschooler is not for me, thanks. Even early Kindergarten tried my patience as a homeschool teacher. Give them to me when they are able to sit for 20 minutes and are minimally literate, and I'm good. Before that, yeah. Not so much. :D

[WeeBeaks]

I print a TON, but not that laminating fiddly stuff honestly. I print a lot of lapbooks for them to work on as that for us gives more time hands on for the printing ink/time. Also worksheets/colorsheets/activities from Evan Moor and such.

[2_girls_mommy]

I printed a lot of sheets over the year for 4 yr old preK when I did LOTW. But it was super simple. A coloring sheet of the letter once a week (we did the Sesame Street ones, then either colored or painted or decorated each sheet and put in an alphabet notebook she made) and a sign language coloring sheet of the letter once a week.

 

I printed the weeks lesson ideas for me to read through at the same time and requested books from the library for the next week's letter so that I would pick them up when I went to the library.

 

So I spent about 30 min printing and reserving for the week's work. It didn't seem like too much. I did almost no laminating :) I once did a file folder game. It was cute. But too much work for me for something that barely got used. We have done one or two lapbooks over the years, but not for preschool!

 

We did do a lot of the water games, beans and rice to play in, moon sand, etc. That stuff is messy, but my kids had long attention spans for that type of play. It was worth it. She did lots of playdough at the table while older sis did bigger kid stuff.

 

Other than that I used the R&S ABC workbooks over 4 yr old preK and K. That way I had something for to her work on when I needed it or when she wanted it once or twice a week while I worked with older sis.

 

We did more like the preschool above it sounds like. A little focused storytime, learning, coloring, and cutting in the morning with the LOTW or R&S stuff, then playdough or sensory type stuff while I worked with older sis. She also had puzzles and sewing cards and other quiet activities that she liked. Sometimes she built block buildings forever for her Polly Pockets. Then lots of singing, practicing ASL and playing outside. We did crafts a couple of times a week related to the Odd's SOTW and she went to scouts and other places with her sis and did stuff there too.

[redheadmom]

I just went to Walmart or Target (I forget) and bought one of those Everything for Preschool workbooks for $5; it was much cheaper than printing everything. The book had lots of tracing, cut and paste, letters, number, etc. I did find some of the pages a little hard for early preschool. My ds liked that he was doing "school" and thought it was fun. We would only work on it for @ 15 minutes a day without being too structured or strict. The rest of the time we would do storytime, puzzles, coloring, or he would play with his toys.