Check out the first and third parts of this series–Part 1: Calendar Time and Part 3: Letter of the Week Activities.
In Part 1 I explained how I started doing Pre-Preschool with my boys, aged 3 and 2. Remember that this isn’t meant to be a full-blown preschool academic curriculum, but–as the name implies–this is an intro to preschool skills, namely letters and numbers.
I previously discussed how my boys benefited from the routine and schedule laid out by a visual calendar that they could see daily and understand. It was a huge help!
Beyond that, I also wanted to introduce basic preschool topics with my boys. We of course talked about colors and numbers and all that basic stuff throughout our normal day, but I wanted something more formal, something I could track and remember and be sure I was teaching them everything they needed.
And so was born our Learning Board. Let me explain how I made mine, what we put on it, and how we learn from it.
Supplies You Need
- A Board
I happened to have this unused cork bulletin board that I’d been saving for my homeschooling future, and here was finally the perfect opportunity to use it. It’s 23×35 inches.
Side note: my friend made a similar learning board for her three-year-old son and we compared and shared a lot of ideas. We both learned the basic preschool skills (letters, numbers, colors, and shapes), but she decided to make hers on a tri-folding board, where I made mine on the cork board.
She wanted her board more portable so she could fold it up and put it away in the closet when she wasn’t using it. On the flipside, my cork board is easier to mount flashcards to without taping them directly to the board. There are pros and cons for both options. You can do whatever works best for you.
- Pushpins
Obviously with a cork board you need push pins to go with it (if you use a something other than a cork board you still need something to mount and hold your flashcards to it). I used basic pushpins to hold up my decorative string, but I bought these special pushpins with clips on them so I could clip my flashcards onto my board without poking holes into the cards themselves. These clips are easy to use and very durable.
- Pointing Sticks
I already described my Pointing Sticks in my previous post about Calendar Time, so I’ll sum up quickly here. I keep 12-inch dowels in our calendar pocket for pointing and counting to the date. We use the same Pointing Sticks for our Learning Board. Read on to see more examples of how I use them.
- Flashcards
I hope this one is a given; you need to actually put something to learn on your Learning Board.
I have flashcards for letters, numbers, shapes, colors, weather, and feelings. I also put pattern-building paper on my board and pictures that correlate with the current scripture story we’re studying for the week.
I’ll describe more fully down below exactly what I have and how I use them on my board.
- Decorative String
This one is totally optional and I only recently added it to my board, but I love the extra color and formality it adds. I used this cute string I had on hand and pinned it to outline my various flashcards.
- A Storage Box
I use a basic, plastic Sterilite box to store all my extra supplies in. Inside are all the extra flashcards, “Build a Pattern” paper strips and stickers, extra pushpins, extra calendar pieces (unused holidays and month names), and a pencil for marking the backs of certain flashcards (read below to see which ones and why). I pull this box out every Monday to update the board.
What’s on Our Learning Board
- Letter: I inherited these letter flashcards from my mom. There’s two per letter and they have basic pictures of items that start with that letter, such as “Rr” for rainbow and ring (pictured below).
First we talk about the shape of the letter, something like this: “Big R is made with a long line, bump on top, and then a line sticking out.” Then they’ll repeat and trace on the card with me, “Long line, bump on top, stick out.”
Sometimes we use our Pointing Sticks to draw the letter in the air, or for entirely straight letters we arrange the sticks on the floor in that letter (letters like A, E, F, H, T, V, etc.).
Then we make the sound. “R says rrrrrr like rrrrrrainbow and rrrrrring,” pointing to the flashcards. “What other words do you know that start with the rrrrrr sound?”
My boys are great at this game and together we come up with all sorts of words. “Run! Race! Rain! Rake! Right!” We also list any friends or family members we know whose names start with that letter. As a bonus, I also explain that we use the big R for names and the little r for everything else.
- Shape: I made these shape cards myself, simply with a sharpie on 5×7 index cards. I have eleven in total that we rotate between: circle, triangle, square, rectangle, star, heart, oval, octagon, pentagon, hexagon, and trapezoid.
As much as possible I try to coordinate my weekly shape with that week’s letter, but sometimes I choose to coordinate it with our number instead. Notice that in my pictured example we are learning the number 3 and so are also learning about the 3-sided triangle. We’ll learn about the square along with the number 4, the pentagon along with 5, and so on.
Like the letter, we talk about the shape and trace it on the card. For round shapes (circle, oval, heart), we draw it in the air with our Pointing Sticks. For straight shapes (square, rectangle, triangle), we arrange our sticks on the floor to make that shape.
I keep a pencil in my storage box and on every Monday, when I switch out the Board for new cards, I make a small tally mark on the back of these shape cards indicating how many times we’ve reviewed them. There are some shapes that simply won’t coordinate at all with that week’s letter or number, and on those weeks I choose a shape that we’ve learned the least, based on the tally marks on their backs.
- Color: I also made these color cards by cutting out colored cardstock into 4×6 rectangles and writing on them with a sharpie. I have twelve colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, brown, tan, gray, black, and white.
Like the shapes, I also try to coordinate the week’s color with the letter, if possible. Notice in the below picture that this week we are learning Red with the letter Rr.
Even if the first letter doesn’t perfectly match (such as red for Rr, yellow for Yy, etc.), I try to match our letter to the middle sound, such as learning blue for Uu (and emphasized the “bluuuuuu” sound) and green for Ee (“greeeeen”).
Like the shapes, I also mark the backs of my color cards with tally marks to keep track of which ones we’ve learned the most. Sometimes (if we’re can’t coordinate with the color) I let my boys pick a color for that week, and therefore their favorites have way more marks than some of the others.
- Number: we were gifted these number flashcards for Christmas last year by my mother-in-law. The set includes two cards for each number, one with the actual number written, and the other with that number of animals. I have the numbers 1-25, but for Pre-Preschool we’re only learning numbers 1-10.
The numbers simply go up every week until we run out and start over at 1 again. Just like the letter, we talk about the shape of the number and usually draw it in the air with our Pointing Sticks. Then we count the animals on the coordinating card.
- Build a Pattern: all my research says that recognizing and building patterns is one of the earliest pre-reading skills, and so I really wanted to incorporate patterns into our Learning Board.
It took me some time to decide how to actually do it, and this is what I’ve settled on: on a simple Word document I printed these landscape-oriented rows of dots (I found the dots in the Insert-Symbol section and simply enlarged it to the size I wanted). Then I cut out the rows. Every Monday I put a new, unused row on the board and we pick a new three-color pattern. I bought a big pack of colored dot stickers, which we stick onto the dots in order to form our patterns. Then we repeat and repeat the pattern every day, adding another set of three stickers until it is full.
In the future I’d like to incorporate shape-patterns as well as color patterns, but as we’re just starting these patterns I’m happy to begin with the basics. This is, after all, Pre-Preschool and not full preschool. And my boys have caught on to this concept almost immediately, even my younger one, and they both love sticking the correct stickers on every day.
- Weather: I found these cute weather printables that I printed and laminated. It contains the following weather options: sunny, partly cloudy, cloudy, rainy, stormy, snowy, and windy. The Pinterest link I originally found these particular ones is gone, but there are tons of other options on there.
I pinned a little piece of felt onto my board and stuck a velcro dot onto the backs of each of the weather cards to make them easier to move every single day, instead of my regular flash cards that only move once a week.
I also wanted to store the extra weather cards in a convenient spot so we could pull them out every day. So I cut the flap off an envelope and pinned it onto my board to make a pocket, which is easy and sturdy.
Every day we pull out all the weather cards and lay them on the floor, then we look out the window together and talk about what we see. Then we choose the correct weather card and stick it on its felt.
- Emotions: like the weather cards, I searched and printed emotion cards from Pinterest. These are also laminated with velcro dots for sticking to the board.
Like with the shapes and colors, I try to coordinate our emotion with our weekly letter whenever possible. My goal for these weekly emotions is to simply give my boys the vocabulary to express themselves. I describe what that emotion feels like and then try to give a scenario in which a person might feel that way. This week we are learning “afraid” and I try to list some of the things I’m afraid of: spiders, mostly. But I’m also afraid of my boys getting hurt, I told them, and so I use my fear to drive me to action; I protect my children because I’m afraid of them getting hurt.
Sometimes I worry these conversations might be a little too complex for them, but to their credit they’ve responded really well to our weekly emotions and don’t seem to have a problem so far.
- Come Follow Jesus Christ: scripture pictures to match the current scripture story we’re studying
I’m a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. In 2019 the church instigated a new program called “Come Follow Me” that said a bulk of spiritual and religious learning should be done in the home and supported by Sunday-attended church, not the other way around. I was really on board with the idea and really felt it was true; I’m responsible for teaching my boys about Jesus Christ as their mother, not some random Sunday school or seminary teacher.
After some trial-and-error for how to practically teach my young boys the scriptures and the Come Follow Me lessons, I decided to add a section to our Learning Board so we could learn about the scriptures just a little bit every day.
(For the record, I’d previously tried teaching a full lesson every Sunday, but that just never worked out for us. This method, touching on a brief topic once a day, has been way more meaningful and sustainable.)
Note that the church program itself is actually called “Come Follow Me” based on Christ’s regular invitations to do just that throughout the New Testament, but as my young boys aren’t biblical scholars, I didn’t want to confuse them into thinking they were following me Mom, but that we’re actually learning about and following Jesus Christ. That’s why I renamed it to “Come Follow Jesus Christ.”
This year we are studying the Book of Mormon and I just so happen to have a collection of pictures based on the Book of Mormon stories. So every week I pick the appropriate picture to go with that week’s story and post it here. Then every day I tell my boys that story, sometimes gradually adding more throughout the week if the story is particularly long.
Note that I’m not giving full-blown doctrinal lectures here but a basic introduction to what the Book of Mormon is and the stories it teaches. My boys are almost four and two, remember, and so I tell them four- and two-year-old versions of these stories, shortening and simplifying them as needed. It only takes a few minutes, but they’ve really come to love hearing these stories, for which I’m really grateful.
That’s how I do our Learning Board. We review our Board every day immediately following our Calendar Time. Total, doing both usually only takes about 15-20 minutes.
You can review how I do Calendar Time or check out Part 3 of this series: Letter of the Week Activities.
