Hello! My advice is to decide what you want from the preschool experience. Lots of people have offered their opinions about this, but I think preschools can offer varied experiences that are often equally valid. Then find some like-minded parents--ask around at your church, library, or MOPS group and talk out what it is you would like to accomplish. I wrote an online article at HUBPAGES.COM about starting your own preschool at home. This type of preschool experience can be a valid alternative to enrolling your child in a pricey program. Here is my article:

http://hubpages.com/_o3w9wmuys93/hub/Starting-a-cooperative-preschool 

My oldest is five and my middle is three, we've been homeschooling for about two years now.  If you do plan on sending your daughter to public school I would recommend checking with whatever school she'll be attending as to what they expect children entering Kindergarten to know.  I was shocked to hear a friend talking about how the schools in our district expect the kids to not only know all their ABC/123's when entering K but to be able to write them as wel!  You'll want to know beforehand what she'll need to know so you can tailor your teaching to fit those recommendations.

 Personally, the library is my curriculum source.  I've gotten countless things there that have been wonderful.  Books, educational materials, videos, etc.  I would recommend you do a search for reading lists, "twaddle free" reading lists or preschool book recommendations if you need help finding good reading material.  PBS kids website has lots of awesome printables for free, also if you do a search for free preschool printables you'll find TONS of them.

If you really feel like homeschooling is something you'd be interested in doing for your daughter, use this year as an opportunity to show your hubby how she can thrive in a homeschooled environment.  What you'll be teaching her are the basic fundamentals to build her education on.  If he sees a positive and productive school year he might be more apt to agree to do it another year. 

 Good luck and have fun!

We used magnetic letters and numbers. Flash card with colors, numbers, shapes, letters, animals and some small 3 letter words to begin with.  We used lunch or snack time to teach beginning fractions ( 1/2 apple, 1/4 of the pies, 1/6 of the pizza, 1/8 of a Hershey bar.)  We used videos for early social studies (community helpers, holidays, coloring books are good for this too. Videos are good for learning songs, poems, nursery rhymes, and patriotic songs and learning various musical instruments.). Workbooks are ok!  I would suggest you make it as much fun as possible at this age.  I started with pre-school and finished with high school graduation.  I always wished I had just spent a lot more time playing with them.  It is amazing how much they learn from putting on a puppet show or helping you in the garden or playing dress up.  After spending a few minutes learning something from a book such as cowboys and Indians or explorers or wild animals give them some time to digest what they learned.  Have them tell the lesson back to you in their own words and then just set back and watch and you will see wild animals come alive, or a backyard explorer at work or a pirate come alive and take your gold and jewels from your jewelry box.  Children take what they learn and use it in their play.  You might be very surprised at what they learn from time spent with you.

I was a preschool teacher for many years and often with very little funding for materials from the church run preschool. Children need to have fun (think games) and be exposed to what you want them to learn. For example in my school we used themes such as Apples, Fall, Bears, etc. We used the mailboxes magazine which you can order online and we used Totline's theme a saurus. We covered colors, shapes, letters, numbers, days of the week, Bible songs, Bible stories, fingerplays and songs and art. Sometimes we combined several of these things. For example, if we were doing the theme of bugs and insects we would combine colors (green caterpillars, orange butterflys, red ladybugs), science (looking at books with true life photos, catching bugs and keeping them in clear containers, buying caterpillars and making butterfly houses and watching them hatch out of cocoons), counting (construction paper cut outs of butterflys, ladybugs, etc.), and letters (talking about the letter B for bugs and butterflys, C for caterpillars, L for ladybugs).The benefit of themes is that the children learn all about that subject, you can choose subjects the child is interested in (ocean animals, spiders, birthdays, jungle animals, trucks, etc.). Children can also play matching games that you make matching colors (cut out of construction paper), letters (one letter with pictures of things that start with that letter, shapes (again cut out of construction paper), and numbers ( a written number that they put down that number of items- you can use candy, juice lids, markers, basically anything that is safe and that they can count.).These matching games initially should be introduced and played with a parent, once the child understands the concept they can play these alone. Also, felt boards are a fun way to re-inforce the concepts you have introduced but can also be used for independent play. Also, look at www.preschoolexpress and www.themailbox.com.

 I've been very lucky in that my toddler loves to learn - her idea of 'playing toys' is reading books, no lie.  We have no clue what planet she came from LOL

Anyway, I found an online preschool curriculum to use with her and at 28 months she knows all her letters, shapes, colors, has an amazing vocabulary and is starting some begining phonics.  This fall we'll be working on writing and we fully expect her to be reading by age 4 - just because she loves to learn, its been very easy with her. 

The link for the curriculum (free) is here, I've recommended it to several people who all report good results:  http://www.letteroftheweek.com/

Jen D. 

I just found the following lwebsite online.  I am not the most decisive mom so I like that they have a calendar for the whole year.  My son is older so I will be supplementing with the flash cards, card games and workbooks we have collected online as well as the pritnables and games online at pbskids.org, wondertime and Nick Jr.  I like that the website offers a general theme which can be built upon  and it is FREE.  Like others have said before me though, preschool is a time for learning through play and experience.  The main reason I use the materials is to provide a little variety to our days.  Also, I keep our dollar store workbook pages inside the clear page protector sheets in binders.  This allows me to rearrange them with my different themes and, best of all lets us use a dry erase marker on the outside of the page protectors then wipe off (sometimes with a damp cloth).  This allows us to use the same sheets over and over until he gets bored with them. 

http://www.laxfamilyresources.org/preschool_curriculum.htm

 Hi,

I have a 3 yr old as well, but she's in a play based preschool.  I took a chance and purchased this program called Kidsparkz (http://www.kidsparkz.com/index.html). I went ahead and purchased the whole curriculum package.  She's havig a sale and it's half price for $50.  It comes as a CD with PDFs of lesson plans, activities, and lots and lots of printables.  This is meant to be a curriculum package for a preschool.  I was looking for some specific things, like educational printables.  I am not disappointed (I assure you, this is not my company).  I am a college science teacher, and so think you can teach reading, writing, and math all wraped together in science projects, as kids are naturally curious.  I checked out the books "Mudpies to Magnets" and they are of limited use.  I realy like "Science Everywhere" by Barbara J. Taylor.  It has a long intro section about preschool learning that may or may not be useful to you.  And it has an extensive bibliography and also hundreds of short ideas.  I like this better as the ideas are so varied something should work. M to M was much more structured and frankly seemed very very boring.  I hope this helps.