Looking for ideas on how to homeschool toddlers? Find 10 incredible resources that can help you in homeschooling your toddler.
With the ongoing pandemic situation, most of us (parents) are in a similar boat of homeschooling your little ones. As a toddler mom myself, I completely understand how difficult this situation is and especially if you have no experience of teaching a kid then homeschooling might sound just like rocket science.
With older kids, the situation is still tough but then there are resources and virtual classes available and most importantly older kids are grown up and understand that they are expected to learn. But what do you do with toddlers? They have no idea of what the ongoing pandemic situation is all about. All they want to do is run around, explore and create a lot of mess 🙂
With the start of the pandemic, I was absolute lost with no idea on how to teach my daughter. She turns three this Halloween and is in that age where all she wants to do is get her hand on everything and anything that is around her. It was so hard to control her and achieve some normalcy back into our lives.
My daughter has been home since March 2020, and it was not until May that I officially started homeschooling her. In my journey of teaching my toddler, I have found indispensable support on a few learning resources (for toddlers) without which I have no idea as to how I would have even made it through. All these resources have come in super handy to homeschool my toddler and most importantly kept us all sane during the lockdown.
Below I have shared ten incredible resources that I have been using again and again in our daily routine of homeschooling my toddler and my experiences on how I use them. Hopefully, these resources come in handy to you as well to homeschool your little ones!
Related. I have been successful in homeschooling my toddler because of sticking to a fixed routine with her. Routines are like the backbone of a family and if you are looking to set up a routine with your toddler, then read this post here.
Related. Interested in fun & learning art & craft activities for your toddlers. Sign up here to get a pack of 25 activities for toddlers that requires minimal setup, are easy to do and teaches kids important life skills like sensory development, motor skills, creativity and a lot more.
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10 Incredible resources to homeschool toddlers
1. Busy Toddler Preschool learning program
This learning program created by Susie on her Busy Toddler blog is like my homeschooling bible. I follow her recommendation and class structure consistently and love how much there is for little ones to learn. She has 19 units in her entire program and each unit lasts for 2 weeks. The program has all the details of everything you need for each unit and although the learning session is only for 45min – 1 hr, still it keeps up pumped throughout the day. I break the activities in different sessions, and we do them throughout the day.
2. Bumo brain
If you have been following my stories on Instagram, then you would know how much I love Bumo Brain. Busy Toddler’s preschool learning program gives us to structure on how to plan out our homeschooling session whereas Bumo brain offers virtual classes experience for kids 2 years +. It is so amazing to have a resource like this when I have not been able to send my daughter to school.
They offer live classes which are 5 weeks long and come with an instructor and six other students. It’s fun watching my daughter interact with kids of her age through these classes. I have her enrolled in the Fall enrichment live classes and just recently they have launched a winter live class with a ton of free gifts. You can check them out here.
Related. Also, I have partnered with Bumo Brain to get you a 25% discount on any of the Live classes. Use my code RUPAL25 at checkout.
3. Post-it notes
I love using post-it notes around the home. Every week we target a new alphabet or a number to learn and then I write them on the post-it notes and stick them around the home like on the fridge or in our living room.
Whenever we are around the post-it notes I ask my toddler to spot the alphabet and tell me words that start with that alphabet. A great way to learn something as well as make conversations with your toddlers.
4. Reading Egg App
Although my daughter is 3 years old which is quite an early age to start reading by herself I am slowly trying to teach her to read and one of my favourite resource for this is the Reading eggs Junior. This online program is a great interactive program for kids aged 2-4 to help them get started on reading from such an early age.
Reading eggs has four fantastic interactive and great learning programs that your kids can benefit from. Packed with funny animations, a huge library of read-aloud books, alphabet games, songs and phonemic awareness activities it can teach your child to learn new words, sounds, and letters. Get the free 30 day trial.
Related. Curious to learn more about the Reading eggs learning program. Read this post here which is a complete review of the program.
5. Fridge magnets
Fridge magnets have been a great hit from the time my daughter was a year old. And now with her actually learning alphabets and numbers, they come in handy for a lot of our learning and sensory activities at home.
I usually try sensory bins like letter hunt (this one is a great example from busy toddler) or we trace magnets on white construction paper and colour them. Also, another great way to learn via fridge magnets is to play it like a wild card. We usually throw a bunch of fridge magnets in a big bowl and then on each's turn, one of us has to pull a magnet from the bowl while the other has to guess what alphabet or number it is.
6. Scholastic books
I had stumbled upon Scholastic books a few months back through a mom friend and absolutely love them. With the Scholastic store, the sky is the limit. They have unlimited reading books resources for kids of any age group. They also offer book clubs, magazines, seasonal bestsellers and a lot more.
Every month I order a pack of few of our favourite reading books for Mishika and also lately we have been reading the First Little readers scholastic book which can teach your toddler how to read. We are slowly making progress through the First Little Readers Level A, which is more like a picture book with very small letter words.
The letters are usually one syllable or two and easy for Mishika to spot out the different alphabets in the book.
Related. Curious to find some exciting Halloween books for your little ones to read? Read this post here.
7. Sensory activities
Doing sensory activities at home has been one of my biggest tools for homeschooling Mishika. I plan out the week with 4-5 good sensory activities and club them with her learning session.
Sensory activities are a great way for toddlers to explore and learn new things around them. It teaches them important skills like hand-eye coordination, motor skill development, analytical skills, creativity and a lot more.
Related. Wondering what you need for a sensory bin set up at home. Read this post here to find all the basic things you will need to set up a sensory bin for your toddler. Also, all the items if stored properly can be easily reused.
Related. Looking for some sensory bin ideas for your toddlers. Find 21 fun & learning sensory bin ideas for toddlers here.
8. Bob books
Bob books are another great resource to build a solid foundation of reading readiness in your little ones. We have the My First Bob books: Pre Reading skills set, and they are great to develop pre-literacy skills in a story format. Their pre-reading set of books can teach toddlers to identify basic shapes, letter recognition, sorting, classifying and symbol identification to build important problem-solving skills.
They also offer workbooks. You can check out the store here.
9. Highlight for children
Highlight workbooks and magazines have been so helpful in our homeschooling routine. Just last month, I had my daughter signed up for their high five magazines annual subscription. Every month they send out a magazine filled with pictures and entertaining things to read about.
Filled with workbooks, puzzles, sticker books etc., there are so many helpful things available at the Highlight for children store that you can choose from and include in your homeschooling routine.
10. Reading
Reading storybooks has been our biggest way of homeschooling. We start and end our day with books. Reading has been very instrumental in teaching my daughter phonemic awareness (sound of letters) and phonics (shapes of the letters in print). It has also helped improve her vocabulary has been a great way to learn about the outside world.
Related. I have curated an Amazon store with some of Mishika’s favourite books here.
Related. 10 Benefits of reading to your child that every parent should know
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