We don’t buy fancy supplies for our homeschool preschool work. I want to teach my children to use what they have first so they do not always think they have to buy new. It certainly has made our budget as a one-income household work much better to live this way.
It was easy enough to put together letter of the day activities on a budget. My oldest daughter was a kid that needed to learn to extend her attention span a bit from 4-5 years old, so this simple hands-on way to learn and explore letter sounds was great for her. It can be short or long depending on the child’s interest.
I could follow my daughter’s lead, while still encouraging her to focus for an appropriate amount of time.
If you have not viewed the Preschool at Home Curriculum page, that will give you an idea of how we structured our homeschool preschool days. When we started learning the letters in depth each day, we started our preschool time with
ABC Book coloring pages and review
Then we got started with our letter of the day activities. Follow this every day, or every other day depending on your schedule for preschool at home.
Letter of the Day for Preschool
What you need:
Construction paper (one for each letter)
Black marker
How to make it:
Write one upper case and one lower case letter on each piece of construction paper.
Aa, Bb, Cc, all the way to Zz. You don’t have to prep the entire alphabet ahead.
Then gather any extra stickers you have in the house.
We had a drawer of stickers in our office. I did not have to buy new stickers for this activity. If you need to buy some stickers, check out these fun ones on Amazon or the Dollar Store.
Look with your child for stickers that start with the letter of the day. Since day 1 for us focused on A and a, we went with stickers that had pictures of “A-things” like apple, or the word “awesome”.
My preschooler pressed the stickers that had A-words or pictures onto her Aa paper.
This was a very interactive activity. Since she was already 4 years old when we started a regular preschool at home schedule, she knew some letter sounds and could find some of the stickers on her own.
Birds were our focus with letter B. It was a good exercise in the sound B makes.
I didn’t want to spend a lot on stickers, so we used what we had from Highlights magazines and freebies that came in the mail. I even cut off the image from old address labels and put those in the kids’ sticker collection. There are a lot of ways to keep the cost of preschool at home very low.
If you haven’t looked at the day-by-day homeschool preschool curriculum I created and used with my kids. You can check out that page here.
More letter of the day activities for preschool:
Letter of the Week Crafts at No Time for Flashcards
Letter of the Week Ideas at Kids Activities Blog
Preschool Letter Crafts at Cryal and Company
What are your favorite letter of the day activities for preschool?
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Enjoy your time at home!
I am so grateful to have found your blog! You have given me such inspiration and encouragement for teaching my daughter preschool at home. I have been somewhat pressured by her father and his parents to send her to a formal preschool program but I know my daughter and feel she needs that extra time at home with me. I am so excited to utilize and and explore all of your great ideas for activities and learning. Thank you for empowering moms like me to educate our young children at home. You’re blog is such a blessing!
Stephanie, This makes my heart so happy. You are the best first teacher for your child! You can do it!! I am so glad these activities will be helpful for you. Let me know how it all goes. 🙂
Those are really cool ideas and I love teaching the kids to be resourceful and not depend on running out to buy something new every time they think they need it to make something work. What a great life lesson!
I agree. We use what we have first.