Homeschool Preschool: Using Educational Signs to Your Advantage

Are you a parent who has started your own homeschool preschool program? Or, are you a parent who is taking steps to at least prepare your child for preschool or kindergarten at home? If you are, do you currently have educational signs hanging in your home? If not, you may want to take the time to examine them and their benefits.

Before focusing on ways that your child can benefit from the use of educational signs, it is first important to focus on what they are. At the preschool level, these signs may simply state the alphabet, list the numbers one through ten, have pictures of the different shapes, or the different colors. In all honesty, educational signs, even at the preschool level, come in a number of different formats.

As for the benefits of using educational signs at home, when implementing your own homeschool preschool program or when looking to prepare your child for preschool or kindergarten, there are a lot of them. For starters, using educational signs in your home can help to create an educational environment. Even if you choose to prepare your child for preschool or kindergarten at home or implement your own homeschool preschool program, you will want to create a school-like environment. If you are unable to set a specific room aside for doing so, educational signs can turn just about any room into your home into an educational environment.

Once your child knows that they have educational signs hanging in their home, they will likely use them to their advantage. My three year old uses her large alphabet sign to practice how to write. If she needs guidance, she often turns to the sign behind her, as opposed to simply asking me for help. For her, this creates a sense of pride, as she was still able to technically write her ABCs on her own.

If you do decide to hang educational signs in your home, be sure to use them to your advantage. This may simply involve pointing to a sign and asking your child what they see. You may even want reverse the roles a little and let your child do the asking. Provide them with a tool, such as a ruler, that allows them to point to a specific item, like a shape or a letter, on an educational sign. This is still educational in nature, but it creates a whole new fun preschool activity for your child, playing school and being the teacher.

Since there are a number of benefits to using educational signs to your advantage, when implementing your own homeschool preschool program or when simply just preparing your child for preschool or kindergarten at home, you may be curious as to how you can go about buying these signs. The internet is a nice approach, but many local retailers, including traditional department stores and even dollar stores, carry these educational signs, often for an affordable price.

In addition to simply buying educational signs for your preschooler, you may also want to make your own. In fact, you can let your child watch you or even help you. This allows you to get full use out of your educational signs. For example, when drawing and coloring in a star, ask your child what shape they see, as well as what color.

As you can see, you have a number of different options when looking to use educational signs to your advantage, especially at the early learning levels.