Kindergartener wants to 'do school'

I am not opposed to workbooks for my kids if they are requesting them. My 3.5 year old has been working on the “C” Rod and Staff workbook at the table while I read aloud. She keeps talking about how “cool” it is. My 5.5 (K’er) has a copywork book and also a calendar book that she does. I think it’s important not to PUSH school on a younger than 6, but especially when they see older siblings doing school, it seems normal that younger ones are interested. For my K’er, I have a list of things to do with her (including cooking/baking/cleaning/handwork) and we just take as long as it takes to get through the list and then start over. She also does board games and is read living math books by my DS (almost 8). These things are “school,” but they are fun and it’s no big deal if we don’t do them every day.

Personally, I think the ETC Primers are great.  There is just the right amount of handwriting in each lesson (we usually do 2 pages per day).   So many phonics books have tons of writing, but I think ETC is right on track.  So many letter workbooks have an entire page to fill with one letter!

Other great options for phonics are sand/rice trays to practice “writing” letters, magnetic letters and a magnetic surface, masking tape letters on the floor (they can cover the letters with blocks, drive cars down them, hop along the letter, etc.).  I just picked up some cute Starfall puzzles for DD.  There is one for each vowel sound.

I have quite an assortment of math materials for my K’er: pattern blocks (with Patternables book), teddy bear counters, geoboards, etc.  I often have her get these out when I’m working with the other DC.

We also love the Rod & Staff preschool books.  They are so cute and work on hand-eye coordination more than anything.  My DC have all used these and they love the cut/paste activities.  Kumon has some nice workbooks to practice scissor skills as well.

We used Delightful Handwriting for K last year and it worked great. This year I picked up some cute Crayola workbooks in the $1 section at Target for my almost 5 YO who thinks he wants to do school but isn’t really ready. They had shapes, tracing, color coded color by number/shape/dot (hard to explain), and easy dot to dot. They had an alphabet one too but it had a lot of writing and I skipped that one.