Schoolhouse Review ~ Gryphon House (Preschool) #hsreviews

We had the opportunity to review The Homegrown Preschooler: Teaching Your Kids in the Places They Live offered by Gryphon House. This 204-page FULL COLOR soft cover book is one of THE BEST resources I have EVER seen! It isn’t very easy to impress me completely…but I am COMPLETELY impressed. VERY NICE resource for instruction and encouragement for moms of preschoolers.

If you click HERE you have the opportunity to look inside the book…HOWEVER, I wasn’t all that impressed when I did that as it looked like a lot of other books available…but let me assure you – THIS IS *NOT* like every other book out there!

The first nine chapters are the encouragement and instruction with topics such as learning through play, organizing and working outside the box. These were pretty similar to many other things I’ve read but were great reading! [There are also recipes sporadically throughout these chapters.] But I have to say that my VERY FAVORITE part of this book is in the back…THE ACTIVITIES! I know when P was a little younger (not that long ago!) I was looking and looking and looking all over for different hands-on things I could do with him to have fun and learning. THIS BOOK HAS ALMOST 100 PAGES OF ACTIVITIES!!!! And the majority of the activities involve making homemade things with things you normally already have at home. *THIS* is what I had been looking for! (And things we can still do now…YAY!)

The activities cover home life, science, gross motor, fine motor, math, language and emergent literacy, art and social-emotional. Is that a list, or what? (Can you tell I’m impressed?!?!)

Here is a picture of inside the book…beautiful color photos sharing what they are talking about so you can SEE it too. Additionally, there are MANY “boxes” of little tid bits of information shared on a lot of the pages – field trip ideas, notes from the authors, recipes, etc.

Some examples of each are:
Home Life: helping in the bathroom, kitchen, cleaning, gardening
Science: see my pictures below (keeping in mind that there are several others shared in the book as well)
Nature: nature journaling, bird sounds, rock collection
Gross Motor: follow the line, tap shoes, obstacle course
Fine Motor: spaghetti in the hole, shakers, nuts and bolts
Math: sorting shells, roll the dice, TP measuring
Language & Emergent Literacy: gives book reading ideas
Art & Sensory: painting, printing & stamping, sculpture
Social-Emotional: hair salon, tool time, body tracing

Here is us doing “Solid and Liquid, All in One” – we LOVED it! (The ENTIRE FAMILY loved it!)

Here we are doing “Fizz Fun”:

This was “Jumping Colors!”…SO.MUCH.FUN!

This book sells for $29.95 and is worth every penny! I seriously wish this had been something I had available a couple years ago…it is EXACTLY what I had been looking for…a resource of things to do with my young one. All in one place. Using mostly items found around the house. Don’t get me wrong, I can still use it now but it would have saved me a lot of time of all the searching I’ve done over the last several years!

I seriously cannot say enough good things about this book. LOVE IT!

Click to read more Gryphon House reviews from the Schoolhouse Review Crew

Here’s praying you have fun learning!

 

 

 

Tagged: Homeschooling, PreK, Schoolhouse Review