Math and Reading for your 3-year-old

For the most part, every mom wants to do her best to teach her children and give them the knowledge they need to easily matriculate into public school. However, a lot of the things out there to help your kids through their preschool years are VERY expensive! Which brings me to my two new favorite teaching tools.


When Brooklyn first expressed her desire to read, I looked everywhere online for a good reading program that would be appropriate for a 3 year old. At first, I couldn't find ANYTHING that was under $200! Then I stumbled on a review for this book. I bought it off of Amazon for under $20 and that included shipping and handling!

The box of cards you see next to the book was a Walmart purchase on a whim. Kevin and I wanted a new game for our home-bound date nights and picked it up. It wasn't very fun but ended up being a fantastic math tool!


Some of the things I love about the book are that it works with lower case letters (which is 90% of what we read) and focuses on building sounds slowly into words. Each page can be a lesson in and of itself, although the lessons are several pages long. Brooklyn and I do about 3 pages a day and she is really picking it up quickly.

I decided to use the cards as a math tool when I was online, studying what math should look like for a preschooler. Everything I read really focused on categorizing and identifying things (shapes, numbers, positions, etc.)

Each card has a shape, color, and number of objects on it. I split the deck between us and then we start the first round of categorizing, which consists of Brooklyn and I separating the cards into piles of matching colors. When we're both done with our piles, I shuffle the cards and we start the second round, which is separating the cards into shape piles. Then we shuffle again and start the last round, which is separating the cards by the number of objects on them.


Brooklyn LOVES the one-on-one time we get with this game and she is getting REALLY good at quickly identifying the number of things she is looking at. I am amazed at how quickly she picked up on the game and how easily she started using the skills she learned into her every day life.

Anyway, the point of this post is not to make you run out to the store and immediately buy these things, but instead, to show you that teaching your children can be inexpensive, and that you can use things already lying around your house to aid you. Take a look through your old books and games and see what you can use to teach your preschooler about this crazy world we live in. Your children will love it, and it might even get you started on your Spring Cleaning! Good Luck!

(And in case you were wondering, it was REALLY cold in our house the day I took these pictures, so Brooklyn wouldn't take off her coat. Also, sorry you had to look at my disgusting apartment carpets! Ewww!)