Mastering preschool skills with Kumon Books!

My child amazes me. I can say that, right?

I mean, I am just amazed by how smart little kids are. SMART!

I started the year with a list of preschool skills I wanted my three-and-a-half year old to achieve by year end. I had a hard time deciding which skills to focus on as he won’t be four until end of February and most skill lists I found were for kids going into preschool already four years old.

When Kumon Books sent me a complimentary sampling of their basic preschool skills workbooks to use in our home preschool, I was excited to see their format and coverage. With our Kumon Books we:

Teach a variety of preschool skills at home

With Kumon Books, you can have your preschooler work through a variety of preschool skills like drawing, coloring, pasting, tracing, and cutting. Even mazes and puzzles.

Each workbook is rated for a range of ages. For instance, you could get the Coloring book for 2-3-4 year olds, or the Coloring at the Zoo book for 3-4-5 year olds. Children move up in skills as they progress through the books.

The books are printed on high quality paper with color ink, and each book uses paper appropriate for the task. The Cutting and Pasting books have thicker cardstock-like pages with a coated surface – this makes it easier for small fingers to handle as they also deal with the scissors.

Teach preschool skills in a step-by-step format

Kumon Books start children off at entry-level. In my son’s Tracing book, he started by tracing lines vertically, far apart on the page. Then horizontally. Then lines closer together. Now he’s working on slanted lines. Soon he’ll work on curvy lines. If he gets stuck, I can have him return to a previous worksheet and redo that one in a different color pencil or crayon.

As kids progress through the book, the activities get more challenging. In teacher-speak, this is known as teaching in the zone of proximity – giving instruction and work just a bit up from their current level and coaching them to attain a higher level.

Develop preschool skills with engagement and support

My son loves the animals featured on various pages – he traces their path through the forest with excitement. The bright colors, objects, and animals hold his interest despite the repetitive practice.

Coloring his favorite fruits and vegetables with the matching color is exciting for him. Because the worksheet gives him just a small area in the middle of the picture to color, his hand doesn’t become fatigued, and if he goes “out of the lines” it’s hard to tell because the rest of the picture is in color – so he never feels discouraged by accidentally going out of the box.

He traces around the pictures too – he is really into tracing! And it’s another way you could use the coloring images for additional skills practice.

See preschool skills developing day by day!

My favorite book is the Drawing book. I love the way it shows kids step-by-step how to draw objects like an apple, baseball, and more! We are only a couple pages into this book, but I seriously believe it has stretched his drawing abilities already. Before we started any of the Kumon books, he had a very hard time with scissors, drew pictures very lightly with crayons. His drawings were loose in structure so I had a hard time knowing what anything was except a box with circles was a car.

Now, just a few weeks into the school year, his drawing progress is remarkable! After the first page of the Drawing book where he learned the three steps to drawing an apple, later that week he asked me to draw a tree. Then he drew an apple in the tree, and a ladder going up to the apple. He’s writing more firmly with crayons, and his drawings have more intentional details.

I really believe the Kumon Books we’re using are developing his preschool skills in an easy-to-use and effective method. It’s really hard to explain the rapid progress over just a few weeks otherwise.

I’ll be buying more of these books (and asking for them as Christmas gifts for my kids!). You can purchase your own books online at Amazon.com – click on the titles below to check out the ones we have and find many more Kumon Publishing products! (affiliate links)