Affordable Preschool at Home with Chalk Preschool Online #Review

This is a sponsored campaign with Mums the Word Network and Chalk Preschool . All opinions are my own.

A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I received some upsetting news. The private preschool that we planned to enroll our three-year-old son in for the 2014-15 school year, did away with their 3 year old class. B won't be four before their Jr. K class (4 year old) cut off date, which is July 31st, meaning he'd need to be in a three-year-old class next year. There are some other preschools in town, that we could enroll B in, and we may wind up doing that for next year, but the idea was to send him to Preschool at this particular private school, and for him to stay there, continuing his K-12 education, as the school goes all the way through high school.

Finding a preschool can truly be a challenge. Number one, they're not free. All preschool programs in our area are for 2-3 mornings a week, and can cost anywhere from $100.00/mo to $180.00/mo or more. A lot of parents just don't have that much extra money laying around, and it's a costly expense for a few hours a week. Other parents may find themselves not being able to send their children to preschool, because the parents are working, and their children may be in a day care program or child development center.

I've been fortunate to be able to stay at home with my son, and began working on age appropriate at home lessons and activities with him, well over a year ago. I wanted to make sure that when he did go to school for the first time, he would be ready, and possibly even advanced.

I was recently given the opportunity to give Chalk Preschool a try. Chalk is a free online Preschool interactive curriculum for children, and parents. Chalk is 100% free to join and use, according to your own schedule. Chalk provides parents with daily lessons and activities for their children, through videos that are fun and engaging.

Day to day lesson plan screen on the Chalk site...

I went ahead and signed B up for this program, because we've been doing pre-K lessons at home anyway, I thought this would be a fun addition to our daily lessons. B has his own online classroom, which we visit every day. There is a lesson plan already put together for each child, a new one each day. Since it's the month of March, we're learning all about this month, and its color (yellow), as well as the other months and seasons. It's been a lot of fun for us to learn together, and also do some fun new activities.

The online Preschool curriculum has different paths to follow each day, and lots of different subjects to explore together, such as weather, literacy, math/science, and art. The parent may select which subject they want to explore, and which videos and activities to watch and try together, as well.

B loves art, so we were excited to learn about paint brushes together.

Learning about painting, and different styles of paint brushes.

We have a whole lot of paint brushes at our house, so we gathered them all up, and compared their differences. We followed up with an activity, where we painted with all of the different brushes on a paper bag. We explored the different types of brush strokes the paint made, as well as the size of the streaks of paint, according to the size of the brush.

B, ready to begin his painting exploration lesson!

The ladies who do the teaching through the videos at Chalk Preschool, are a lot of fun. Ms. Jerra sings lots of fun songs that are easy for the kids (and parents) to pick up on and remember. The songs are very short, and help to teach the children themes like seasons, days of the week, months of the year, etc.

Learning about the different seasons with Ms. Jerra...

...and singing the Months of the Year song, too!

As we explored the month of March, and talked about the spring season, we decided to make a poster and to include lots of things that represent spring. This was a super fun activity for us to do together, while we played some of the other daily videos from Chalk Preschool.

Our month of March poster included colorful raindrops, grass, flowers, the sunshine, a boat...

Chalk Preschool not only provides short, fun daily videos to go along with the lesson plan for each day, but they also have some really neat printables for each day, as well. As we talked about weather and began to learn about differences in temperature, we came across this super colorful graph, which we used to help us chart the temperatures of each day for the whole week! Unfortunately, the temps on the graph weren't quite low enough for some of the cold days we've been experiencing lately... Mother Nature has been off her rocker!

Printable temperature charting graph.

Chalk Preschool is such a neat tool for parents to have, and since it's all online, it's easily accessible from wherever you may find yourself in a day! You could watch the daily videos while sitting in the waiting room at the Dr.'s office with your child! Chalk definitely takes the guess work out of planning preschool lessons at home for your kiddos. When I began following an at home preschool curriculum for B, I was also taking on a lot of extra work! I had no idea that planning out some daily lessons and activities would be so time consuming, and at some times, frustrating! Chalk plans everything out, so all I need to do is sit my child down, and press 'play.'

The Chalk Parent Portal

Chalk also offers a Parent Portal, where parents can go to seek advice, learn a bit more about the Chalk program and teaching their child in their own home, and they can give their feedback on the program, as well.

I am so thankful to now have access to Chalk Preschool for my son. Their free online preschool activities can't be beat! I love not having to spend several hours a week, looking for lessons and activities, or forcing my three-year-old to work out of a workbook for an hour every day. We're truly enjoying our daily lessons and activities provided through Chalk, and I highly recommend check it out, if you're looking for a simple, yet effective online preschool curriculum for your child.

Want It? Try It!

Head on over to Chalk Preschool to sign up for your free account! Remember, the site is 100% free to use, and you will receive a personalized lesson plan for your child, daily, after signing up. You can keep up with Chalk Preschool by visiting the Chalk Preschool Newsroom, the Chalk Preschool Blog, and by connecting with Chalk Preschool on Facebook!

We'd love to hear your experiences with Chalk Preschool! Join today, and share your thoughts!