Here are FREE virtual preschool videos to watch! These free virtual videos are
videos even a veteran preschool teacher would love... Interesting color with ducks videos too! So please enjoy these videos with ducks and please share the preschool you love!
The Best Types Of Videos For Preschoolers
Alphabet Videos
For as long as we can remember, alphabets have always been our first lesson, be it at school or at home. It is indeed the foundation of many childhood learnings all over the world. Alphabets are a foundation of learning, similar to numbers. Our ability to form words and later on sequences are based on how we know the alphabet.
This is called the Alphabetic Principle which explains that written letters and letter patterns are directly related to sounds.
In a class, there are no hard rules in teaching the alphabet. However, it is recommended to establish letter and sound relationships. To do this, some schools have dedicated speech classes.
But for preschoolers who are just starting to learn the basics, high utility letters are taught first. High utility letters are “M, A, T, S, P and H” as an example. Low utility relationship sounds are that of “X” as in fox or “TH” as in thought. This means teaching your preschoolers more familiar words and vocabulary using the more common letters. To help you with this, there are videos for preschoolers online free for any parent to make use of.
As an example of alphabet videos for preschoolers, Sesame Street has episodes focusing on specific letters. This is called Letter of the Day segment.
By far, the best preschool YouTube videos for preschoolers on the alphabet were created by Sesame Street, if we may say so. In an episode showcasing the letter M, Cookie Monster introduces the letter “M” to Harry the Monster in a song number. Sesame Street often introduces letters in song numbers, carefully injecting words that start with the specific letter in focus.
Mathematics Videos
Numbers are taught together with alphabets. Like letters, we are “predisposed” to learn about numbers and shapes. Numbers and mathematics in general is said to be a determining factor for a child’s academic success. Learning Mathematics develops core thought processes such as reasoning, problem solving, connecting and analysis.
Experts say, “Start them young,” when it comes to numbers, so it is never too early for little ones to learn them. Similarly to letters, mathematics also has what they call mathematics vocabulary, words that pertain to a number. So what would work as teaching materials for preschoolers are “read-alouds”.
From then on, teachers can connect these preschool video concepts to books and eventually to daily activities that make understanding easier.
Today, not only do we have “read-alouds” as a tool, but videos help explain mathematical or numerical concepts to kids in even more visual form. With videos, these can help children explain the world they live in in Mathematical format. This is one of the evidence-based teaching methods for mathematics.
Examples of numbers videos for preschoolers are videos from Teaching Channel. Both parent and child can learn from videos from the Teaching Channel because they are fully guided, complete with lesson objectives, duration and guide questions.
Videos can go from 5 to 12 minutes. In addition, you can create an account to keep track of you and your child’s progress.
Teaching Channel is a channel for teachers to learn from co-teachers. It is loaded with number videos for preschool resources to help in teaching not just on mathematics. It encourages collaboration among teachers, so it is the best platform for parents to learn as well.
Nursery Rhymes Videos
Nursery rhymes are part of every childhood. These are especially catchy songs or poems that originated in England, but each country have their own stories to tell as well. Nursery rhymes that are sang are said to aid child development according to R. Bailey, author of Foundations of Literacy: A Balanced Approach to Language, Listening and Literacy Skills in the Early Years, published in 2004.
Because music is also said to aid in spatial reasoning, this skill will eventually lead to better mathematical skills. Spatial reasoning is the ability to visually or mentally think of objects in 3 dimensions even with limited information.
It is surprising that something as complicated as spatial reasoning can be connected with fun activities such as singing nursery rhymes. But because children retain information more when they’re having fun and are articulating repetitive words, using fun rhymes helps lessons stick in their extremely plastic minds.
The authors of these nursery rhymes vary greatly from period to period. But a famous name surfaces among the rest in Mother Goose. Mother Goose is Charles Perrault’s fictional heroine who tells stories in the book. This became the start of Mother Goose Tales in 1695. The nursery rhymes came after by John Newbury.
The best way to teach nursery rhymes to children is to sing it or accompany with music. The Mother Goose Club website has preschool learning songs videos of their own interpretation of nursery rhymes by Mother Goose.
Other websites will show classic videos but in the Mother Goose Club, children will be more attracted to them because the preschool nursery rhymes videos are updated with modern storytelling techniques.
Environmental Education Videos
This might seem totally new, not to mention unconventional at that, but raising environmentally-conscious kids equals raising healthy kids as well.
In an era of technology and social media, teaching your kids to be environmentally-conscious encourages them to play more outside, with real kids, learning new things from kids their own age instead of learning something from a game.
In a study by Louise Chawla, people who were nature-friendly were those who spent a lot of time outside, exploring one way of the other. More than just telling your kids to go outside and play might be too abrupt these days, but videos with kids exploring might just sway their minds.
“Seeing is believing” might just be the trick to get them running outside, instead of being too cooped up with their devices.
Furthermore, raising environment-friendly kids not only benefits the place they live in, but it also encourages them to live healthy—eat healthier and exercise more through games. Nature tripping teaches kids to participate in marathons, fun runs, walkathons and biking—activities that all promote exercise and reduction of carbon footprint.
To help you with this mission, Science Kids has nature videos to show your little munchkins about various environmental topics. Topics can go from Great Barrier Reef on marine biodiversity to energy conservation. Hopefully, you’ll be raising a little helper in making sure your lights are out when you don’t need them.
As an alternative, there are YouTube preschool learning videos that emphasize on conservation of the environment.
Computer Science Videos
You might think that computer science might be too much for your bunch, but that is no longer the case these days. There is an increasing emphasis on coding as a fundamental literacy.
Kids and preschoolers are spending more time with gadgets. This will not change anytime soon as the world continues to embrace streaming video and a digital learning environment. If your preschooler uses gadgets all the time, it seemed fitting to teach them how these things work. In this regard, computer science videos for preschoolers has its advantages.
Like mathematics, coding gives our preschoolers an edge when it comes to analysis and problem solving. However, an underlying mission is for computer science to one day, give more to society, do more for the greater good, creating things that can help our communities.
However, you might be surprised to know that you don’t need a computer to teach your preschooler coding. With a little help from your imagination, you can introduce it to your little ones in the form of play. Preschoolers will naturally love and gravitate towards time with gadgets so making sure the videos they are watching is key to their development.
By using wooden blocks you can have sequence, cause and effect and other computer science concepts taught to your kids. This is called tangible programming, where you do not need to have computers to teach the concept. In fact, Kibo and CHERP are both pioneers of this method.
To aid in programming, the concept can be taught through a collection of videos as well. Parents might be happy to know that Mark Zuckerberg is a strong advocate of coding along with a bunch of other celebrities and successful people.
In this video, these celebrities explain the importance of teaching coding to kids these days. Also, Mitch Resnik, LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research at the Okawa Center and Director at MIT Lab, has this talk on TED to help you understand the importance of programming as well.
If you want your child to have an edge over his generation, start them young with coding.
Science Videos
Science can be so much more engaging when taught correctly. Similar to mathematics, science is one of the most feared subjects by kids. But only because traditional teaching approaches science as a complicated matter altogether, where in fact, is a topic that can be fun and beneficial to everyone.
Moreover, science experiments can be one of the most enjoyable activities you can do with your kids. It can also help divert kids’ attention other than computer games. With science, you hit two birds with one stone—divert attention while learning. Science activities can be as simple as playing in the garden or cooking. Through creativity, Science can be explained easily to a bored child.
Science encompasses a lot of topics, so running out of ideas should not be a problem. From Zoology, Botany, Astronomy and Physics, science is a treasure trove of ideas and activities for bonding with your kids. National Geographic has some really cute videos of different animals that you can watch with your kids.
Similarly, PBS introduced a puppet character that focuses on science called Sid the Science Kid. In the PBS site, you can watch episodes of Sid the Science.
Art Videos
Teaching Art to your preschoolers has a lot of benefits. Among all the subjects, art is probably the easiest topic to teach your kids. art, after all is made to be fun.
Kids at certain react to situations differently, but there is a stage where they have difficulty expressing their feelings. At some point, their frustrations are difficult to handle for most parents. Some parents end up getting angry unnecessarily.
But with patience and art, parents might have the answer to handling difficult child development stages.
Art helps kids create an avenue to express their feelings where no other subject can. More importantly, art can help them control their feelings, making it a safe way to channel their emotions.
In the same fashion, art enables your kids to develop perceptual abilities. Being made aware of colors, shapes, textures, lines and more are a part of an art lesson. On the other hand, their motor skills are also enhanced. When your kids hold on to pencils, crayons or paint brushes, they develop muscle control and eye-hand coordination.
As an example, the TV show by Disney, Art Attack is one of those shows that focus on teaching Art to kids as young as preschoolers.
Writing Videos
Sooner or later, after ABC’s and numbers, your toddlers will want to tinker with pencils and crayons. You might as well teach them to properly write their names and some simple letterforms.
Surprisingly, the best way to teach writing is not by using pencils, pens or even crayons. Remember that preschoolers still need a bit of help when it comes to their motor skills, so the best methods of writing will take this into consideration.
According to Mara Guckian, a childhood specialist and managing editor for Teacher created Resources, materials that allow them to exercise muscle components on hands will help. Helping them grip thin objects, control their fingers and focus on fine motor movements are the best techniques to use.
Furthermore, while preschoolers learn best by example, creating an environment that enables you to create a multi-sensory approach to teaching is recommended. The best teachers adapt to a child’s preferred method of learning.
A multisensory approach to teaching is a proven method as it uses styles for visual, auditory, kinesthetic and tactile learners. As such, you can use materials such as clay, bubbles, dough and even activities such as drawing letters on the hand, on air and the like.
Alternatively, handwriting videos are teaching materials that can aid you in the process. There are general videos that encourage parents to teach their kids to write as well as a short history on how things began for writing. But if you feel that your little one is ready to start with the ABC’s, there are videos for each letter that can help.
Phonics and Reading Videos
With the proliferation of technology, it has become difficult to inject some form of learning in our kids’ daily activities. To raise lifelong readers, experts say that reading to your unborn child will help this objective other than brain development and establish an auditory bond with you.
Phonics is the relationship between letters and sounds. In order for your child to be able to read, she or he must know the letters and the sounds by heart. This process is aided by phonics.
Basically, schools teach kids to read through familiarization—making sure that the kids remember what the letters look like and how they sound like. These are also done by reading short stories and nursery rhymes.
Nursery rhymes are perfect because, again, it has a multi-sensory approach to learning it—by using sounds or music for recall. This is the same with teaching Phonics, and eventually, reading. When a parent reads with enthusiasm, the child associates this with joy of reading, therefore creating a better experience.
As an example, KidzPhonics has a collection of phonics videos for preschoolers that can facilitate learning.
This website is dedicated entirely to phonics. In the website, you can utilize the video stories for preschoolers to learn not just about alphabets but different areas of learning such as animals, food, sentences and so much more.
Preschoolers Learning With Video
Video is being adopted by many classrooms as a means to enhance learning. Although electronic media, especially television has been frowned upon for its possible impact on young minds, the proliferation of technology can no longer be halted.
Contrary to a lot of traditional education experts, electronic media is finding its way into teaching methods. There are even learning videos for preschoolers circulating the Internet. So this is no surprise.
In a study done by Cisco and Wainhouse Research on video, viewers are no longer passive spectators, instead, they become active participants. Through videos, there are pedagogical impacts on education can be summarized into three concepts:
With this, more and more academicians are accepting video or technology in general as a way to create a better learning experience for students of different ages. Videos are perfect for driving this positive learning experience and for this purpose, we look at different early topics that are apt for preschoolers.
Videos enumerated above are free preschool learning videos, so parents can watch it on demand. These learning videos for preschoolers are made for parents to act as guides and should not be taken with a grain of salt. It is still in the discretion of the parents to limit or amend whatever lessons there are in any YouTube videos for preschoolers.
REMEMBER: Parental Guidance Always Wins!
Some say that a few hours of boredom may even be good for your child! Nevertheless, in our ever-expanding modern world, it can't be denied that our lives are full of distractions. Wouldn't it be great to at least know which distractions may be worth their while?
We hope this article has shown you that there are countless of YouTube videos that you can look into with your child and they might very well be a good use of your time.
Resources are almost endless, so teaching comes easier. Just a cautionary note, though, to be very discerning when it comes to the videos that you have your child watch because as much as there are a lot to learn from, there are also those that do nothing but waste your child’s time.
With this in mind, the best educational videos for preschoolers are those that help them retain what they have learned and later on apply it to daily activities.
There are countless of YouTube educational videos for preschoolers that it’s tempting to leave our kids to their devices, but look at this as a way for you to build your relationship with your kids as well.
YouTube videos for preschoolers are made for both parent and child. This is to encourage parents to be with their children when they begin learning, especially the youngest ones.
After all, everything that they will need to succeed in life is learned from a young age. Start them young.
Additional Research:
http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/solutions/industries/docs/education/ciscovideowp.pdf
http://www.readingrockets.org/article/alphabetic-principle
http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/The_Letter_of_the_Day
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPRVSb4J6Pw
http://www.sesamestreet.org/parents/theshow/episodes/the-amazing-alphabet-race
https://docs.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=http://www.shankerinstitute.org/sites/shanker/files/Dec-11-pre-school-curriculum.pdf
https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/pdf/practice_guides/early_math_pg_111313.pdf
https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/pre-k-math-lesson
https://www.123test.com/spatial-reasoning-test/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histoires_ou_contes_du_temps_pass%25C3%25A9
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Newbery
http://www.mothergooseclub.com/
http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/raising-environmentally-conscious-kids.html
http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/videos/nature.html
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=environment+videos+for+kids
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/code-literacy-21st-century-requirement-douglas-rushkoff
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/09/18/441122285/learning-to-code-in-preschool
http://ase.tufts.edu/DevTech/tangiblek/research/cherp.asp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STRPsW6IY8k
https://www.ted.com/talks/mitch_resnick_let_s_teach_kids_to_code?language=en
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/videos/
http://pbskids.org/sid/videoplayer.html
http://www.education.com/reference/article/value-art-preschool-children/
http://disneyjunior.disney.co.uk/art-attack
http://www.education.com/magazine/article/preschool-letter-writing/
http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED432388.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7pYXto9kc0
http://www.handwritingforkids.com/handwrite/video.htm
http://www.oprah.com/health/Should-You-Read-to-Your-Unborn-Baby-RealAge
http://www.kizphonics.com/