I have my 5 y/o son home with me again this year because he missed the Kindergarten cutoff by 19 days! :(

I need some ideas of workbooks & learning books we can use @ home for pre-k for things like days of the week, months of the year, telling time....

Also looking for recommendations on books to get started on learning to read?

Any other topics we should cover & books & such to help recommendations are much appreciated!

Have you looked at www.letteroftheweek.com?   Also I loved file folder games for days of the week, months, and time.  There are a lot of free file folder games available, or you can make your own.

Also check out www.homeschoolshare.com.  They have lots of books listed with information to go with them.

HTH

For telling time we used a Judy clock and the Judy clock workbook from Rainbow REsource Center or from other vendors for one kid and the second child learned telling time by casual conversation. (All kids are different)

With both kids I used a regular calendar to teach weeks and days and months. I combined it with a fun activity. I got weather stickers and each day we would look at the calendar and identify the day of month, number, week day, and month, look at the weather then put a sticker on the day to represent (sun, cloudy, rain, snow). They had fun with that. When I ran out of stickers and couldn't find any more like that my son drew in the weather by hand with the symbol. They also memorized the poem "30 days hath september" to memorize the number of days per month.

We did Alpha Phonics for reading and also the Leap Frog videos helped my younger son (they came out after my older was done learning to read). That is not a workbook activity.

We used math u see for math and when their hands were tired I'd do the math with them and I'd write it in.

We used Ready Writer to help them do fine motor skill pencil practice on paper.

Later regular penmanship practice was kept short in alignment with developmental skills for kids that age (they can't write for long periods of time).

Lots of reading aloud and Before Five in a Row for beginner unit studies based on picture books.

Lots of learning has nothing to do with workbooks or computer games or the Internet.

HTH :)

Oh, and have FUN! It is such a sweet time....

www.starfall.com is one of our girls favorites.

Our Dollar Tree has clocks for telling time in their dollar section.

Some Good Readers are:

Abeka, Bob Jones, BOB books, and of the level 1 readers (look at the library), Hooked on Phonics

Rainbow Resource has a lot of workbooks

http://www.rainbowresource.com/prodlist.php?1=1&subject=2&category=368&pg=3

You could just ask your son what he likes and research it.  Our girls learned about princesses last year :-)

BOB book series is good for learning to read.  Costco has the big box sets.   We also recommend starfall.com.  All my kids loved it.

I love the Kumon workbooks for that age.  My kids love them too.

I have some Kumon and a few others I can send. My bookshelf is on hold but PM me if you want me to go through and see what all I have for you. :)

I super love the Kumon workbooks!! I wish I knew about them earlier. At our Barnes and Noble they only cost $6.95;

they have bold colorful pictures and go step by step. They have a wide range of subjects and they make it easy to pick the right one. 

I think they are especially good for kids that don't like busy work but the books do keep them busy.

Honestly I have a 4year old and she's doing awesome in trying to read so far with what I've given her. She can recognize at least 10 words on site and that's more than most of the kids I know in my neighborhood. But we use the learning games. freddi the fish, dora, elmo, jumpstart. Computer games work wonders too. My daughter loves starfall.com, nickjr, and you can buy jumpstart games for your computer. If your kid has a DS they offer learning games my daughter only has rudolf and dora but rudolf isn't a learning game and it's kind of advanced. As far as books go I can read books, step into learning, books on tape, also story time with you as a parent does wonders. Walmart has Pre-k activity books that are a guided curiculium of what your child should know and if all else fails use the library they do their best to keep up to date info on school stuff thats helpful for kids.

If you're printing worksheets from online sites (there are lots!), you might want to make them reusable:  Slide the worksheet into a clear plastic sleeve protector or place it in a picture frame.  Now you have a wipe-off page to use with a dry erase marker. 

(We used to use the sleeve protectors. A friend of mine who had extra frames around the house came up with the second idea.)

Bob books are great for learning to read. Also the explode the Code workbooks seem to follow about the same method as the Bob books so they go together nicely. I have some Bob books sets that I don't need. Maybe we could make a deal.

We liked bob books, explode the code and our favorite is the Five in a Row curriculum (or Before Five in a Row)  Lots of fun things to do that relate to science, math, and more!  Follows along with what the need to learn in Kindergarten.  Mine did not like workbooks at all and really just holding the crayon/pencil correctly, coloring and expermenting with drawing (lines, squiggles, squares, connet the dots,etc) is plenty at that age.  They'll have lots more workbooks/worksheets to do for the comging years.  I say don't let them get burned out on it this early. Enjoy!