This year I am going to be going through preschool with my third daughter Sutton. This past year, I had a lot of fun with my second daughter Oaklynn, so we will be completing many of the activities I did with her.
Most of my education background was geared towards early childhood and elementary grades, so I have a lot of fun working through our preschool and early elementary years.
For preschool, we mostly do our learning through play and simply exploring the world around us. Since Sutton has two older sisters that will be working on “school”, she likes to do “school” too. Counting our toys, putting together puzzles, identifying colors when coloring together and reading tons of books together are just some of the ways we incorporate learning into our day.
For our core curriculum, we will be using the Preschool Course from The Good and the Beautiful. I really love how this curriculum is presented to the child and it is little to no prep for me to get ready each day/week. The course book is full of hands-on learning, very colorful and inviting for the child and has many games. The course also comes with a book of practice sheets and a folder of activities and games to go along with lessons. We will work through this course book 2-3 times a week. The lessons take around 15-20 minutes to complete and then we go back to playtime.
For handwriting practice, we are going to use the Doodles Pre-writing Part I and Part II from The Good and the Beautiful. As you will see from all of my curriculum posts, we really love curriculum from The Good and Beautiful. It is very well written, colorful, they have free options, the price is very reasonable and my girls have learned so much through their program. The Doodles Pre-writing books are perfect introductions to holding writing utensils and learning to trace lines. I will allow her to complete these pages independently as I work with her older sisters on their lessons.
This past year while working through preschool curriculum with Oaklynn, we completed Animal ABC’s Alphabet Curriculum. I like to focus on one letter a week. This curriculum was so fun and perfect for learning the letters. The curriculum is presented where every letter it offers you picture book suggestions, two letter crafts, sensory bin ideas, snack ideas, and a few worksheets for q-tip painting, tracing, bingo dotter painting, and mini books. You can easily pick and choose what works best for you. We usually started the week with an introduction to the letter, a color page, and sensory bin. Throughout the week we would complete the other activities. For the letter crafts, we made them all in a notebook so we had it to keep. Sutton will not be completing this curriculum this year since she worked through it last year, but I highly recommend it!
Instead of the alphabet curriculum, be are going to be adding in simple themes throughout the year that go along with holidays and seasons at that time. I will be putting these together as we go and incorporating more letter work, crafts, snacks, and sensory bins throughout these thematic units. I will probably share some as I go through and put them together for us to use, so be sure to check out my blog for updated posts.
I really love thematic learning. My girls get very intrigued by certain topics and I have a lot of fun gearing all of their learning around those topics. Thematic learning is fun to incorporate different times, seasons, and holidays throughout the year. Some of the themes I have planned are camping, summer, spring, fall, winter, hibernation, farm, nursery rhymes, and many holidays.
Here are a few extras we have fun playing with!
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Final Thoughts
I have had to unschool myself from being a public school educator. Not all children are going to learn at the same pace. You may go through all of this curriculum and your child may not have mastered all of their letters. THAT’S OK!! I’m living this right now. Oaklynn has taken much longer to show and interest in learning letters/numbers than her older sister. I have found that it’s important to let them guide you. They will want to jump in with more intent when they are ready and you won’t fight them on completing the lessons. She has learned so many letters in such a short amount of time rather than me sit her down and trudge through a lesson for us both to end up frustrated and concepts still not learned. Their attention span is about 15-20 mint. Attempt that and then go back to play. They will catch on! Have fun with learning so they want to learn everyday! ❤️
Check out my blog post on learning with the whole family with family unit studies. My preschoolers always love joining in with these wherever they can help. Sometimes they color, create the crafts with me or the snack portions. I really love coming together for several subjects right now!