Preschool Curriculum Choices

Our preschool years are pretty lax around here. Or at least they have been in the past. But this year, as Mister Mouse begins Kindergarten, Miss Priss has told me that she wants to do school too. So, I am going to try a little more structured school time for her and Punkin and we’ll see how it goes.

The first thing to tackle when homeschooling preschoolers, is a schedule. Now scheduling around toddlers is tough enough, but creating a preschool homeschool schedule for them comes with it’s own set of challenges. Why do I say to schedule first? Because I think it’s important to know how much time you plan to spend each day on homeschooling the preschoolers. Once you know your time frame, then you can work on finding curriculum.

I have finally figured out our schedule for this year and narrowed down our Preschool Curriculum choices. I am so excited to take this new adventure with my girls as we grow and learn together!! So here are my choices for preschool curriculum this year. We don’t use a boxed curriculum set for preschool, as I create so many printables and what I don’t have, I usually find online for {free}. Using a mish-mosh of printables, also allows us to mix in some fun thematic printables for books we are reading or things my Littles are “into” at the moment (i.e. princesses, planes, etc.).

So those will all be used in our homeschooling this year. Here’s how we will be using them.

Character Badges – This is going to be a great asset to our home and encouraging not only the Littles, but the oldest one to work on our character traits. While I try to be consistent with our discipline, it is difficult to keep up with everything for each child. These charts will help keep me a little more focused and give the kids something tangible to look at and know what is expected of them.

Little Lads & Ladies of Virtue – While this curriculum is another one on character building, I believe it will only enhance our studies on character building. While the badges are a more visual way to learn about character traits, this curriculum has copywork for the older kids and hands-on activities great for little kids.

101 Independent Activities for Tots and PreK – I am so excited about implementing these activities in our school this year. We will use them as busy boxes for the Littles when I am working with one of the other kids. There are so many great ideas in here that I can’t wait to get started. The hard part is going to be deciding which one to do first!

Basic Shapes for Beginners – As it says in the name, we will use this one to teach shapes. It’s a wonderful hands-on approach to teaching shapes and I know my girls (almost 3 and 4) will love this! It’s a fun, unique way to learn about shapes rather than just flash cards or drills.

While these are all great products, I still needed something to teach our ABC’s on a regular basis. So off I went in search of a curriculum I could use to teach the alphabet. My favorite book that helped me figure out where to start and what order to learn our letters for the best results, as related to handwriting and letter formation, is The Preschool Journey. It has quite literally changed the way I think about and structure our preschool time. I highly recommend picking up a copy for just $6.99!! It is well worth it.

Other printable sets we will use are:

• Free Beginning Coloring Sounds from The Measured Mom
• Tot School Printables from 1+1+1=1
• Romping & Roaring ABC’s and ABC Dot Pages from 3 Dinosaurs
• Zoomin’ Moovin’ Alphabet by Royal Baloo

Another set of printables I received a copy in exchange for an honest review, is the Encompass Preschool Bundle. It contains 26 weeks worth of activities for each letter of the alphabet. From tracing to gluing objects beginning with the letter of the week onto a page. It also includes Morning Board cards for the Alphabet, Shapes, Colors, Bible Verse, Number, Character Trait and MORE!!! There are hundreds of pages included in this set for just $10!!! In 26-weeks your child will know their letters, numbers, shapes, colors and a host of character traits and Bible verses that will carry them through life.

I am so excited to use this new curriculum and put our morning board together. We have never done one, so it should be fun and interesting and a great way to start our new morning routine.

This year we thought it would be fun to share what other IAHE Bloggers are using in their homeschool adventures this year. Be sure to check out my friends’ posts on their curriculum choices.  They are linked below.