Preschool Curriculum

I have had a lot of people ask me what curriculum I am using or if I am just making my own.  My answer is....both.  I thought I would briefly share what we are doing this year for our preschool curriculum.

I had a hard time finding a (what I consider to be) complete curriculum for preschool.  After consulting with a few "seasoned" homeschooling moms I know and my reading specialist mom, it was suggested that reading and math be the primary focus.  So I found this great K4 curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler that did just that!  All I have to do is print out the material, laminate it (since I plan to reuse all this for little sister), and enjoy!  By the way, I started spending an arm and a leg laminating things at the local Office Depot so I decided to look into my very own laminating machine.  A friend told me about one she found at Amazon.  So I checked it out, bought it and I am so glad I did.  You can also purchase a pack of 100 laminating sheets for only $10!  Definitely worth it and the quality is great!  You can check out these items by clicking on the images below.

We are primarily using the K4 curriculum and I am adding in other subjects.  I am not making it very hard core or anything.  We are mainly focusing on reading and math and just having fun learning about other things in our world.  After all, it is only preschool.  :)  I am also making all of this fit in with our workbox system as follows:

Boxes 1-4: K4 Curriculum

Box 5: Spanish

Box 6: P.E. (Gross Motor Skills Games)

Box 7: Piano/Music

Box 8: Science

Box 9: Geography/Social Studies

Box 10: Life Skills (Home Economics)

Here is a break down of the other subjects I chose to add:

Spanish

 I speak very little Spanish.  Let's just say that if I were stranded in the middle of a foreign, Spanish speaking country I would be able to order from a menu, introduce myself, and ask for directions to the restroom....that's it.  But I do know how important it is these days to know a second language.  Not to mention it will look great on a transcript some day for my little school girl.  In the future, I plan to use a professionally made curriculum.  For now, we are learning how to count and say animal names in Spanish with Dora and Diego!!  I printed off these and these flash cards, colored them (with help from the school girl) and laminated them.  She pretty much already knows her numbers.  We just review them everyday and learn a new animal every week.

Physical Education (Gross Motor Skills)

I found this great list of gross motor skill games.  You can do almost all of them with things you already have around the house.  I actually remember playing a lot of these games from when I was a kid in P.E.  (And here I thought these games were just for fun when I was little.  I was actually learning something!)  This "workbox" is proving to be a triple score!  The little school girl is learning gross motor skills, we are all having fun, and I get to reminisce about fun times from my childhood.  Awesome.  :)

Piano/ Music

Again, here, I am not very proficient in this area.  I may not be Mozart but I can read music.  When I was in middle school, I played the clarinet in the school band and I have taken a few piano classes.  I looked at several "piano for preschoolers" books and finally settled on this one below from Amazon mainly because it was only five dollars.  My reasoning..."If she doesn't like playing the piano, I have only wasted five dollars."  So far we are enjoying it.  She likes all the cute pictures and songs and I like the fact that it incorporates singing and other aspects of music like beats, tempo, etc. 

 

Science

I am having a blast with this one....of course.  This "workbox" is bringing out the nerdy science teacher/ mad scientist wannabe that lurks just beneath the surface at all times.  I found this cool website that has a free science curriculum for preschoolers.  I really like it because it is organized into different subjects and each lesson has suggested activities, guiding questions, and suggested books.  I chose to cover one subject a week.  For example, the first week we talked about magnets!  Here is a picture of my little school girl painting with magnets.

By the way, I got these cool magnetic marbles and magnetic wand at Amazon.  Click the images below if you are interested in more info.  Click here for a cool tutorial about painting with marbles.

Geography/Social Studies

I had a really hard time planning this one.  For me I usually equate this subject with complete and utter boredom.  I also feel the same about History which just breaks my History nerd of a husband's heart.  When he gets to going on and on about World War I this and World War II that, my eyes usually glaze over and I go to my happy place.  Just kidding.  I try very hard to pay close attention to his History "lectures."

Anyway, after looking at website after website of geography/social studies crafts to do with preschoolers, I decided to just make up my own curriculum.  From all the ideas I have looked at, I decided to start by talking about the Earth itself.  We made a paper mache globe, read books about how God made the Earth and talked about the oceans.  Next week, we will start a continent study.  I plan on covering different countries on each continent and exploring different cultures, traditions, and landmarks.  I actually found a lot of lesson ideas for each continent from this website.

After we have sufficiently covered the continents, I plan to do a state to state study of the United States of America for the little school girl.

Life Skills (Home Economics)

We are not doing much in this area yet.  Again, I had a hard time finding something to use here for a curriculum.  I did purchase this ebook below from Amazon and plan on using a lot of the activities.  For now, my little school girl is learning to help out in our home every day.  In fact, one of her favorite things to do is help me make up the beds.  Maybe because it is usually followed by my letting her jump on them.   I eventually plan to incorporate gardening, sewing, manners, etiquette, etc. here.  When I make more of a development, I will let you know.

Bible

And last, but certainly the most important, Bible time.  I decided not to incorporate this into our workbox system.  We already have a Bible time every night before bedtime.  I decided to make it a little more elaborate by adding actual lessons from a book I purchased from the Focus website.  You can see it here if you are interested.   Every night after supper, our little school girl goes over her ABC Bible memory verses (which you can find here), we read books and now we do a lesson from our book.  I love these lessons because they incorporate a little bit of "preschool" work like colors, tracing, etc.  They also have a morality lesson that goes along with each lesson.  We are enjoying them and our little school girl is learning.  :) 

If you are planning to homeschool your little preschooler soon, I hope these links and items help. Please let me know if you have any questions and I would be glad to know what you think!

Katie