Toddler and Preschool Curriculum

I am going to start this post by loudly saying, I am not an expert in homeschooling, teaching, parenting, or anything really, so when I talk about lessons and curriculum, it’s just what I’ve found that works for us. Last year when I began my “stay at home mom journey”, I knew I wanted to incorporate some sort of “teaching” in to our daily schedule…and by daily schedule I mean stick it in somewhere between breakfast and dinner.

I didn’t realize how daunting of a task it would be to even find a curriculum! There are THOUSANDS and they all claim to be the best, even more some are crazy expensive. I was fairly confident that I didn’t need to spend $800 to teach my kid the difference between a circle and a square, luckily that one worked out for me.

So after hours of searching and now having a year under my belt, here are a few of my recommendations:

My “Core” Curriculum: ABC Jesus Loves Me

  • Age Range: 2-5 – which is great if you have different age children.
  • It’s FREE – and it’s good stuff – really I can’t believe it’s still free.
  • Great materials that teach you how to teach your kids.
  • Print off week to week lesson plans.
  • Has checklists on where your child should be at each age.
  • Wonderful at integrating bible and educational lessons.

Supplemental Material : Home School Creations

  • Really focuses on PreK and K, which is why I use ABC Jesus Loves me as my “core” because I wanted my two year old involved too.
  • Has WONDERFUL print outs – everything from posters and play dough mats, tracing cards to flash cards. Really, you can spend hours in her printables.
  • Themed units – these are my favorites, because I like teaching by themes. She has full units on the ocean, astronauts, birds, geography and it goes on and on.

Between these two sites you have a great foundation. Of course, there is really so much more you can do, but it is a big commitment to have lesson plans every week.

Here is what this week looks like for us:

Wyatt’s Lesson (3 year old)  Violet’s Lesson (4 year old)
wyatt's Violet's

My kids each have a bulletin board and binder to keep me organized. These sheets are my favorite because I know at a glance what I’m suppose to reinforce all week long.

9780761149613_p0_v5_s260x420I am NOT, repeat NOT an organized person, but it’s pretty easy to pull up these links and print off the material each week and it keeps my kids busy and me focused on them mastering different skills each week.

And if you don’t want something so structured then you can slowly work through the something like the Brain Quest Workbooks.

1859843-1Also, I would recommend grabbing a copy of What Your Preschooler Needs To Know – this book is eye opening on how much we should be teaching our children before we release them to teachers. There is an edition for every grade, so pick up the Kindergarden one while you’re at it.

How-to-Raise-an-Amazing-Child-the-Montessori-Way-Seldin-Tim-9780756625054The last book I recommend is “How to Raise and Amazing Child the Montessori Way by Tim Seldin. It is a book that covers from birth to six years old and gives a good foundation for the Montessori style of learning, how to create a child friendly bedroom, or play space and how to adapt to a child’s physical and intellectual growth from year to year.

I would love to hear what you do at home. What curriculum or sites to do use?

**Bonus – our contributor Kara writes her own Homeschool Curriculum.  She has created a coupon code just for OKCMB readers that are interested in her Oklahoma History curriculum (the others are completely free!). It’s 25% off any download until December 31, 2014. Use the code – OKCmomsBlog. {Can only be used once in a year.} **

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Whitney Jackson
My name is Whitney and I'm married to my talented husband, Blake and we have two insanely wonderful kids, Violet (3) and Wyatt (2). I've been a stay at home mom for a little over a year, after making the decision to leave a world of spread sheets for a world of forts made out of sheets. I work part time as a day school teacher after realizing I actually love working with kids and I may even be good at it. I enjoy reading, taking family road trips, drinking copious amounts of coffee and hope to one day to be a professional thrift store shopper (only slightly kidding). I'm excited to be a part of this group, because raising kids is rough and everyone needs a village, even if a virtual one. I hope we're all able to discover new parts of our city, give and get advice from how to get your kids to stop eating chalk (me) to raising strong confident children and maybe even make some new friends.

3 COMMENTS

  1. Definitely no need to spend a lot of money teaching toddlers! (And to clarify on my homeschool stuff, only Oklahoma History costs money, but my tot school weekly themes are completely free)

  2. Thankful for this post! I’ve always wanted to incorporate more learning activities into our day, and had done good for awhile…. that’s gone by the wayside the last several months, so this is what I needed to give me a kickstart! Excited to check out those resources!

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