So our homeschooling has ground to a halt, simply because preparing from scratch brand new, themed curriculum for every week got to be overwhelming and tiresome, without noted satisfaction or overly positive reactions from the kids….so obviously, discouragement set in. Simple frustration spurs me to action….but discouragement always seems to stop me solid.
I began looking into what I liked and didn’t like about our current preschool-at-home tactics, and I realized that, like with so many other areas of my life, I have fallen into a rut. In efforts to save money, I decided to put together our own curriculum cafeteria-style, but this task becomes a weekly mountain to scale, and I wasn’t getting enough time between units to catch my breath. It became a chore, not a joyful privilege.
So I am changing curriculum style. To what? One of these two methods:
1. Letter-of-the-Week lessons. I overlooked these at first since both of the kids know their alphabet letter names and recognize them by sight. But wouldn’t this help with phonics, too? Brightly Beaming Resources caught my eye a while ago. I love that most of the work has been done already….I’m really good at following directions….and best of all, it is free.
2. Book-based curriculum. This would require a bit more research on my part, but I really believe I would embrace this method….after all, it’s centered around one of my favorite things in the world: Books. With this, the possibilities are endless. Subjects (math, science, history) can be woven all throughout the week, and to me, this seems to mimic better what kids do in public school classrooms.
Do any of you have any experience (with positive outcomes) with either of these two curriculum styles?
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Shannon (3 years ago)
Are you familiar with homeschoolshare.com? It would really help you with a literature based curriculum. http://www.homeschoolshare.com/level1.php
Tonya (3 years ago)
I echo the comment above about homeschoolshare, it’s ingenious. We use Five in a Row, but you can do the same thing with any book. The great part of it is sitting down and reading the same book with the kids every day for a week. It really gets them involved and reinforces the previous day’s lesson. I’ve blogged about the books in the past (been a little lacking lately in the blog arena however) As far as prep work, it’s probably about half way in between the all or nothing you’ve been working with.
Clara S (3 years ago)
I did an alphabet theme last year when my oldest two were 4 and 2. We kept it pretty simple – craft, learning a Bible verse, practice writing that letter, etc and then did some Kumon workbooks to round it out. I thought it went well with not that much planning beforehand. This year I’ve done a more structured preschool since my son will be in Kindergarten (at home) in the fall, but part what we’ve done is Five in a Row. The kids love it and really seem to remember a lot of what we’ve done. I also was doing a lapbook along with every title so that they could go back and look at everything again. I found this very time consuming, though (especially things for the lapbook) and have since had to stop since I’m pregnant and not feeling 100 percent. Compared to what you were doing, I’d say the book based wouldn’t be as much work but for me still took a while to plan every week. Not that it wouldn’t be worth it – there’s so many good books! Sorry this is so long…
Amanda @ www.kiddio.org (3 years ago)
Speaking as a homeschooler-to-be (we’re planning to pull Josie out of Catholic school after Kindergarten), I personally love the literature-based approach. I like that you can go with what’s interesting to a kid at any given moment and bring in other ideas that compliment it. That said, Josie started Kindergarten reading 2nd and 3rd grade books, but they started her–one letter at a time–back at A. Although I was at first really peeved about it, it gave her the opportunity to really learn proper handwriting (she would typically go clockwise and bottom-up rather than the opposite), and bone up on other letter skills, like learning more about short and long sounds, how the ‘silent e’ works, and the like.
In other words, I like both, but I wouldn’t cut the letter at a time approach too short.
That said, what about a letter/word per week? Like A is for, ummmm, Alphabet, read alphabet books, do some alphabet projects, work on letter A? Next week B is for, hmmm, Binobos? Bicycles and Buses? Brotherly love?
Just some ideas :)
Jennifer Lavender (3 years ago)
I did LOTW from Brightly Beaming for a while with my oldest. I loved the concept, but it just didn’t work for us, mostly because I didn’t have access to the recommended books and had a hard time finding good substitutes for the themes they suggested, so I felt like I was reinventing the wheel every week anyway. Add to that the fact that my daughter just wasn’t interested in any of the art projects or would get bored after the second day of talking about the same thing and I decided to try something new.
I floated around and checked out other ideas and curriculums and nothing ever felt right.
Eventually, I gave up on preschool at home. Now, with my second, we still read books, do art projects, and have lots of play time together, but I don’t worry about a theme or learning anything specific. I just go with what she is interested in at that exact moment. Google image searches are great for finding coloring pages or photos of things she wants to see and our overflowing bookshelf provides lots of different starting points for topics of discussion. We also get lots of ideas for projects from sites like yours and, once again, searching google.
clemencia (3 years ago)
Wow! I love your blog, is there a way to follow your blog? or subscribe to it?
thanks again
Kelly (3 years ago)
I tried doing what you’ve been doing – piecing together my own ideas into a curriculum. I too had so much work to do for this that I ended up letting it go. My oldest will begin Kindergarten at home in the fall. So, this year I thought it was important to get us into a regular schedule/routine as far as schooling goes. I decided to use Sonlight’s preschool curriculum. It is all book-based and my kids LOVE it. I did not buy all of the books from Sonlight. In fact, I only bought the teacher’s book and a couple that weren’t sold elsewhere from them. Of course, this wasn’t free, but it wasn’t too expensive, either. I bought the majority of the books used from other homeschoolers at vegsource.com or from amazon.com. The majority of our schoolwork consists of reading the assigned portions of the books. Then we have table time where my oldest works on his workbook pages that come with the curriculum. My almost-three-year-old joins us on the couch for the reading time and at the table to do his “schoolbook” which is a workbook I got from Sam’s Club. Sonlight has 2 levels of preschool programs. The youngest is basically just reading some books. There aren’t assigned readings, but they break the list of books into trimesters. Read the books from the first list throughout the first trimester, etc. We use the second level, which is more structured, but still very flexibile. Both of the boys have learned SO MUCH just from reading these books and the discussions that we have about them. The books are wonderful. Some of them are books I may never have chosen myself, but I’m glad that we are reading them. I plan on using this program for Kindergarten, as well. In Kindergarten, a more formal math and phonics program are added. But, it is still largely based around books.
Koko's mama (3 years ago)
How about Sonlight? It just seems like it would be a good fit for you because it’s totally literature-based and Christian? I also love the Montessori method. I think you can do some Montessori activities to supplement without buying the actual equipment like landforms for geography, etc.There are a lot of free downloads,too.
warillever (3 years ago)
I was going to leave a long commment and then realized tht the previous commenters have already said all that I was going to.
I like the LOTW concept, but it is NOT all planned out for you, at least not if you are working with kids of multiple ages. Plus it isn’t much fun.
Sonlight sounds great, but is awfully expensive.
We have been doing our own thing. Right now “preschool” is more about the routine than the content. I’d write more about that, but the kids are pulling me away. I’ll try to post about it on my blog this weekend…
Muses of Megret » It’s decided. (3 years ago)
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