Pre-school homeschooling curriculum

by Ariana Peters, posted in homeschooling, kids, life, school/studying

Our first year of homeschooling is coming to an end. I loved almost every minute of it lol. Overall, my toddler did amazing with the curriculum. With a year under my belt now I kind of know how he learns and how he does things. So I will review the curriculum that we used for preschool and in a couple weeks I’ll post what we’re going to do for Pre-K.

Language Arts

Part of timberdoodle curriculum

These were fantastic much more like playing games and doing fun little projects then worksheets

The Good and the Beautiful language arts curriculum

We started this about 2/3rds of the way through the year and will be continuing it through pre-K. These are much more lesson like so we tend to break them up into smaller sections but I have become a big fan of the Good and the Beautiful.

Math

Mathematical reasoning

I didn’t like this at all and neither did my toddler. We found it to be very dry and boring. I wasn’t going to make either of us suffer through it after I decided we didn’t like it. We got about halfway through it then I chucked it in the recycling bin.

Farm land math from Timberdoodle

My son loved this in the beginning and even asked for it regularly to play it. However once his new little sister was big enough to start taking pieces it started turning into a battle so we set this aside as well. But, it did lay a great foundation for us.

Also from Timberdoodle

This was fantastic. Timberdoodle actually added this in their 2023-2024 preschool curriculum kit so I only ordered it about 2 months ago but we are almost done with it. If you do it weekly it is not a full year’s worth of curriculum but it has added a little bit of math back into our study.

Thinking skills

Super sticker

My toddler loved this!!!!!

Bought the trio off Timberdoodle

These were fantastic just like the alphabet books by the same company. They were fun and engaging and quick.

Thinking skills

Another one that my toddler and I thought was really boring and dry. Just like the math we got about halfway through the book and I chucked it.

History and social studies

Love this puzzle, it is super adorable. For a long time my toddler had little to no interest in doing anything except jumping on the pieces to get them together when I set them in the correct place. But in the last 6 weeks that has started to change, with me helping him identify which pieces go where he is assembling it entirely himself.
I thought this book was super cool and interesting, my toddler generally just tolerated it lol. We did not finish it. I might throw it in here and there in our pre-K unit and see if he likes it better.

Nature and science

Love, love, love this. This curriculum is meant to be used year after year after year layering in more information and learning each year. Right now we keep it very basic but I look forward to using it for years to come with the kids.
This is really great for kids that aren’t ready for a full curriculum. We started with this entire program which is made of units. Now we use it mainly for it’s great book lists as well as a science project here and there.

Art

Eh, super cute idea but my toddler was just kind of meh about it. Maybe he’ll become more artistic in the future (though I’m not sooooo….I wish I was but was not blessed in that area)

Skills

This was great in the beginning of the year to get my son interested in learning to use scissors but we didn’t finish it because once he semi knew what he was doing he wanted to do his own cutting lol.

Overall, it was a great year. I loved watching my son grow in leaps and bounds. Which is exactly how it came. He would not get something and suddenly it would click. He was really did go in leaps and bounds and stops and starts.

The great thing about homeschooling his preschool is I was really able to follow his rhythm and our rhythm as a family. There were weeks where we didn’t do anything. We kind of fell out of our rhythm and then we’d pick it back up and have a couple of great weeks, couple great months and then kind of fall off again which worked out great for us. We’re still finishing on time and I just love the entire experience.

We started a little before he returned 2 years old. So it was by no means always easy sunshine but it was rewarding and wonderful. Occasionally I did resort to a little bit of bribery or coercion sort of to get him to come over and start. Once he started. He usually loved everything. But it would occasionally be oh. Can you help Mommy do this? Or do you want to come eat a chip with me while we look at this picture and talk about it? Lol.

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