Choosing Preschool and Kindergarten Homeschool Curriculum

Preschool and Kindergarten – what fun ages! Play is learning and learning is play. Perhaps you’re looking for some ideas for your formal Tot School or perhaps you just want to make sure that your little ones will be ready for first grade when it comes along. We are here to help you with choosing preschool and kindergarten homeschool curriculum.

Welcome to Five Days of Choosing Curriculum! A series helping you with curriculum choices for specific age levels. Today is all about preschool and kindergarten resources. Don’t miss our schedule at the end of the post. We invite you to browse all the information for all age levels.

Our Preschool and Kindergarten Curriculum Reviews

Here you will find an amazing list of resources from our wonderful authors – with informative reviews to help you as you choose your preschool and kindergarten homeschool curriculum! A sampling from our archives…

• Browse our Preschool and Kindergarten Archive
  
• Christian Liberty Press Preschool Kit
• Kindergarten Math Splash App
• Wee Sing America
• Kindergarten Home Art Studio
• Ranger Rick Appventures
• Larsen Toy Labs Blocks
• Preschool Items from Gentle Shepherd
• The Big Picture Story Bible
• Manners Made Easy
• Teaching Spanish Can be Easy! Speekee!
• Favorite Poems Old and New
• Critical Thinking Math Curriculum
• Accountable Kids Chore Chart
• Literature for Lively Lessons: Fresh Picture Book Titles for Pre-K to 2nd Grade
• Scripture Memory Box
• Sing, Spell, Read and Write
• My First Science Kit
• Geography Songs
• Favorite Free Sites for Preschoolers
• Your Backyard Birds DVD
• Your Backyard DVD: The Life and Journey of the Amazing Monarch Butterfly

More Encouragement from Our Authors

Most of the Curriculum Choice authors have active blogs where they share all kinds of homeschooling advice and experiences. Below, you’ll find links to some of our reviews and curriculum choices as well as encouraging, practical posts from our authors.

Heather B. at Upside Down Homeschooling:

Mama’s Learning Corner Worksheet Packet – “Attention all homeschooling moms of students in Pre-K through second grades…I want to tell you about the BEST $9.00 you will spend on your homeschooling curriculum! Lauren, from Mama’s Learning Corner has created over 200 worksheets, printables and games in one convenient download.

Heather N. at Homeschooling on Faith and Coffee:

Kidzmet Personality Profile – Kidzmet is a tool that is all about helping parents and teachers determine their childrens’ learning style(s) and  learn to speak their students’ preferred learning language.

All About Reading : Level 1 – All About Reading is a multi-sensory reading curriculum for all types of learners. All About Learning Press also offers a Pre-Reading Curriculum for your younger students. If you’re not sure where your child falls,  you can determine which level would work best by taking a quick placement test, found here (about mid page).

We Choose Virtues – The We Choose Virtues Homeschool Kit is a fun and beautiful way to incorporate character training into  your homeschool and daily inspire character that will last!

Cindy West from Our Journey Westward loves teaching hands-on, meaningful lessons in the early years.  She uses some prepared curriculum for math and phonics, but focuses quite a lot on child-directed learning, living math, nature study and lots and lots of living literature.  The following posts give you a peek into how she does some of these:

MATH:

Early Math Ideas
Standard Measurement with PlaydoughYummy ShapesBead Classification

NATURE STUDY:

Nature Study with a Preschooler or ToddlerA Preschool Walk

DELIGHT-DIRECTED:

Science Notebooking with MicroscopesTechnology Project: Early Elementary

LITERATURE-BASED ABC’s:

Posts for each letter of the alphabet from A-W (She got tired and gave up before posting X, Y and Z.)

Tricia from Hodgepodge homeschools preschoolers, elementary, middle school and high school students:

How to Start a Homeschool Routine with Young Children – “Just making the routine all a natural part of your day. Here is a simple run down of what a typical morning might look like for our preschooler and first grader. An example…”

Preschool to First Grade Curriculum and Organization – “So, each day I start with the little ones first. Since there are some of you that might be looking for resources for the littlest of littlest crowd, I’ll share with you a few resources, besides just classic books, we use up until age four…”

Leading Little Ones to God review – “This book is intended to be a guide to parents who desire to teach their little ones about God. Parents are the child’s best teachers, and perhaps there is nothing more important in his or her spiritual development than quiet talks with Mother or Father about the great God who made us and loves us.”

Rod and Staff Preschool Activity Books – I highly recommend all of the preschool books published by Rod and Staff. They have brought much joy to our homeschool and offered the slow and steady practice my children needed for a good foundation for learning.

Slow and Steady Get Me Ready – age appropriate activities from birth to age 5. Weekly developmental activities. Just one activity a week.

Answers for Preschoolers – Stop, drop and roll; numbers, matching, science, music, math, cutting and pasting, coloring, calendar and pattern practice, weather and seasons, holidays, physical education, Bible verse memory work and Biblical world view. Definitely a “Complete multi-subject curriculum for preschoolers” ~ Answers in Genesis

Alphaphonics – Basic. Simple. Long-lasting. Used with all of our five children to learn how to read. The phonics book that has been the go-to teaching tool in our family. Alphaphonics by Sam Blumenfeld is a full, logical resource for teaching students of all ages to learn to read.

I Can’t Homeschool Because of the Little Ones – ” So, when are you going to enroll her in mother’s morning out?” That’s the question I heard most often when our eldest was just a little more than a year old. It’s also the question the Lord used to work on my heart about homeschooling.

App reviews by Steve at Hodgepodge:

Phonics and Reading with McGuffey App – Once the student is comfortable with the letter sounds for the current lesson, words are presented using the letters.  Each word is correctly sounded out. Students are presented with the opportunity to build simple words with the letters and have those words sounded out for them. There are also drills, where the student is required to tap the correct word out of a number of possibilities on the screen after hearing it spoken.

Letter Writers Ocean App – The object of the game is to “draw” the letters correctly.  The letters float beneath the ocean’s surface, and tapping on a letter causes it to float alone on the screen.  A friendly fish guides your finger to the correct starting point.  As you drag your finger along the letter’s lines, the friendly fish follows your finger–as long as you correctly follow the lines of the letter.

Daniele at Domestic Serenity:

Kindergarten Home Art Studio – In kindergarten, children work with oil pastels, watercolors, tempera paints, crayons, markers, construction paper and more.  You can find more info and a sample video on kindergarten — also check out the variety of projects completed at this level!

Betsy shares her thoughts on preschool and kindergarten plus reviews:

Learning to Love Learning – Always a priority in my homeschool, and that was especially true for our early years. When looking for homeschool helps and early curriculum, I wanted it to be hands on, fun, and easy to fit into our daily routines. These are some of the resources, activities, and curriculum that we used in our preschool and K years.

Language Arts – We focused on read alouds, and going to the library. My daughter loved the story times. Hearing stories aloud gives kids exposure to written language, which is very different from spoken language. Learning to love books and developing an interest in reading was what we were striving for. When my daughter was ready, we began Explode the Code primers, for a fun, easy to do phonics program. This usually starts in K, at around age 5. See my Explode the Code review (grade 3), for more info.

Big Book of Alpha Tales  “Are you looking for a fun way to introduce the alphabet to your younger ones? Or do your children need something special to do while you work with their siblings? Scholastic offers a hands-on alphabet program called The Big Book of Alpha Tales. It includes an entertaining story for each letter of the alphabet.”

Sequencing Simple Stories “In this workbook, children practice putting the parts of simple stories together! Through cutting and gluing, they construct their stories, and build a concrete beginning, middle and end to each story. This helped my daughter to understand stories better, as all stories can be broken down to a beginning, middle and end. And this understanding helped her progressed in her reading!”

Evan Moor’s Building Spelling Skills “Gradually there were more correctly spelled words in her writing! And this learning happened naturally. There are many good spelling programs out there but for my family, we liked Building Spelling Skills.”

Reading Success Mini Books “My daughter not only enjoyed making her mini books, but also loved sharing them. She prided herself on her writing, and enjoyed reading it out loud all to her family – especially to her dad at dinner!  This gave her a feeling of confidence in the sometimes difficult process of learning to read.”

Math – Preschool/K Math is all about exploring numbers, and playing with patterns. Making cookies, counting them, then subtracting them, yum! See my review of Numbers and Patterns Kindergarten: Playing and Learning with Manipulatives.

Our author, Amy Maze at Living and Loving at Home, is sharing Five Days of Classical Preschool. Be sure to visit her this week!

General Preschool Homeschool Helps

• FREE HSLDA Membership for Parents of Preschool Age Children
• How to Get Started Homeschooling Pinterest Board – a fabulous gathering of encouraging posts!
• A Preschool and Kindergarten Pinterest board! reviews of all kinds from our archives and more.

Even More Homeschool Resources!

• Be sure to also check out The Ultimate Guide to Choosing Homeschool Curriculum.
• Our Choosing Curriculum Pinterest board
• Our Curriculum Choice review team features a topic monthly. You can see all that our authors have shared on electives, math, curriculum choices and more under Review Team Features.

We are joining up with our iHomeschool Network friends in a summer hopscotch! Pin each post for future reference!

Five Days of Choosing Homeschool Curriculum

• Monday – Choosing Preschool and Kindergarten Curriculum
• Tuesday – Choosing Elementary Homeschool Curriculum
• Wednesday – Choosing Middle School Curriculum
• Thursday – Choosing High School Curriculum
• Friday – Choosing Homeschool Curriculum for Multiple Ages

~Subscribe to Curriculum Choice via email (enter your email address in the top, right-hand corner) and receive our Ultimate Guide to Choosing Curriculum~

How about you? What is your favorite curriculum and/or resources for this age and stage of homeschooling?

~Written by Heather N, Homeschooling on Faith and Coffee

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