5 free curriculum ideas for your preschooler and kindergartener student

Many of you are thinking about homeschooling more than ever right now, and deciding to jump in this fall. You are searching for the best curriculum to use so that you can begin your homeschool journey with a bang.

I get it. Before you purchase a curriculum for your little ones, let me suggest an alternative.

This age group is one of the easiest and stress free groups to teach. Everything that you do with them is a learning experience. They are like little sponges, and teaching them can be so much fun. One reason it’s a lot of fun to teach this age is because they are too young to realize that they are “in school”, therefore, it is unlikely that they will rebel grasping the learning objectives. They will be spending time with you, and that is the ultimate reward for them. Let me caution you to resist the urge to download a learning app on your phone, ipad or computer, and use that as a means of teaching. If you are homeschooling, the earlier that you establish yourself as the authoritative teacher the better. Old school, hands on teachinig with this age group is so much fun. Here are my suggestions:

1. Story Time

All of learning is built on teaching your child one of the most crucial life skills ever; reading. Having a consistent story time (by consistent, I mean everyday) with your children is a good way to introduce them to the joy of reading. One way of getting a variety of books and good stories into your school day is by making a trip to the library a daily or weekly event. If possible, go to the library and check out 20-25 books. Read your way through these books with your child during the week. Read them often. Talk and laugh with your children about the stories. They will begin to see reading as an desired activity. You can also try to incorporate good audio books into your daily story times. Soothing authors reading great stories will be sure to capture the attention of your child. Try not to substitute audio books for your time reading with your children. Nothing can replace that time, but audio books can come in handy when you have other tasks to take care of and/ or you need a break.

2. Arts and Crafts

Arts and crafts are a great way to introduce, colors and shapes to your young learner. The activities that you can do are endless. One activity is painting. Children love to paint. Take some craft paper and tape it to a wall and encourage your child to paint. As they paint, talk about the colors that they are using. Paint a strip of red, and say red. Have them paint with red. Do this for all of the colors. Overtime, they will know their colors. You can also do the same with shapes. Paint a circle, and say circle. Then have them try to draw a circle. Eventually you can add the two together, and have them paint a red circle. Do this with all of the shapes and colors. You can also have them cut out shapes, either shapes that you make, or a workbook designed to teach children shapes. Have them match up shapes and colors this way. Use coloring books, to also reinforce the basic skills of colors and shapes. Sorting, counting, and matching shapes and colors are all great ways to teach your child another set of basic skills, all the while having a great time.

3. Playtime

Yes, playtime is also very important for little ones when homeschooling. One of the all-time favorite activities for a child is to let them play with a ball. I do not know of a single child who does not like a good bouncy ball. This is a great way to teach them how to count. Toss the ball into the air and count one, two, three etc… Do the same with bouncing the ball, and passing the ball. You can also use a jump rope during your school day. It’s a good way to teach your child the alphabet. Sing the abc song while they are jumping. Soon they will have the song memorized. You can also use sidewalk chalk and make alphabet squares and have them stand on the letter “a”, “b”, “c”. You can even take this further and have them stand on the sound “a”, “b”, “c”. Take nature walks during your play time. A nature walk can literally be just around your block. You do not have to go to a nature preserve or anything formal. Take a walk and have your child count the big trees that you pass by, and the sidewalk cracks. Have them spot the red, yellow or blue flowers. Collect green leaves, and pinecones, and count them. Again, everything that they do is a learning opportunity. Have fun with this.

4. Quiet time

Quiet time is very important to have during your school day. It gives you a chance to rest and think your own thoughts, and the child can do the same. Playing with legos, building blocks, reading picture books, and puzzels are all quiet time activites for a child. Quiet time helps children to understand that all of life isn’t about buing busy. There is a time to be quiet and sit still. Have you ever wondered why some children just never can sit still? If they do not have a medical condition, chances are they can’t sit still because they were never taught to do so. Remember you are teaching them everything. How to be quiet and sit with their own thoughts is part of everything. I remember once my daughter was sitting still with her thoughts and she blurted out, mom look, I have a fingernail on my toe.” Another time she said, why can’t I see my words when I talk? I said what do you mean? she said when we read we see words, why can’t I see my words when I talk?” Give your children time to sit and think on things. Have a pen and paper ready to capture all of the insightful observations.

Another word about quiet time. If you find that your child is unable to sit for any period of time, now is a good time to teach them. To do this, all you need is an egg timer. Have your child sit down for a determined time. Set the egg timer, and once it goes off, they are free. You want them to win and be successful at this, so even if you have to start the timer at 60 seconds, so that they can have victory, do it. You can then inch the time up by small increments until they are finally sitting quietly for a good 45 min-1 hour.

5. School time

At last, you might want to have a workbook or two available for a little time of concentrated “schooltime,” if you think they would enjoy it. A good workbook to have would be an age appropriate dot to dot activity book. I found these to be a good way to reinforce counting. There are so many good preschool and kindergartener activity books. If you think your child can use more challenging activities, working on a page or two from these books throughout the week would suffice. Find a way to teach them to recognize their written name, and even write it themselves. Try not to have them spend too much time sitting and doing workbook work. If they will tolerate it great. If not, there is no need to push it onto them at this age.

Again, all of life is learning at this tender age. Try and make it a part of your everyday. Let this time be filled with fun and wonder, and they will never realize that they are in fact in school.

Incorporate these five suggestions into your homeschool, and you will have what you need to teach your children preschool and kindergarten. If you are in a state that requires you to keep records, just take the work that they do and place it in a box. At the end of the year, you would have accumulated a years worth of work, and can summarize the learning objectives that have been met. It would also be a help to keep a calendar throughout the year, and toss that in the box at years end too. This will show that the required school days and any other requirements have been met.

That’s all I have. You are homeschooling your children. It is going to be great!

Happy Teaching. <3