For those who homeschool their children...

[shelleyb1969]

what preschool curriculum do you use?
My DH and I have decided that we want to homeschool our son for his preschool year. I need a curriculum that will include everything he needs to be able to start regular school next year. But I need something affordable, too. Grandma is going to help us out with the finances of it since my DH is laid off from work and he and I both are going back to school ourselves. All suggestions are appreciated.

 

[ky chicks]

I did not homeschool my boys, but I really don't think you need to worry about a curriculum for preschool. My older son went to preschool, but my younger son only attended for about 3 weeks before we moved and I didn't enroll him in our new district. I loved the preschool we had, and before we moved, I spoke to his teacher about my concern that I wouldn't be able to find another one that I liked so well. She told me not to even worry about preschool--being at home with me and learning through everyday activities "is the best classroom there is." My son will be starting kindergarten this year, and went through screening last week. The school really just wants to see if the kids recognize at least some letters and know the sounds they make, recognize numbers and can count, and shapes and colors. I think it will be easier for both of you if you just try to integrate these things into your games and conversations. Maybe this wasn't the advice you were looking for, but I hope it helps. Don't worry too much--just have fun with your 4-year-old, and let him learn from you! Good luck!

 

[NancyP]

I agree, a curriculum is not needed. A good resource is the ED Hirsch what your preschooler should know book. There is one written for each grade it gives an overview of things they are expected to know.
Enjoy your son.
Nancy

 

[Camelot Farms]

You may even consider contacting your school system and asking them for a list of goals that they have for incoming Kindergarteners. Then you could work towards some of those.

As a pre-k program worker, I think that you would be fine without an official curriculum.

But shhhh. Dont tell anyone that a Pre-k worker would say that...

 

[farrier!]

Lot and lots of neat things to be found on ebay.....

The last 4 years almost all my curriculum has come from there.

 

[Effervescent]

I personally use Calvert Homeschool for my kindergartener, fourth grader and 6th grader. I love it and have had great success so far with it. It covers all the subjects and scripts everything out for you so there is no guess-work.
FWIW

 

[rainplace]

When my youngest was 3 and 4, I homeschooled my older boys because at the time we lived in Paraguay. My littlest always wanted to do "school" too. So I started teaching him to read. We'd do simple words like Mom, Dad, Dylan, toy and whatnot. I'd make little flash cards and tape them to the wall so he could read them to us. When we would add a new word to the wall I would mix the other words up just to make sure he wasn't just memorizing the order the words were in. I'd have him help me make little books that he could read to us. He'd draw pictures or write a word or two. There little hands don't really have the dexterity/muscle coordination for long bouts of writing so I would never push how long or force him to do it.

We did simple addition and subtraction with rocks from the yard, and I made sure he had outside chalk so he could write all over the courtyard. He wrote a lot of addition with his chalk!

We'd spend time looking at how busy the ants were and that would be perfect time to for me to say enough about what they were doing to have him start asking questions. We would do the same thing with the night sky, rain, the differences in trees, scorpians, mating feral cats

... everything is science.

We'd make up stories about everything from socks to fairies.

Anytime I didn't know an answer, I'd say, "Let's look it up." It got to the point where he wanted to look everything up!

It was the best experience I've ever had with any of my children. Now at 11 he's just as curious now as he was then, and he knows how to find things out on his own.

I used a curriculum with older boys because I was so afraid of them falling behind in school. It was tough. I think they learned more with the open sort of "school/play" that we did with the youngest than they did with their grade appropriate curriculum.

 

[mamagardener]

My sons went to preschool. All they really learned that I couldn't teach them at home was how to behave in a classroom (sharing, and playing with others their same age, and how to pay attention) other than that it was basically little kid songs, alphabet and counting,shapes,colors. Things you can easily teach them without a cirriculum.

 

[saddina]

For language arts try out: starfall.com it's easy for him to self pace, and in the printables it has worksheets and lined paper so her can do 1-2 to get used to the idea of pencil on paper and using lines. (At his age you want effort not perfection). For math, grab one of those fat preschool workbooks and work thru it at his pace (the kind they sell for like $5 at walmart will work).

If you want something a bit more comprehensive time4learning.com has a really good prek program they just rolled out (Erik beta tested it over the summer), and when he's done with that he can move to thier Kinder skills, it's about $15 a month.

Misc goodies:

dltk-kids.com Awsome site with loads of themed crafts - free

edhelper.com $20/year gives you access to huge chunks of workbooks, projects, books, I keep a subscription to print off extra worksheets for my kids who need more pratice.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Quote:
THese are VERY EXCELLENT books! I heartily recommend them.

You can also get some workbooks at the bookstore or at a teachers' store. The ones at Walmart, K-Mart, Target, etc. aren't usually as good. Spend time finding ones that fit the type of kid he/she is, and look through the material to ensure it is neither too difficult nor too easy.

Counting is not saying your numbers, and knowing the alphabet is not singing the alphabet song.

Counting is being able to correlate the stated number with that many objects. Stars in a workbook, animal crackers or round counting disks are good manipulatives for learning to count, add and subtract. As you say "ONE" you point to or pick up an object. Then point to or pick up a second object and say "TWO." Then say "your turn!" If he succeeds, start again and count a bit higher. You can interspurse questions such as right after you've counted to four saying "now how many objects do I/you have? There are also many computer games and videos (although they are probably all on DVD or blu-ray now). Sesame Street has/had a good counting one and a good ABC's one.

For the alphabet, they need to recognize the letter with its name. Older curriculums taught all upper case letters first. Later there were ones that taught lower case first or both at the same time. I don't know what the currently preferred method is, but most books have far more lower case letters than upper case ones.

Sounds are usually taught at the same time as the letters, and once again, the specific curriculum determines whether they learn one sound per letter to start with or all of them at once: for example C as in City vs C as in Cat; or A as in Apple vs A as in Ape.

Don't forget to include some music time, art time, game time and story time. And one of the more important aspects of a good preschool is socialization--learning to "play well with others."