This year, I continued preschool homeschool with my four-year-old. My two-year-old also loves to join in for part of school! Here are my homeschool preschool curriculum picks that I used with my kids this year.
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Meaningful Menu
I have used this Meaningful Menu for over a year! The company is now a part of The Gentle and Classical Press. You can purchase different menus to use and store in a menu cover. The one that I use has different hymns, catechisms, scripture memory, and math activities. You can go at your own pace or use the recommended timeline for each menu.
Weather/Calendar Songs
While not curriculum, we do have a few songs that we sing daily to memorize the days of the week, months of the year, and the weather of the day.
Here are links that are similar to the songs we use:
Nursery Rhymes
I enjoy reading nursery rhymes and poetry to my kids to build their phonemic awareness and language development. The Neighborhood Mother Goose has many classic nursery rhymes but this version is more inclusive and representative of various cultural backgrounds. We also read other poetry, folktales, and fables on a regular basis.
Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Preschool Homeschool Curriculum
When I taught first grade in a public school, we learned about the science of reading. One component of effective reading instruction is teaching kids phonemic awareness.
According to readingrockets.org, “Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. This includes blending sounds into words, segmenting words into sounds, and deleting and playing with the sounds in spoken words.”
Heggerty is a curriculum that teaches kids phonemic awareness in about 3-5 minutes a day. The lessons are pre-written and progressively get more challenging.
Heggerty offers curriculum for preschool through second grade. This is the curriculum that I use with my preschooler. They also have resources for students who speak Spanish and are learning English as a second language.
We also have the alphabet chart and ABC cards from Heggerty that we use with our Peaceful Press curriculum when introducing new letters.
The Ology
The Ology is a theology book written as a story and in a way that children can begin to understand. It is designed for children ages 6-12, but my children are beginning to grasp some of the concepts in the book.
I do think this book is a little advanced for pre-schoolers, but it is something that can be re-read from year to year!
The Peaceful Preschool by The Peaceful Press
I share my curriculum review of The Peaceful Preschool by The Peaceful Press in detail in this post. This is a Charlotte Mason, Montessori inspired approach to learning. Each week, children learn a new letter. Each day has a read aloud suggestion, phonics practice, fine motor skills, large motor skills, practical life skills, and art skills. My children love the multi-sensory approach to learning letters plus the art skills!
Handwriting Without Tears
My son started showing an interest in writing shortly before he turned 5. I decided to order Handwriting Without Tears to introduce him to writing his letters. He loves his handwriting book and actually reminds me every day that it is time to get it out!
The lessons are short and include instructions for each letter formation. You can purchase a teacher’s guide for more in-depth lessons, but I have honestly not referenced the guide as often as I thought because the lessons are pretty self-explanatory.
They also sell wood pieces that can be shaped into different letters in the alphabet. This is a multi-sensory approach to learning that helps kids remember the letter shapes.
After working through this book, my preschooler learned all of his upper and lower case letters, plus his numbers! I highly recommend this handwriting curriculum.
Kick Start Kindergarten with Teacher’s Manual
All About Reading Pre-Reading Preschool Homeschool Curriculum
After extensive research, I decided to use All About Reading and All About Spelling curriculum for teaching my kids to read and spell. I noticed that my kids needed some extra practice with letter and sound recognition after completing The Peaceful Press for our first year of preschool, so I decided to try the pre-reading curriculum for our second year.
This curriculum teaches upper and lower case letters and sounds as well as phonemic awareness. In all honesty, there are a lot of different ways to teach kids letter/sound recognition that don’t involve an expensive curriculum. However, I liked the structure of All About Reading: Pre-Reading, and my kids enjoy the activities!
Favorite Homeschool Preschool Supplies
In addition to the curriculum mentioned above, I also have some favorite homeschool supplies for my kids that I use with the above curriculums. Here are a few of my favorites:
Pencils
Pencil Grippers
Paint
Paintbrushes
Paint Palettes
Glitter Glue
Craft Supply Bundle
Markers
Crayons
Dot Markers
Stickers
Other Homeschool Preschool Curriculum Ideas
There are a lot of incredible homeschool preschool curriculum resources out there. I am finding that each family–and even each kid–may need a different approach. Instead of limiting myself to one curriculum, I have pulled from different resources to meet the needs of my children.
I also ordered Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons because a lot of my homeschooling friends recommended it. However, I have a teaching background in direct phonics instruction, and in my opinion, this resource seemed really fast paced and difficult to retain. I’m going to keep it as an option, but as of right now my plan is to take a more direct phonics approach to teaching reading to my children through All About Reading.
Let me know below if you have tried any of these resources or found others that you like!
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