I am so excited that the 2012 “Not” Back-to-School Hop is finally here. It’s fun seeing everyone’s plans for the year; it gets me all pumped up for fall.
If you have been reading my blog for any length of time, you know that I like to plan and organize way beyond what most people would probably call normal. This school year is no exception. In fact, I feel like I’ve probably put more planning into this school year than most others. Why? Because its my first year to home school. I’ve been a public school teacher for years but teaching a preschooler one-on-one is a totally different ballgame. As such, I’ve probably spend the better part of two years researching home school curriculums, printables, books, and more to learn how I could best prepare for my first few years on the home school front. The result? I ended creating our own preschool curriculum which I will be using the entire year.
After much research, I wanted a curriculum that would teach my daughter not only the ABCs, 123s, and colors, but would also include physical development activities, music experience, Bible application, life topics, and more. I wanted what we used to be an all-inclusive curriculum option. Thus, the name–Encompass Curriculum–because it encompasses a full spectrum of preschool appropriate topics and subjects.
The 4-day per week curriculum is set up to include morning board activities, group activities, and workbox activities. Together these three activity types will guide Peanut through basic developmental and educational skills expected of a 3 or 4 year old including by not limited to fine and gross motor skills, music, art, math, Bible, recitation, literacy, and cooking skills. By the end of this curriculum my hope is that Peanut will be able to recognize all basic upper and lower case letters, numbers 1-25, basic shapes, basic colors, time to the half-hour, U.S. coins up to 31 cents, write her full name, and demonstrate basic reasoning skills. In addition, she will have the opportunity to memorize several well-known Bible verses, poems and nursery rhymes that will hopefully have a life-long impact on her behavioral development.
Now don’t go thinking that I created everything in the curriculum. Quite the contrary. While I have supplemented some printables as I thought necessary to complete our outlying goals, Encompass also incorporates a lot of excellent resources and printables found across the web. A few of my favorites are Carisa’s 1+1+1=1 Preschool Printables, Erika’s Letter of the Week Curriculum on Confessions of a Homeschooler, Jolantha’s PreK Printables on Homeschool Creations, and several interactive activities found on Preschool Express. Each original source is linked up on the lesson plans for convenient access.
 |
| Sample Lesson Plan |
We will also be using the following resources throughout the year:
- My ABC Bible Verses: Hiding God’s Word in Little Hearts by Susan Hunt
- BIG Preschool Workbook by Lisa Carmona, Barbara Gregorich, and Joan Hoffman
- Preschool Practice Scissor Skills by Joan Hoffman
- Creative Correction: Extraordinary Ideas for Everyday Disciplineby Lisa Whelchel
- Parenting with Scripture: A Topical Guide for Teachable Momentsby Kara Durbin
Each Monday I will be sharing our progress here on Cornerstone Confessions and link up the week’s lesson plans and activity sheets for others to download for free. We actually started school a few weeks ago so that we could spread our schedule out a bit over the year. Thus, feel free to look at our first few weeks to get a taste of what’s in store.
This year is definitely a new adventure for us but one we are very much looking forward too. I hope you’ll follow along with us as we try to Encompass it all in our first year of preschool. We know there will be struggles and not everything will work out as planned but as Winston Churchill stated, “He who fails to plan is planning to fail.” Thus, in planning ahead we hope to have already won half the battle. God bless!
You have a post you want to share about your curriculum plans for this year? Feel free to hop on over and link up on the “Not” Back-to-School Blog Hop. Hope to see you there!
