What thoughts go through your head when you hear people talking about what preschool curriculum to use for your lesson plans? Are you thinking things like, Where do I find a curriculum to use at home? Is there a Christian curriculum for preschoolers? How do I choose the right one? or maybe you’re even thinking, What’s a curriculum?
Let’s start with that last one first.
For most people, when they hear the word curriculum, they think of a pre-packaged course, usually with workbooks. But curriculum is actually any resource you use to teach your child the things you want them to learn. Resources like books, games, toys, a trip to the zoo, or visits to the library, and yes, even workbooks, can all be part of your curriculum.
At the preschool level, it’s not necessary to use a prepackaged curriculum. You can put together your own tailor-made preschool plan for your child much easier than you may think.
In my almost 20 years of teaching preschoolers in the classroom, most of the preschools didn’t use a pre-made curriculum. Those that did, heavily supplemented them with other activities.
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Creating Your Own Lesson Plans
I’ll let you in on a little trade secret. Most of those amazing activities and adorable crafts that preschool teachers use in their classrooms come from Pinterest. And anyone can have a free Pinterest account (if you don’t have one, I would highly recommend it. It will be like a best friend -lol). You can check out mine, if you want to take a peek at the ideas I’ve saved over the years- Tothood 101 Pinterest
Before spending unnecessary money on books and resources, first think about what you want to accomplish. What is your child interested in? Look at theme lists for ideas. Once you find something, start exploring that interest together.
- Read books about the topic. Visit your library and look for books together.
- See our book list by themes. Most have a free printable list you can take to the library.
- Sing and listen to songs
- You can find songs by theme on our Favorite Preschool Songs page.
- Play games related to that theme
- Do arts and craft projects
- Pinterest is great for this!
- Let them pretend
- Kids can dress up and pretend to practice what they are learning. For Instance, they can pretend to be a veterinarian and take care of their stuffed animals, or be a scientist looking for birds, ants, frogs or butterflies.
- Include lots of hands-on learning activities
- Take field trips (aka Adventures!)
Planning Out Lessons
When planning out lessons, keep in mind that preschoolers’ interests change so much from day to day as they learn more about the world around them. You may want to tentatively plan out lesson ideas for a week, adding areas like math, language arts, science, and Bible.
You can easily jot notes for ideas down on a piece of paper, but if you want something more structured, we have free lesson plan templates you can use. You can find them in FREE Printable Resource Library!
