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Need recommendations for 4 year old Preschool curriculum


Brooke
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I need some help navigating on how to plan this coming year. I thought I loved the idea of Charlotte Mason but I’m starting to think modern classical is the way we should go. My 4 year old is a very eager learner and loves having his own book to work from.
 

We completed pre school math at home. We are about halfway done with Teach Your Child to read in 100 easy lessons. We have incorporated Torchlight literature and some units from core knowledge preschool and kindergarten level. We just finished get ready for the code book A. 

Right now I’m planning on using build your library but I would like to use a well trained mind method but I don’t know how to do that. Any advice? We prefer secular but aren’t opposed to using religious curriculum if it gets the job done. I suppose one of my questions is if build your library could work in a classical way? Next is what do I use to continue phonics after 100 easy lessons? Lastly, should I start a kinder level of math? I’m between Singapore dimensions and math with confidence. I know he’s only 4 but he really does love learning so why stop him? 

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So........I'm of the opinion that directed "play" is the way to go for 4yo.  If it can be fun, do it.  One of the things about the WTM method is that you can see skills building on each other, almost like a staircase.  It's possible to look at the base skills and adapt them down to lower levels.  At 4yo, it looked like this in our house:

Narration: getting into folk and fairy tales, especially the "three-peat" ones, where an element is repeated and changed just slightly (think Goldilocks or The Little Red Hen).  You can read different versions, act them out together, make stick puppets...

Memorization: we had a lot of fun with nursery rhymes and fun pieces.  I think my youngest was 6 when he recited The Jabberwocky, but it enchanted him long before that.

Great literature: there's plenty out there that is age appropriate, well illustrated, and gives you opportunity to do voices.

Mapwork: we did a stacked map that year.  First we did a week of just our house: the floor plan from above, who lived there..then our street (house number, street name, our neighbors), then the neighborhood, then the town, then county, state, country...if you've ever seen the book Zoom, it was a bit like that.  Each week built on the last and showed our place in the world.

Fine motor skills: a lot of opportunities with chalk, paints, hole punch, hammer..ways to move the body

Gross motor skills: same as above with park days, jumping, running..

Nature study: through our state park, nature center, public gardens..

Logic: games, and the very occasional workbook page from Developing The Early Learner

 

Every skill I wanted to touch on I color coded in our weekly spreadsheet of activities, and then adjusted to different activities as I saw fit.  There are a lot of ways learning can happen, but I wanted to make sure it wasn't too much table time.

For where to go after 100 EZ Lessons, that's going to depend on how well he's reading.  Most kids hit sticking points in the book, because it's a scaled down 3 year program.  You can redo some older lessons to help stretch it out a bit, or move to Reading Mastery books (same program, more readers.  Older versions are pretty cheap on Abe Books).  I think you'll figure out more of exactly what you need when you finish the 100th lesson.  Mine moved on to reading with minor assistance (teaching the phonemes not covered) and then a few years later: spelling.

For math, you might enjoy taking a look at Miquon.  It's a 3 year program, but is pretty age appropriate in how the pages are set up.  I used to slip the lab sheets in page protectors so they could be done over and over.

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11 minutes ago, HomeAgain said:

So........I'm of the opinion that directed "play" is the way to go for 4yo.  If it can be fun, do it.  One of the things about the WTM method is that you can see skills building on each other, almost like a staircase.  It's possible to look at the base skills and adapt them down to lower levels.  At 4yo, it looked like this in our house:

Narration: getting into folk and fairy tales, especially the "three-peat" ones, where an element is repeated and changed just slightly (think Goldilocks or The Little Red Hen).  You can read different versions, act them out together, make stick puppets...

Memorization: we had a lot of fun with nursery rhymes and fun pieces.  I think my youngest was 6 when he recited The Jabberwocky, but it enchanted him long before that.

Great literature: there's plenty out there that is age appropriate, well illustrated, and gives you opportunity to do voices.

Mapwork: we did a stacked map that year.  First we did a week of just our house: the floor plan from above, who lived there..then our street (house number, street name, our neighbors), then the neighborhood, then the town, then county, state, country...if you've ever seen the book Zoom, it was a bit like that.  Each week built on the last and showed our place in the world.

Fine motor skills: a lot of opportunities with chalk, paints, hole punch, hammer..ways to move the body

Gross motor skills: same as above with park days, jumping, running..

Nature study: through our state park, nature center, public gardens..

Logic: games, and the very occasional workbook page from Developing The Early Learner

 

Every skill I wanted to touch on I color coded in our weekly spreadsheet of activities, and then adjusted to different activities as I saw fit.  There are a lot of ways learning can happen, but I wanted to make sure it wasn't too much table time.

For where to go after 100 EZ Lessons, that's going to depend on how well he's reading.  Most kids hit sticking points in the book, because it's a scaled down 3 year program.  You can redo some older lessons to help stretch it out a bit, or move to Reading Mastery books (same program, more readers.  Older versions are pretty cheap on Abe Books).  I think you'll figure out more of exactly what you need when you finish the 100th lesson.  Mine moved on to reading with minor assistance (teaching the phonemes not covered) and then a few years later: spelling.

For math, you might enjoy taking a look at Miquon.  It's a 3 year program, but is pretty age appropriate in how the pages are set up.  I used to slip the lab sheets in page protectors so they could be done over and over.

This was very helpful so thank you! It looks like we are doing most of what you listed but I suppose I didn’t look at it that way. 
 

It has been smooth sailing with 100 easy lessons but it is definitely getting harder so we circle back a few lessons to refresh his memory. I’m going to look into miquon for math. 
 

I will also look into reading mastery books. We have the ordinary parents guide to teaching reading but at the time blending didn’t click yet so that’s why we tried 100 easy lessons. 
 

Thanks so much! 

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K math with confidence is gentle and fun and has been done with some 4 yr olds. The 1st grade book has been great for my current 6 yr old. He's really memorizing his math facts.

I love RightStart and have used it with other kids A-G. RightStart A is super interactive and really gets to the interesting math. You could keep it up or switch out after A or B or C.... I am planning it for fall for my almost 4 yr old. We will go at her pace;)

 

If you want planned out nature/crafty fun for science ect a fun one is Wee Folk Art https://weefolkart.com/homeschool-homepage/

It would go onto classical later just fine. I might use it with my 4 yr old next year if I have time;) she will have 5 siblings.....

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Before you start with MIquon, I would do Mathematics Made Meaningful. Miquon assumes that the children are already familiar with the rods; Mathematics Made Meaningful does that. It is OOP, but you can find it reasonably on Ebay. The kit you want includes task cards and rods. The task cards start out simply: dump the rods in a pile and separate them by color. Dump them again and separate them by size. Hey--they're the same piles! 🙂 No workbooks, mostly intuitive but directed play. This product is what caused me to be enthusiastic about Cuisenaire rods. 🙂 Then when he's, oh, 6, do Miquon.

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To add to what others are saying, incorporate some fun activities to build strength in his fingers for future handwriting. Work with play dough and clay, practice using scissors, connect the dot pages,  coloring with different materials. Learn correct grip and try to enforce that early (I wish someone had done that for me). 

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I've enjoyed Math with Confidence Kindergarten with my 4 year old. It's mostly activities in the Teacher's Manual so it's easy to just stay with a lesson if she isn't quite getting it. She likes worksheets too and the workbook for Math with Confidence is just enough to wet her appetite without being too much (it's also not really the meat of the lessons, so if she doesn't feel like doing one I don't feel like I need to force her to finish or do the worksheet correctly).  

14 minutes ago, GoodnightMoogle said:

To add to what others are saying, incorporate some fun activities to build strength in his fingers for future handwriting. Work with play dough and clay, practice using scissors, connect the dot pages,  coloring with different materials. Learn correct grip and try to enforce that early (I wish someone had done that for me). 

Kumon makes some good cutting and pasting books. Handwriting without Tears makes some good workbooks that are gentle (only has 4-5 letters per page to copy) and thus you can require correct grip and careful writing without it being overwhelming.

Gentle and Classical preschool is free for just the Teacher's Guide and that can give you a schedule of good books and poems (nursery rhymes) to read. It actually repeats the poems so they can memorize the poems from exposure. It is religious but it's pretty modular with it and your child doesn't read the teacher's guide so I think it'd be easy to just skip.

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8 hours ago, countrymum said:

K math with confidence is gentle and fun and has been done with some 4 yr olds. The 1st grade book has been great for my current 6 yr old. He's really memorizing his math facts.

I love RightStart and have used it with other kids A-G. RightStart A is super interactive and really gets to the interesting math. You could keep it up or switch out after A or B or C.... I am planning it for fall for my almost 4 yr old. We will go at her pace;)

 

If you want planned out nature/crafty fun for science ect a fun one is Wee Folk Art https://weefolkart.com/homeschool-homepage/

It would go onto classical later just fine. I might use it with my 4 yr old next year if I have time;) she will have 5 siblings.....

Thanks so much! I’ve heard of this wee folk art but haven’t dove in yet but I’ll definitely do that now. I forgot to mention we are in a co op said op that does art and now started a play group too. 

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5 hours ago, Ellie said:

Before you start with MIquon, I would do Mathematics Made Meaningful. Miquon assumes that the children are already familiar with the rods; Mathematics Made Meaningful does that. It is OOP, but you can find it reasonably on Ebay. The kit you want includes task cards and rods. The task cards start out simply: dump the rods in a pile and separate them by color. Dump them again and separate them by size. Hey--they're the same piles! 🙂 No workbooks, mostly intuitive but directed play. This product is what caused me to be enthusiastic about Cuisenaire rods. 🙂 Then when he's, oh, 6, do Miquon.

Good to know thanks! We actually have the rods but I haven’t shown him the concept of what they mean yet. He was actually playing with them the other day like blocks haha! Im going to look at the mathematics made meaningful.

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5 hours ago, Clarita said:

I've enjoyed Math with Confidence Kindergarten with my 4 year old. It's mostly activities in the Teacher's Manual so it's easy to just stay with a lesson if she isn't quite getting it. She likes worksheets too and the workbook for Math with Confidence is just enough to wet her appetite without being too much (it's also not really the meat of the lessons, so if she doesn't feel like doing one I don't feel like I need to force her to finish or do the worksheet correctly).  

Kumon makes some good cutting and pasting books. Handwriting without Tears makes some good workbooks that are gentle (only has 4-5 letters per page to copy) and thus you can require correct grip and careful writing without it being overwhelming.

Gentle and Classical preschool is free for just the Teacher's Guide and that can give you a schedule of good books and poems (nursery rhymes) to read. It actually repeats the poems so they can memorize the poems from exposure. It is religious but it's pretty modular with it and your child doesn't read the teacher's guide so I think it'd be easy to just skip.

I think he can handle math with confidence but if he gets frustrated I’ll back off. That’s what we did with reading. If he had too much push back I let it be for a bit. I wasn’t planning on handwriting yet but he wanted to so badly on his own. That’s what I love about homeschooling. I didn’t know gentle and classical had a free teachers guide so this helps  a lot. Thank you!

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5 hours ago, GoodnightMoogle said:

To add to what others are saying, incorporate some fun activities to build strength in his fingers for future handwriting. Work with play dough and clay, practice using scissors, connect the dot pages,  coloring with different materials. Learn correct grip and try to enforce that early (I wish someone had done that for me). 

Thanks! We do most of those things but the scissor part we need to work on again. He is a lefty but his grip has improved a lot in the past few months. I need to get him some left handed scissors too. He’s tried with his right but it feels awkward to him I think. 

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On 3/12/2023 at 9:30 PM, countrymum said:

K math with confidence is gentle and fun and has been done with some 4 yr olds. The 1st grade book has been great for my current 6 yr old. He's really memorizing his math facts.

I love RightStart and have used it with other kids A-G. RightStart A is super interactive and really gets to the interesting math. You could keep it up or switch out after A or B or C.... I am planning it for fall for my almost 4 yr old. We will go at her pace;)

 

If you want planned out nature/crafty fun for science ect a fun one is Wee Folk Art https://weefolkart.com/homeschool-homepage/

It would go onto classical later just fine. I might use it with my 4 yr old next year if I have time;) she will have 5 siblings.....

I ended up ordering math with confidence K. Thankfully it was on sale so why not? I’ll test the waters to see if he’s ready in a few months.   

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On 3/12/2023 at 5:28 PM, HomeAgain said:

So........I'm of the opinion that directed "play" is the way to go for 4yo.  If it can be fun, do it.  One of the things about the WTM method is that you can see skills building on each other, almost like a staircase.  It's possible to look at the base skills and adapt them down to lower levels.  At 4yo, it looked like this in our house:

Narration: getting into folk and fairy tales, especially the "three-peat" ones, where an element is repeated and changed just slightly (think Goldilocks or The Little Red Hen).  You can read different versions, act them out together, make stick puppets...

Memorization: we had a lot of fun with nursery rhymes and fun pieces.  I think my youngest was 6 when he recited The Jabberwocky, but it enchanted him long before that.

Great literature: there's plenty out there that is age appropriate, well illustrated, and gives you opportunity to do voices.

Mapwork: we did a stacked map that year.  First we did a week of just our house: the floor plan from above, who lived there..then our street (house number, street name, our neighbors), then the neighborhood, then the town, then county, state, country...if you've ever seen the book Zoom, it was a bit like that.  Each week built on the last and showed our place in the world.

Fine motor skills: a lot of opportunities with chalk, paints, hole punch, hammer..ways to move the body

Gross motor skills: same as above with park days, jumping, running..

Nature study: through our state park, nature center, public gardens..

Logic: games, and the very occasional workbook page from Developing The Early Learner

 

Every skill I wanted to touch on I color coded in our weekly spreadsheet of activities, and then adjusted to different activities as I saw fit.  There are a lot of ways learning can happen, but I wanted to make sure it wasn't too much table time.

For where to go after 100 EZ Lessons, that's going to depend on how well he's reading.  Most kids hit sticking points in the book, because it's a scaled down 3 year program.  You can redo some older lessons to help stretch it out a bit, or move to Reading Mastery books (same program, more readers.  Older versions are pretty cheap on Abe Books).  I think you'll figure out more of exactly what you need when you finish the 100th lesson.  Mine moved on to reading with minor assistance (teaching the phonemes not covered) and then a few years later: spelling.

For math, you might enjoy taking a look at Miquon.  It's a 3 year program, but is pretty age appropriate in how the pages are set up.  I used to slip the lab sheets in page protectors so they could be done over and over.

Love the mapwork idea!! and I know my son is for sure going to enjoy it! Thank you!

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