Preschool Curriculum

I've had people ask me about what I've done in homeschooling my preschoolers.

I have used Five in a Row some and enjoyed that because it uses classic, award-winning books. I just spent 1/2 hour a week (or so) reading the book for the next week and going through the activity choices, then writing down what I'd like to try and do over the week. Some things are really short and easy to talk about while reading the story, so I can accomplish several things off my list in a day if I need to. And if I don't finish my list--no biggee! The girls really liked it. We spent 2 weeks on Madeline because I was able to find so much at the library to go with it (videos, puppet, game, etc. and we have a felt board) and there were so many good activities for H's age. Our library system is great--I've been able to get most of the books at the library. And of course I bought my FIAR curriculum on ebay! There is also Before Five in a Row for ages 2-4 and Beyond Five in a Row for early elementary.

Before we did FIAR, we spent a year doing one letter a week, kind of like a mini-unit study approach, preschool style, with fun art projects. The kids LOVED it! Start with "A" and pick up some books from the library to focus on (alligator, ant, and apples, for example). Then make a craft for those 3 ideas. Here are some websites to check out if you want to start with a letter a week: http://www.alphabet-soup.net/alphabite.html
http://www.letteroftheweek.com/
I have lots of pictures of crafts we've done already in my computer that I could easily email you if you are interested and need some ideas.

I've also just picked up random workbooks for them (my kids like workbooks) and printed off worksheets that I found online. I can email you links for some of those, too, if you are interested.