These preschool homeschool curriculums provide excellent teaching resources for homeschool and classroom teachers.
The Complete Daily Curriculum for Early Childhood: Because there’s more than one way to be smart! This innovative book for three- to six-year-olds offers a complete plan for every learning style. Organized by theme, The Daily Curriculum includes a morning circle and end-of-day reflection, and different activities for each learning center. With over 1200 activities and ideas to engage multiple intelligences, assessment tools, and a comprehensive appendix of songs, stories, games and dances, props, recipes, patterns, chants, rhymes, and arts and crafts, you’ll find everything you need to captivate and challenge every child in your classroom. Themes include: All About Me, Colors All Around, The Shape of Things, Sing a Song of Opposites, World of Animals, Little Things, Things That Go Together, It's Chow Time!, Mother Goose on the Loose, Sing Me a Song, Tell Me a Tale, Whether the Weather, 'Tis the Season, and Celebrations.
The Complete Daily Curriculum for Early Childhood is designed to help teachers create a comprehensive curriculum that is tailored to meet the individual differences of children. Each concept or skill is introduced during a Morning Circle activity and then reinforced in learning centers that utilize activities that appeal to each of the eight ways of being smart and learning style preferences. A variety of subject/curriculum areas and each of the developmental domains are addressed in each day's lessons.
Because getting children focused is so critical to learning, every Morning Circle includes a suggestion for grabbing children's attention. Closing Circle [Reflections on the Day] offers suggestions for helping children reflect on their experiences of the day. Each lesson includes several Story Circle suggestions and Music and Movement activity ideas. Each thematic group of lessons includes suggestions for assessing children's understanding of the skills and concepts presented in those lessons by using strategies that appeal to the eight ways of demonstrating high ability levels [multiple intelligences].
Lessons in this book are flexible. You can use them with scheduled units or themes or to address children's interests as they arise. Lessons can last one day, one week, or as long as the children are interested.
You will notice that some of the activities are repeated within different themes. Repetition is an important part of learning. It strengthens children's understanding of patterns and often helps clarify information for them. Repetition of skills is critical to mastery. When children practice what they have learned by repeating an activity, they enlarge their understanding of that skill. Think about riding a bicycle. Every time you ride you become better at balancing. New experiences provide expanded knowledge. Your muscles become stronger from repeated use. Your awareness of bicycle etiquette expands. And most important, your self-confidence increases, allowing you to try more difficult tasks.
You will also notice that some of the stories are retold using different formats. Children love to hear a story over and over again. Rereading familiar stories coincides with the way children learn. The repetition improves their vocabulary, sequencing, and memory skills. Research shows that children often ask as many and sometimes the same questions after a dozen readings as they do after the first reading. This is because they are learning language in increments-not all at once. Each reading brings a little more meaning to the story.
The Appendix includes songs, fingerplays, chants and rhymes, stories, recipes, games and dances, directions for making games, and patterns for games, puppets, and flannel board stories. A sample letter to parents describing the concept of multiple intelligences and ways to determine their child's high ability levels is also provided.
The lesson themes are familiar ones found in most early childhood classrooms. This means that The Complete Daily Curriculum for Early Childhood will fit right in with your established curriculum. What a wonderful way to view children! What a celebration of human potential! What an ideal way to build community!
By Pam Schiller, 480 pages. 2002. |
