The Gentle + Classical Preschool Year-End Curriculum Review (And What I Added)
We have officially completed the 26 units of the recently updated Gentle and Classical Preschool curriculum, so I wanted to share a bit about it since we loved it! I have been wanting to post a review on the curriculum for months now, because I have had several friends ask about it, but I am glad I was too busy to do it before, because now I can fully review it since we have completed it!
Elliot is a few months shy of three years old, so why in the world did I even think about using a curriculum this year? I'm glad you asked, haha! Here are a few reasons:
1) We both function well with structure and routines, so it helped to have activities planned out and things to do rather than feeling like I have no ideas in the moment.How did our year with The Gentle + Classical Preschool help me meet these goals?
1. Structure: The 26 units each focused on a letter of the alphabet, accompanied by other subjects as well, so it was easy to focus on certain things each week rather than trying to cram too much all at once. We did the bulk of the week's curriculum during breakfast while munching and going over our memory board statements (more on that later) and reading books that included the letter of the week. We had regular free play to get the wiggles out, nature time, and even music and art time (Tea Time Tuesdays). We didn't follow this routine rigidly, but rather used it as a rhythm for our day and week, tweaking things or fully taking a break when needed, like when there was an illness, traveling, family visiting, or first trimester queasiness. I feel like this rhythm, aided by this curriculum, really helped Elliot thrive this year.
2. Implementing what I have been learning about home education: I have been inspired by many books on both Montessori and Charlotte Mason education philosophies (which have some similarities but also definitely some differences), and I appreciated that The Gentle and Classical Preschool curriculum was particularly inspired by Charlotte Mason (classical education, which I haven't looked into way too much yet, is the other inspiration for the curriculum). I have found it to be a peaceful, gentle, and beautiful approach to introducing learning to young children with no pressure to grasp concepts the first time around. I am planning on repeating a lot of the curriculum when he turns three in the fall, so this year was very low-stress and all about exposure rather than mastery. I wanted to expose him to the ABCs, but not expect he remembered every letter. He blew me away by recognizing most of his ABCs and will point them out when we see words on signs during our walks. I hoped he might be able to count to five by the end of the curriculum, but he latched onto counting and loves counting all the time, correctly to ten and has been trying out 11-15, which he wanted to learn himself. He has also learned shapes, colors (primary and mixing primary into secondary colors), and concepts like more and less, which are all great pre-math concepts. The curriculum recommends reading and using the fun, easy, free activities from the book, Preschool Math at Home by Katie Snow, which I wholeheartedly recommend. See my Goodreads review HERE.
3. Exposure to a fun learning environment and Bible/devotion time: Along with the classic subjects taught in preschool (ABCs, pre-math) mentioned above, I was thrilled to introduce art and music study, Bible devotions, character development, and learning about his body. The curriculum had all of this. I'll explain more later in the post.
How did I implement the curriculum?
First off, there is incredible flexibility with this curriculum. It's marketed for ages 2-4, which is a vast age difference for comprehension, ability to concentrate/ sit still, and interest in learning. The curriculum is presented as a feast, or a buffet: You as the parent are free to take what you want and leave the rest, either for another year or not at all. I liked the whole curriculum, but Elliot was barely two when we started, so I eased into it and added different sections and really simplified them to his abilities and interest. I will say this a lot in this post, because it became my mantra: It is all about exposure, NOT mastery at this age! Charlotte Mason educators typically don't even start formal lessons until age six, so I saw this as getting our feet wet, and laying a foundation of learning that was fun, playful, gentle, and included great books I otherwise may not have heard about or read to him. If it became too much like work/school, we would take a break and have unstructured play. I didn't want learning to feel rigid, boring, or a list of things he needed to complete before he could play. The curriculum gave us a structure for our day/week, but it did NOT dictate our time. Some days we'd spend only a few minutes total on the different subjects because he wasn't feeling it at all, which was fine. Other days, he was very engaged and wanted to keep going, so we would. It was child-led, with structure planned ahead by me.
There are 26 units separated in three terms (each around 8-9 weeks). The units can be done in one week, or you can stretch them out to two weeks; it's up to you. We stretched out a few of the units for different reasons, but we mostly stuck with one unit per week since that felt right in terms of interest and comprehension. I didn't expect he'd know everything by the end of that week, so it was okay to move on even if we'd still be working on a concept in the future rather than hammering in a concept until we were both exhausted or annoyed. Erin, the creator of the curriculum, offers a FREE Teacher's Guide that explains the philosophy as well as implementation of the curriculum (make sure you select DIGITAL format for the free version). You can implement some of the core subjects of the curriculum using just this guide, but it would require more work if you plan on finding your own books, creating your own statement memory board, etc. If someone wants to use the curriculum, she recommends buying either the digital or the printed curriculum bundle, which includes all the memory statement cards, printables of activities mentioned in the Teacher's Guide, and book lists for each letter unit. (I have a referral code at the bottom of this post if you do decide to go forward.)
Along with using most of the curriculum, I sprinkled in other activities and lessons. The curriculum includes handicrafts/art projects for each letter unit, but most of them seemed too difficult for two-year old Elliot, so I replaced them with other crafts and activities I found on Pinterest. These were typically activities that took less than five minutes to prepare, around five minutes to work through, and less than five minutes to clean-up. Again, I was dealing with a two-year old, so I did not want anything too complex or frustrating for either one of us. I didn't buy a lot of supplies since most of at the ones I chose from the plethora of Pinterest preschool activities were activities including materials I already owned or could easy grab from the Dollar Tree. I basically limited myself to not spending more than $5 per week on any activities I included in our learning time. The handicrafts in the curriculum look fun, so we may try many of them when we repeat the curriculum when he turns three in a few months.
I also included different Montessori activities into our curriculum. Practical living skills (self-dressing, brushing teeth, helping with household chores) were mentioned in the Manners and Hygiene section of the curriculum, but I also worked on others that were age-appropriate for Elliot, many of which I used guidance from various Montessori resources. Caring for our environment is also a Montessori subject, and includes learning how to water a garden (which he helps me with), flower arranging (which we did a few times together), and cleaning up after a meal. Food preparation is another big one with Montessori, and we loved this. We baked an artisan loaf of bread together, he learned to cut bananas with his child-safe knife, and he loves pouring ingredients for pancakes. Many of the Pinterest activities that were ABC and pre-math were inspired by Montessori, from using a sand letter tray to introduce a letter, to using manipulatives (like seashells collected from a beach trip) to help with counting. It all complimented the curriculum well and made it feel more natural to me as I added more Montessori influence into his learning.
The curriculum is available in digital and printed versions. The price difference is pretty significant, though they’re currently having an anti-inflation sale with 15%off, which is wonderful. I chose the digital format because we had just purchased a new printer that was supposed to be very efficient with ink usage (and it has been) and I didn’t have the budget to splurge on a printed version. But this meant I had to buy the cardstock and regular printed paper (depending on if the worksheet was something I wanted to use for one unit vs multiple units and wanted it to last longer), and I had to cut everything. The printed version already had everything cut for you. It’s entirely preference and budget.
How much planning was involved?
This is a hard questions to answer because I totally went overboard at first with planning. I LOVE planning and LOVE teaching, so planning ahead was really relaxing and exciting for me. I spent several weeks prior to our start date last August looking up extra activities on Pinterest, pre-reading many of the books on the book lists, and cutting out the cards for the memory statement board. This wasn't necessary, but I just nerded out big time. That said, it may be a good idea to devote at least a week before starting the curriculum to read through the Teacher's Guide and familiarize yourself with the Charlotte Mason and Classical Education philosophies as well as the overall style and execution of this particular curriculum. I found it helpful to pre-cut the cards for the memory statement board and organize them in a binder by week, and I printed out the week's plan as well, so I had it handy. Then, throughout the year, I spent a bit of time on Sunday evenings with planning out the new unit. I replaced the previous week's memory statement cards with new ones, set-up the shelf with new activities that matched the new theme, and made myself a list of things I hoped to get done that week from the curriculum as well as my own additions. We didn't always finish everything, but it was nice to have a list to refer to. I wouldn't call this an open-and-go curriculum since there is a bit of prep work, but it depends on how much you want to do before starting the curriculum and how much you're okay with doing either the weekend before the new unit or as you go during the week.
Our typical weekly rhythm using the curriculum:
Rather than a rigid schedule to follow, I prefer having rhythms in our day and week. I try to keep our week pretty simple, without a ton of driving around and events, but there are definitely some things we do (YMCA, church, Neighborhood Circle Time, library story-time, Friday Field Trips, etc). If I were to show you a detailed schedule, it would look overwhelming since everyday is a little different and can change depending on different factors, so instead, here are the main anchors for our day and week:
Breakfast learning time: While enjoying breakfast, we start off with a prayer and Bible storybook story. Then we used a statement memory board, which Erin explains in her Teacher's Guide. This hangs right by Elliot's little table we use for breakfast and table work. The sections on the statement memory board comprise the bulk of the curriculum. On most days, I read through each card, explaining it quickly and simply and using aides (like a book or song) to help with the concept. This can last a few minutes or sometimes thirty minutes, depending on his interest. Some days he wants to skip to reading books and so we only work on a few of the subjects and skip the rest.
Here are the subjects covered at some point during the week during Breakfast Learning Time:
Bible Devotions and prayer: I usually start our Breakfast Learning Time with a short prayer. I made prayer sticks (laminated photos of family and friends attached to popsicle sticks) for Elliot to choose who to pray for. Erin, the creator of the curriculum, encourages parents to read from whatever storybook Bible they choose. We have tried a few this year and our favorite has been The Beginner's Bible, since the stories are short and easy to understand for him. This takes anywhere from three minutes to ten, depending on how many stories he wants to read.
Morning "Binder": There is a collection of writing work that you can print out and place either in a binder, or in our case, in menu holders to work on most days. I chose to skip many of the pages due to his age and I just don't like the idea of worksheets. But the pages we typically worked on was the About Me page (he'd recite his full name, age, and circle or point to his current emotion from a collection of photographs), the pages that include the calendar and weather, and lastly, we'd sometimes use a page with the letter of the week for tracing with play-doh, toothpicks, popsicle sticks or other manipulatives (I wasn't interested in him writing yet, just playing with the letter in a tactile way.) There is a link for photos of the actual Morning Binder that comes with the curriculum. Our Morning Binder time ranges is usually around five minutes or less, depending on his interest.
Wonder Tale: This is our book of the week that includes the letter of the week and inspires the activities we do that week. For example: At the start of our curriculum in August, during the E week/unit, we read The Little Engine that Could. All the activities were train-related. Elliot discovered trains that week and ten months later, he still loves them! We read that book often now! I also check out a lot of books from the library to put in his book basket that either start with that same letter or are somehow related to that theme (for E, I introduced Elliot to Thomas the Tank Engine, for example), which complemented our Wonder Tale aka main book of the week. These books are listed in the Preschool Handicraft and Activity Guide (which is part of the bundle I mentioned above). I will try to read that main book a few times during the week, sometimes during breakfast and other times whenever we have a good opportunity.About Me: Each week, we talked about a different part about Elliot. We started with him learning his name, then his age, his parents' names, what country, state, and city he lived in. Then we worked through the five senses in the second term, and in the last term of the year, we introduced the body and what different systems do (in very simple terms, such as the "stomach helps make our food into energy"). This is a precursor to learning later school-age subjects like history and science; Erin believes kids should first learn about themselves before they start learning about the large world around them. But funny enough, as he was learning about himself, he WAS learning about the world around him too, like his state and city names. This takes three minutes or less, depending on how much detail I give or props used to help. Sometimes it will take thirty seconds.
Scripture: Every few weeks, we'd work on a new Bible verse. For example, this week we are focusing on Psalm 17:8 ("Hide me under the shadow of your wings"). I don't expect him to memorize this verse at all. Instead, I use the Dana Dirksen album to learn the catchy (and soothing) song for the verse and I sing it during our Breakfast learning time. This takes maybe 30 seconds. I often play a playlist with all of the Scripture and Catechism statements we have been learning (all from Dana Dirksen's albums) to further help cement them in his mind, but I keep this light since he didn't have the vocabulary to expect him to actually recite these verses. I would sometimes pause before the last word of the verse and he would say it for me, so I knew he was at least recognizing some of it. This takes under a minute
Catechism and Virtue: A Christian foundation is the root of this curriculum, so I appreciated this section a lot. Each few weeks, we'd have a new card with a Q & A format of a catechism statement. We started the year with me asking Elliot: Who Made You? And he answered: God! And this week we are tackling the three persons of the trinity (in very simple terms, but still, we've come a long way this year!). Each of the statements matches with a song from Dana Dirksen's Questions and Answers: God & Creation album, which I play every few days on my playlist. During our breakfast time, I will sing the little song, then ask the question and wait for his response, which he typically recites correctly since he just heard the answer in the song I sang. I explain this further in a post I recently wrote on the blog: Why and How I Teach My Toddler the Catechism. The virtues we focused on this year were obedience, attentiveness, and patience. One term (around eight weeks) per virtue. These also had a little song to them for each memorization. I would refer to these virtues during the day when an opportunity to either be patient, attentive, or obedient arose (which is countless!). This takes under a minute, though sometimes longer if we review the previous cards we have worked through.
Nursery Rhyme: I really didn't focus on this much. I only chose a few of the nursery rhymes she included in the curriculum, but Elliot didn't really care for them and I felt like our other books had plenty of rhyming/cadence that we were still exposing him to beautiful language. This is a precursor to introducing poetry to a child. We read a few nursery rhyme books, but again, it wasn't a big focus for us.
Manners and Hygiene: Each week, there was either a manner or a hygiene lesson that accompanied the main theme of the week. For example when we read Last Stop on Market Street, we focused on holding an adult's hand when crossing the street since we saw the main character do this while walking on the sidewalk with his grandma. These were very helpful mini lessons that I would mention during breakfast time, and then repeat whenever appropriate (like when we were in a parking lot or taking a walk and I expected him to hold my hand).
Math: The first term focused on colors, the second term focused on shapes and numbers, and the third continued numbers and worked on the concept of more and less. As mentioned above, the curriculum follows Kate Snow's Preschool Math at Home step-wise approach to pre-math skills, and we took our time with this since I wasn't in any hurry to rush through these building blocks of math concepts. During breakfast time, I would read the card and pull out manipulatives (shells, toys, marbles) for counting, or play I Spy with colors and shapes. I kept it very light and fun; no worksheets or quizzing! Later in the day, we'd practice these concepts through play as well, from counting toys to playing store to matching toys by colors, he played while learning. Now he loves counting and will do it very often without me asking him to at all. He's curious about larger number and has such a curiosity about numbers because of the fun activities we've done! We spend anywhere from a few minutes to fifteen minutes, depending on his interest. He really likes math right now, so we tend to spend more time on this than I thought we would.
Letter of the Week: The Gentle + Classical Preschool curriculum uses the Handwriting Without Tears sequence ins introducing letters, based on how easy they are to write. So, instead of starting with A, B, C, you start learning about L, E, F. Since Elliot was not familiar with the ABC order, this didn't phase him at all. I'm a little OCD, so it bothered by a teeny bit, but it ended up working great because all the letters of his name were introduced in the first term, so within a few months, he knew all of the letters in his name. We didn't focus on any writing skills this year since he is so young, so the order wasn't a benefit or a roadblock for us. It's just something that was different than other curriculums, which go in the ABC order. Using our memory statement board, I displayed a flashcard to show the letter we were focusing on, then would point to a few things that started with that letter. Some weeks, I prepared a small basket with items that began with that letter and other times it was just me mentioning a few objects I saw in the room. I also printed off free cards online with each letter and traced it with glitter glue to give a tactile experience for the letter. He would trace the letter with his finger. I did not expect him to know how to write the letter at all; just start feeling his way around it. There will be plenty of time to learn to write in a few years! We also focused on sounding out the letter rather than only recognizing the letter. And occasionally, we will sing the ABC, typically with the help of one of his stuffed animals pointing to each of the letters as I sing. As with Math, we can spend anywhere from a few minutes to fifteen minutes, depending on his interest.
Structured Play/"Shelf Work": Either after breakfast or later in the day, we'd work on some activities on his shelves. These are typically Montessori-based, and matched with the theme of the week's unit from the curriculum. In the Montessori world, these activities are placed in baskets or trays on a shelf, hence the "shelf work" term, and it is a mixture of play and learning. I would introduce them to Elliot the first time he saw them, then just ask which he wants to work on and let him lead the play. Some activities focused on pre-math skills, others on matching and categorizing, others on fine-motor skills. I posted a lot of these activities in my Highlights on Instagram if you follow me. And HERE is my Pinterest album with activities planned for this year (we did a majority of them). The amount of time spent on these activities varies on his interest, other plans for the day, and his attention span. If he's not in the mood, I don't force it.
Indoor Free Play: Elliot has a ton of unstructured/free play when I don't have an agenda and am not focusing on learning. It also includes playing in his play area in the living room where he has the bulk of his toys (that I rotate every few weeks or months, depending on how much he is actually playing with them). I only have about half of his toys out at once, which I feel helps him concentrate longer on toys and also helps with a quicker clean-up! Favorite free play toys include: magnet tiles, large legos, blocks, trucks, cars and car ramps, trains and tracks, puzzles, cooking up meals in his play kitchen, and a board game called Zingo. He often plays independently for around thirty-minutes or more, fully engaged in his own imagination and exploration. Other times he wants me to play with him, but I try to not interrupt or dictate what or how we play. It's his time.
Free play also includes sensory bins (water beads, salt tray, and a variety of others we have tried this year) and play-doh. I give him firm boundaries (keep the stuff in the bin or we need to stop) and then let him do what he wants within that limit.
Outdoor Free Play: This includes riding his balance bike to the neighborhood playground (and stopping along the way a million times to explore a bug or other fascinating thing), swinging on the disc swing in our front yard, shooting hoops, and exploring new playgrounds in our city as well as while traveling. This is great for gross-motor skills, improving balance, and getting out lots of energy, which helps with his sleep and overall mood.
Reading-aloud: This happens throughout the day: during breakfast after we work on our memory statement board, during meals, before his nap and bedtime, and whenever he picks out a book and asks me to read to him. There are a ton of benefits of reading aloud to children from infancy, so I try to always make space for reading to Elliot and he has become quite the bookworm. I have a stack of books in a book basket that is beside a comfy little armchair where he will pull out his favorites and flip through the pages on his own. Other days he is much more interested in physical play, preferring to jump around and climb than sitting still, so I don't force reading aloud, I just provide many opportunities. The Gentle and Classical Preschool's Handicraft + Activity Guide includes book lists for every unit, so I check out the ones that are age-appropriate and can easily be found at our local library. Many are classics that I already owned, but there were a lot of books we hadn't read and ended up loving!
Tuesday Tea Time: I love art and classical music, so I relished in the opportunity to introduce Elliot to the greats. The Gentle and Classical Preschool curriculum includes an optional Music and Art Study section to gently introduce preschoolers to beautiful classics. Each week, we alternated between Music and Art study. We saved this for Tea Time Tuesdays, when I would either buy or make an easy treat and serve an herbal tea (he learned to pour tea from his mini tea pot during these sweet Tuesdays). On the art week, we'd focus on an artist (term one: Van Gogh, term two: Matisse, term three: Monet). We'd focus on one painting and notice the colors the artist used. We'd talk about it and then we'd create our own version of that art. This was usually a very simplified version, and focused more on the process rather than the final result. For example, after looking at the Starry Night by Van Gogh, I gave Elliot a sheet of aluminum foil as his "paper", q-tips for his "paint brush", and a paper plate with the three main colors used in the painting (blue, white, yellow) and then let him do whatever he wanted. Did it look like the Starry Night? Not really, but he had fun! I wrote more about our art study in THIS post. For the music section, we listened to the classic Russian masterpiece, Peter and the Wolf, which is GREAT for kids because it was composed with kids in mind! There is a fairy tale that accompanies the music. Each instrument you hear corresponds to a different character. Every time you hear a flute, for example, it signifies the bird in the story. The curriculum included a storyboard with pieces I printed on thick cardstock with the characters from the story as well as flash cards with the instruments we hear in the musical piece. I also had the fairy tale in a large fairy tale book I had picked up on a free book stand prior to this. Elliot LOVED this. The curriculum breaks up the musical piece, which is about 27 minutes, into little chunks of only a few minutes per week, but Elliot wanted to hear the whole story and music every time we sat down for this music study. We used THIS narrated version through Amazon music primarily, but found a few youtube videos with orchestra playing the music as well.
Social Activities/Events: A common misconception of homeschooled kids is that they lack social skills or opportunities. This is definitely avoidable and there are a plethora of options to get homeschooled kids interacting with kids. Elliot and I are incredible blessed to have five two-year olds in our neighborhood, with which we have Circle Time once a week. We read a story, sing a few songs that include movements/dancing, and then the kids play on their own while us moms have time to talk. It's been awesome! Elliot is also part of a Sunday school class where he sees the same children most weeks and he attends Child Watch (daycare) at our neighborhood YMCA once a week for two hours while I work out. We also go to a local library's story time occasionally, where he is around toddlers and preschoolers. He has plenty of opportunities to learn to share and play with others, so I have to concerns there.
Friday Field Trips: Our favorite thing to ask for Christmas are memberships to local kid-friendly spots, such as SeaWorld + Aquatica (the water park at Sea World), the children's museum, and the zoo. I have scheduled these to match our themes at times (zoo during Z week, for instance), but often I ask Elliot if he has a preference that week. We try to go on field trips to these places on most Fridays, after we've finished most of the activities planned for that unit. Other field trips include a nearby gym for lots of gross-motor play, story time at a local bookstore (and bike riding around the trendy area before it starts), and visiting a beautiful playground and library in and older part of town that is historic. These are fun times for me as well as for him since we both get to relax and have fun together without plans or a big rush.
Practical Living and Self-Care Skills: Practical living skills are the Montessori way of explaining activities of daily living. This happens naturally throughout the day and is never forced. This includes inviting Elliot to help me sort and match socks while I fold laundry, inviting him to help prepare an easy meal, filling up his watering can so he can assist me in watering the potted plants, and asking him to help me sweep after a messy sensory play session. This is an organic way of promoting both gross and fine motor skills while also encouraging young children to be a part of the family's day-to-day activities and care of the home. I have a Practical Living section in my Highlights on my Instagram with many of these. Self-care skills include learning to pick out his own clothes and self-dress (a work in progress), brush his own teeth, wash his hands, etc). Some of these practical living skills are ones mentioned in the curriculum and others are ones from the Montessori resources I have found.
Would I recommend this curriculum to other mamas who want to homeschool preschool?
Yes! If you want a structured curriculum with a wide variety of topics and aren't afraid or a bit of prep work, then this may be a great curriculum for you. There are other curriculums for older children available through Gentle + Classical Press as well. I loved their Thanksgiving, Advent, and Easter mini-studies too. We took a break from the preschool curriculum to do these holiday studies and simplified them to Elliot's level. They were a great way to prepare our hearts for these holidays.
-------------------------------------
Wow, that was A LOT. I hope it wasn't confusing or overwhelming. I am happy to answer any questions that may come up. Check out THIS review on the curriculum by a homeschooling mama I follow, if you want another perspective on this curriculum. If you decide you want to try this curriculum, HERE is a code to get you $5 off your first purchase as a new customer (must spend $20 or over). I get points that equal to $5 off a $15+ purchase, so it's a win-win. BUT NO PRESSURE AT ALL.
Comments
Post a Comment
I love to hear your thoughts!
Elle Alice