New Milestoneseffective Curriculum Ideas

‘Interests’ are subjects, ideas, things, topics and events which fascinate and stimulate the curiosity of the child.

Within an Emergent Curriculum educators use ‘interests’ of the children, families, community and themselves as the substance of the learning program.

Selected interests are then developed through ‘projects’ or ‘investigations’ – involving related fun and interesting, hands-on learning experiences in which the children and adults work together to further explore the interest and express their own theories and understandings through a variety of representative mediums.

Playtime Devotions (Heritage Builders (Standard): This makes a wonderful Bible supplement to any curriculum. It's a wonderful stand-alone, easy curriculum, too. It's a great resource for infants through two's and three's. I like to focus on one devotion per week. From an online friend: I use Preschool by Stormie as a curriculum.
View our monthly preschool curriculum for ages 2.5 to 6 years. Our fun preschool theme lesson plans are easy–to–use with lots of hands on activities. Our affordable year of preschool curriculum includes circle time, songs & rhymes, math, literacy, science, gross motor, arts & crafts, numbers, shapes, colors with hands which includes all the printable pages, our preschool curriculum is.

Even very young children have interests. For example, at any moment a young baby or toddler is learning to roll, or crawl, or walk, or jump. This is their current interest, they are determined to master the new skill, they practise and practise. So we (often spontaneously) formulate experiences to encourage mastery of this new skill. We support and cheer on their efforts to jump, we jump with them, we sing and jump to make jumping fun. This is a form of Emergent Curriculum – taking what the child is interested in learning about and making it interesting and engaging for them to learn it.

‘Interests’ are subjects, ideas, things, topics and events which fascinate and stimulate the curiosity of the child. Within an Emergent Curriculum educators use ‘interests’ of the children, families, community and themselves as the substance of the learning program. Selected interests are then developed through ‘projects’ or ‘investigations’ – involving related fun. . This document fuses the New York State Learning Standards, K ey Ideas, and Conceptual Understandings and content sequence into a single document. The course sequence is similar to that of the previous Social Studies Resource Gu ide with Core Curriculum. Unifying Themes based primarily on the National Council for the Social Studies themes.

For a slightly older child it might be an obsession with a particular toy or book that provides the leap pad for further learning. I can tell you that this…
…is a key figure in one of Immy’s current interests, cats! This grotty, sucked on, snotted on, fed porridge and drinks of milk from her own bowl and cup, beanie toy is her constant companion. At eighteen months of age, Immy loves cats. We had a cat, Millie, until we moved to Perth when Immy was 12 months old and Immy was fascinated by her. She would light up when Millie came into the room, crawl after her once she was mobile and she mastered opening our sliding, screen door to get to Millie out on our balcony!

I can (and do) use Immy’s fascination with cats to further her learning about the world.

In my work I have seen children with interests in all manner of things, from the common ones like snails or superheroes, to the more bizarre (try creating an interesting curriculum about garbage trucks), to those stimulated by popular culture like a TV character (think Dora or Diego) or children’s movie (Nemo has changed the world of aquariums forever).

The key is for the educator (be it teacher, child care worker, or parent) to be attuned to the child’s play, conversations and activity for clues to each child’s interests.

What are your child/ren’s current interests?

Cute Letter People Alphabet

Letter A Alphabet Poster

Letter B Alphabet Poster

Letter C Alphabet Poster

Our curriculum is aimed at teaching the children their alphabet, numbers, shapes, pre writing {tracing letters}, learning to count, letter and number recognition, learning beginning sounds {by making letter books}, science activities aimed for preschool kids and so much more.

Each month the children are taught three new letters and one number {September – May}. Above are our letter posters shown are for the month of September. These super cute posters are paper sized and can be printed from your computer, laminated and placed on the wall for the children in your daycare or preschool classrom to be able to view them each day. Each month you will receive three new letter posters to display on the wall. You will also receive the number, shape and color posters to print out and display.

During the summer months {June – August} we review the alphabet, numbers, shapes and colors the children have been learning through the school year.

Free Alphabet Letter Coloring Pages

Free Letter A
Coloring Page

Free Letter B
Coloring Page

Free Letter C
Coloring Page

View Our Cute Alphabet Letters
Download Our Alphabet Printable Pages Below

Click Here To View & Download All 26 Letters

Wow, cute & free alphabet letters to color. You can download all 26 alphabet coloring pages for free {Limited time}. Some children love coloring pages others do not. If you have children in your daycare that love to color then you may want to click the link above to go over to the ABC coloring page to download these for free to share with the children in your daycare.

Coloring pages are a fine motor activity. It teaches children to color inside the lines. Younger children may not color inside the lines they may just scribble all over the page, don’t worry if they are only scribbling on the page, as they mature they will learn to color inside the lines, encourage each child to be creative and let them color the page however they want, inside the lines..outside the lines, it doesn’t really matter as long as they are having fun.

Make it a relaxing social time for the children, encourage the children to sit together or near each other as they are coloring. While the children are coloing you can ask them questions such as, what letter are you coloring? What color did you color the letter A? You may want to put on some relaxing music {turn it down low}, while they are coloring their alphabet letters, above all..just have fun!

For those children that do not like coloring pages, offer them some plain paper, markers or crayons and let them use their imagination. The key point is to try and be flexible, not every child is going to like the same things. Try to think how you can offer them something similar so they feel like they are a part of the group, but you may need to make it a bit different to make it more enjoyable for them.

Preschool Curriculum Activities For September

Plant Plot Flower Match Up

Letter B - Pre Reading Activity

The above pictures are from our September preschool curriculum. During the month of September the children will be learning the letters A..B..C.

Above you will see two pre reading activities. The first picture the children will match up the letters to the flower pots.The second picture the children glued buttons onto their letter B. If you have children under the age of 3 in your daycare, you may not want to use buttons, you could use pieces of blue paper or use blue stickers.

In the third picture is one of fun printable games. This game will to teach the children their shapes.

In our preschool curriculum children will be using glue and paint along with working on learning how to cut and trace plus we include sensory and fine motor activities into our lesson plans. Sometimes the children will be using rice in a sandbox or planting fake flowers outside or sticking clothespins into holes in an egg carton.

We try to use recycled items in our lesson plans such as, milk cartons, toilet paper tubes, paper towel rolls, plastic jar covers and egg cartons, they can be easily found or you post a note on yourbulletion board for donations of these types of items.

Preschool Math, Literacy & Science

Dragonfly Writing Page
Trace The Letter D
Color The Picture

New Milestoneseffective Curriculum Ideas Middle School

Math Activity
How Many Dots?
Learning About Numbers

Our preschool curriculum lesson plans also focus on pre math, pre reading, pre writing and science.

Each month the children will be introduced to three new letters, to help the children learn these new letters they will do a craft with each of the letters, make a letter book and trace the letters.

In the first picture above is our letter D dragonfly literacy activity from our May curriculum. The children will be learning the letters Y and Z in May and then the last week’s of the month they will be reviewing different letters from previous months.

In the second picture is our paper plate math activity. The children are working on the numbers 0 through 5. The children will put dot stickers into each section of the paper by looking at the number that is in that section.

In the last picture above you will see one of our science activities from our September curriculum. This one is from our all about me lesson plans. Each month that you purchase will include four week’s of lesson plans.

Our preschool curriculum lesson plans include fun and easy science activities such as, parts of a fish, and the children will learn that a fish has a head, tail, and fins.Some of our other science activities would include sorting nuts and seeds, making popsicles, looking at roots, going on a bug hunt, matching up animals to their shadows and so many other exciting activities!

Our curriculum is sold by the month {or by the year}. Each month includes four weekly themed based lesson plans. Children will be learning about the themes through circle time, singing {no music, words to songs}, interactive rhymes, crafts, pre reading and math activities, science & discovery, large motor, etc.

Children will be using glue, paint, crayons, markers, stickers and other craft items throughout the month. They will be learning how to cut, trace, tell time plus working on pre math, pre reading and science. Some of the simple science projects would be sorting fruits and vegetables, growing grass, watching an ant farm and so many other exciting activities!

View One Of Our Free Printable Books
Made To Use With Our Preschool April Curriculum Program

Is That A Caterpillar Story

Free Caterpillar Story
Download Our Free Book Below

Click Here To View & Download Free Printable Book

View Our Free Book From Our April Preschool Curriculum Lesson Plans.

This is a cute story a duck and a cat who are trying to find a caterpillar but keep finding all kinds of other bugs instead. This story makes a fun circle time or story time book to be used with your caterpillar, butterfly or bug week lesson plans.

Our Preschool Curriculum Program

New Milestoneseffective Curriculum Ideas 4th Grade

Circle Time Activity

Making Shapes With Mega Blocks

Getting Ready For School. We have found that when children are having fun and enjoy what they are doing, they learn quickly, which is what our program is all about, teaching the children through fun activities.

Our program is like providing a mini nursery school along with a preschool program in your own home, daycare or preschool. Parents like the idea that their child is having fun participating in daily activities, art projects, songs, finger plays and games. Our fun hands on activities are teaching them and getting them ready for school.

Our preschool curriculum program provides fun daily activities such as circle time or group time, art time, words to songs or rhymes, letter time, number time, science discovery activities, large motor activities and a special activity for five days per week. We start our morning program off each day with circle time.

Our preschool circle time starts our daily program. There is a calendar that you can print out, it’s paper sized and you may want to place it onto your bulletin board to let the parents know which activities their children are doing each day. You can check the calendar for a quick reminder of what activity you’re going to be doing next. Next, you may need to refer to the daily lesson plans on how to do the activities for that day.

To begin our circle time or group time activities, we try to get all the children to sit together in a circle on the floor. We never force any child to participate, but we do try to encourage participation. Our circle time activities could be a talk or discussion but usually involves a fun activity such as a learning activity, games, singing songs, hearing a story, etc. To begin our circle time, we discuss with the children the weather outside.

We hope you enjoy the curriculum as much as we enjoyed putting this program together.

What’s The Weather Today?

Circle Time – Weather Cards

Our weather chart is included in every monthly curriculum package. We start our morning program each day with circle time.

To begin our circle time, we discuss with the children the weather outside. We have the children look out the window and then we ask them “What is the weather outside?”

If you have a lot of younger children they may not be able to answer correctly, then we give them hints; such as, {Is the sky white or blue?} if its white does anyone know what that means? {It”s cloudy.} “Is it raining outside?' Is it snowing outside?” Is it cloudy outside?' Is it windy outside?'

We have a weather chart and each day we have one of the children move the arrow to the correct weather for that day.

The Weather Song: To help teach the children the weather we sing this song each morning with the children.

Oh, Can You Tell Me The Weather Outside?
Tune to 'Have You Ever Seen a Lassie?'
This is a fun song to sing with the preschoolers each morning to help to teach them the weather outside.
Oh, can you tell me the weather, the weather, the weather? {Point to the weather cards}
Oh, can you tell me the weather, the weather outside? {Point out the window}
Is is sunny? {Hold up a sun picture}.
Or cloudy? {Hold up rain picture}.
Is it raining?{Hold up snow picture}
Or snowing? {Hold up snow picture}
Is it windy? {Hold up cloudy picture}.
Or stormy? {Hold up thunder & lightning picture}
Oh, can you tell me the weather, the weather outside? {Point towards the window})

It’s sunny and hold up that picture. Replace the word sunny with the actual weather that is outside and show the weather picture too.

Then bring out a puppet and have the puppet pretend to talk to children by saying something like this: What’s the weather outside today? Can you go to the window with me and look out to see?

Get all excited and have the puppet say something like:

Come on everyone, hurry up, let’s go, we need to check out the weather, come on, I need your help, let’s go check out the weather, oh I can’twait to see the weather outside, have the puppet sound all happy and excited to be able to look out the window to see the weather, wave to any child that hasnt joined you to come and seewhat we see. {never force a child to join by do encourage them by happy and excited voices}

Take the children to the window to look outside, ask the children something like:

is it snowing outside, have the puppet hold up the snow picture, then askthe children to look outside to see if they see anything white floating in the air, ask the children something like this: Is it snowing out and havethe puppet hold up the snow picture, have the puppet shake his head and say no, it’s not snowing out. hmmm, what is the weather today?

Then ask the children something like this: is it windy outside, ask them if they see things blowing around in the breeze, have the puppet hold up the windy picture, have the puppet shake his head and say no, it’s not windy out. hmmm, what is the weather today?

Continue asking the children by having the puppet hold up the pictures of each type of weather.

If it’s sunny outside, ask them the correct weather last, this way you can ask them is it snowing, raining, cloudy, windy or stormy to teach them these words and then ask them the correct type of weather for the day last.

Ask the children something like: Is it sunny outside today? Have the puppet hold up the sun picture and then hold him towards the window and have the puppet say, I dont see rain, I dont see snow, I don’t see the wind, yes I think it’s sunny, YES it’s sunny, woohoo it’s sunny outside, can you say sunny, clap your hands if you like the sun!

Then hold up the puppet and have it look like he is singing a song about the weather that is outside right now.

If It’s Sunny Outside Song
Tune to If Your Happy & You Know It

If it’s sunny outside clap your hands, if its sunny outside clap your hands
if its sunny outside let’s do a happy dance {pretend dance}
if its sunny outside clap your hands, clap clap

Replace sunny with the actual weather such as rainy, stormy, windy, cloudy or snowy.

Calendar Time

Next we focus on the calendar. I will ask the children “Does anyone know what day it is?” If no one knows what day it is, I will tell them, “Today Is Thursday” {Or whatever day it actually is}. We have a large felt calendar with numbers that have Velcro on their backs to stick to the calendar. The children take turns putting up the numbers each day to show that day’s date.

Next, we have one blank calendar for each child. Each day we will have them stick on a circle sticker with that day’s date on it. After they place the day onto the calendar, such as today is May 18th and they place the circle sticker with the number 18 on it on their calendar, then we have the children find the number one on the calendar and point to it and then we begin counting all the numbers that are on our calendars. Have the children point to each number as they count with you, up to the number that they just placed onto their calendar, such as the number 18.

We write each child’s name on their calendar and then we either stick them onto the wall with a piece of tape or place them into a file folder and put them away until tomorrow. At the end of the month they can take their calendars home.

Seven days of the week song. After we have completed the calendar we sing the seven days of the week song which is shown below.

Seven Days Of The Week Song

There are seven days in the week,
seven days in the week.
There are seven days in the week. {Hold up 7 fingers}
And I know them all. {Point to self}
Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.
Saturday is the last one.
Saturday ends the week.
Repeat song.

{Directions} Teacher will point to each day on the calendar.

Singing Songs And Reciting Rhymes

Each week we teach the children a few new songs or rhymes for that week’s theme. Children like repetition so don't be afraid to sing any song the children really like on a daily basis, but try to add a few new ones each week. It won’t be long and the children will be following along to the hand movements to the songs and nursery rhymes they hear often and before you know it they will start to sing right along with you! Be sure to include some of the children’s favorites each week. Some of our children’s favorites are listed below.

What Day Is It Song

Tune to (Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush)

Do you know what day it is, what day it is, what day it is?
Do you know what day it is, today is Monday.

I know what day it is, what day it is, what day it is.
I know what day it is, today is Monday!

Please note: Change Monday to whatever day it actually is when you sing the song above.

Bring Out Your Puppet

Bring out a cute puppet to sing the song above with you, everytime you go to sing Monday, have the puppet yell out Monday in a funny voice. This should capture the childrens attention and they shouldfocus in on the word Monday as they hear the puppet keep saying it, change Monday to whatever day it actually is.

Sing the song above with your puppet while the children are playing with the numbers and putting them onto the magnetic calendars and then sing some of their favorite songs while they are having fun with the calendars and numbers.

Singing Songs And Reciting Rhymes

Each week we teach the children a few new songs or rhymes for that week’s theme. Children like repetition so don’t be afraid to sing any song the children really like on a daily basis, but try to add a few new ones each week.

It won’t be long before the children will be following along to the hand movements to some of the songs and nursery rhymes they hear often and before you know it they will start to sing right along with you! Be sure to include some of the children’s favorites each week. Some of our children’s favorites are listed below.

Some Of Our Preschooler’s Favorite Songs

The Wheels On The Bus
If your Happy And You Know It
Row, Row, Row Your Boat
ABC Song
Old McDonald Had A Farm

Some Of Our Preschooler’s Favorite Rhymes

The Itsy Bitsy Spider
One Two Buckle My Shoe
Humpty Dumpty Sat On A Wall
Ring A Round The Rosy
Five Little Monkeys Jumping On The Bed
Plus Many Other!

The preschoolers love to sing songs and they love being able to sing some their favorites each day.

Arts & Craft Time
Fun With Paint, Crayons, Play Dough, Stickers & More!

Mr. Square Craft

Art Time: Our preschool curriculum program provides a daily art project (craft) for the children to do each day that goes along with that week’s theme.

After circle time we have the children come to the table and sit down to get ready for art time. You can refer to the preschool daily lesson plans to see which craft you will be doing that day, and if you need to print anything out for that day’s craft. If we are going to use glue I place the glue into tiny plastic cups. I have found that the sample size of play dough cans work great for this. I only put a small amount in each child’s cup; just enough for that days project. I then proceed to pass out child sized paint brushes for the young preschool children to use and for the older preschoolers we offer them smaller brushes.

Flower Garden Craft

If we are going to paint I make sure each child has some type of paint shirt on. If you do not have enough paint shirts, you can always use an old sweat shirt and cut off the arms. Anything will work.

You will also want some rags ready. We use our old washcloths for paint rags. You may find it works best to keep a wet rag handy for spills or for a child who is done before the others. Or you may want to have a dish pan with a small amount of water in it for the children who finish early can rinse off until they can get into the bathroom to wash up with soap and warm water.

Bird Egg Letter Match Up

Baby Chick Bingo

Bear Letter Match Up

Letter M Pompom Activity

Farm Letter Match Up

Letter R For Raccoon
Writing & Coloring Page

Preschool Learning Activities: Above are six examples of some of our preschool pre reading activities. These activities are made from easily accessible materials and provide a fun learning experience for the children. Our program also offers other types of learning activities such as worksheets, coloring pages, printable games, puzzles, bug hunt, ant farm, nature walk and other fun ideas. These activities are to teach the children about sharing, numbers, alphabet, shapes, colors and much more! The activities shown above may not be available for the month you are purchasing but similar activities are available for each month.

Shoe Box Numbers

Feed The Caterpillar

Bear Number Match Up

Play Dough Number Mat

Muffin Tin Numbers

Card Number Match Up

Math Activities: Our preschool program also provides hands on math activities. Shown above are six examples of some of different types of fun hands on math activities that you will receive with our program. The activities shown above may not be available for the month you are purchasing but similar activities are available for each month.

Plant The Sunflower
Sensory Activity

Teddy Bear Pompoms
Color Game

Hair Scrunches
Fine Motor Activity

Special Activities: Our preschool program also provides special activities for each day. Please view three of our examples above. The first picture the one with the flowers is a fun sensory activity where the children will have fun planting fake flowers. The next picture shown above shows is a cute teddy bear from our January preschool curriculum. The teddy bear is a fun color game for the children to play. And the last picture shows an activity of putting hair scrunches onto a card board base.

Our program is sold by the month or by the year.

Read more of the Understanding Emergent Curriculum series;