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Curriculum>Creating a Curriculum
kcnjason 02:04 PM 03-26-2012
I have 2 and 3 year olds in my home childcare at this time. I am working to create my own preschool curriculum. I have tons of ideas but I need help organizing everything that I have. How do you organize all of your ideas to create a curriculum? Ideas please!
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daycare 04:17 PM 03-26-2012
Originally Posted by kcnjason:
I have 2 and 3 year olds in my home childcare at this time. I am working to create my own preschool curriculum. I have tons of ideas but I need help organizing everything that I have. How do you organize all of your ideas to create a curriculum? Ideas please!
I used to buy a prepackaged curriculum, but most of it went to waste. So we do a lot of learning through play....there is a lot of free stuff on the web, so I don't spend $ looking anymore, only time looking for what we will do.

Sensory bins are our favorite right now
Lots of playdough

what do you have in mind??
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Kim 06:48 PM 03-26-2012
I gave up on a purchased curriculum too.

For themes- I just started gathering my stuff and getting organized. I bought some rubbermaid type tubs for each month and put everything in it. There are pics in this thread https://www.daycare.com/forum/showthread.php?t=41656 I may eventually separate out and organize stuff theme but for right now this is a start. I also keep ideas of things to do for each theme on my computer. I think eventually I will print it all and get it into a binder but since I'm still new at getting organized I keep adding ideas to each theme and it would be pointless to print anything yet.

For my alphabet resources- I'm still not sure how to organize all of that yet. I use some stuff from the Letter of the Week curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler. http://www.confessionsofahomeschoole...er-of-the-week I also have other stuff I've gathered over the years. I would love to do a tub for each letter like I have for themes but I am running out of space!
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Countrygal 12:07 PM 03-27-2012
I go to an online site with a very loose curriculum in the area I'm interested in - let's say we have a neighbor with horses and the kids like them, so we want to learn more about them and incorporate them into our curriculum.

I look online for a preschool horse unit. Something like this one: http://www.everythingpreschool.com/t...rses/index.htm I then take the basics of that unit and expand it to fit what I want to do with it. I usually add coloring pages, information online with lots of pictures or online stories that we watch together, books to read, maybe we'd look at a couple of famous race horses, or the breeds or colors of horses. Maybe even the basic parts of a horse. And definitely safety around horses - how do we act. I do poems, lots of ditties with movement, songs, whatever I find. And of course, I try to set up a field trip to that neighbor's to see the horses and where/how they live, what they eat, etc!!!

I don't even lay it out by day. I just make a list of everything, and bookmark what's online. Then each morning I set up what I hope we cover that day. If we have more time - let's say it's raining - I do a couple more or have the kids pretend they're horses, etc. If we do less, it's just less I have to plan for the coming day. We're done when we're done. I don't confine myself to a weekly theme. Some themes only want 3 days and others SCREAM to go for two weeks!!!
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Candyland 11:28 PM 03-30-2012
If you're looking to start with themes; this is an older (1989), but wonderful book to get, THEME-A-SAURUS (The Great Big Book of Mini Teaching Themes) by Jean Warren. There are over 50 small themes. You mentioned RAIN, so here are ideas from the book:
Rain Painting, Umbrellas, Making Rain, making a Rain Book, 7 Rain Nursery Rhymes, Counting Raindrops, Puddle Jumping and a list of recommended books about Rain.
Of course, you can get ideas online, but this book is a compilation in one big book.

ABCs & Numbers can be found online too, but you can find inexpensive books anywhere...Target, WalMart, any "Teacher" store, etc...
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Country Kids 09:43 AM 03-31-2012
Originally Posted by Candyland:
If you're looking to start with themes; this is an older (1989), but wonderful book to get, THEME-A-SAURUS (The Great Big Book of Mini Teaching Themes) by Jean Warren. There are over 50 small themes. You mentioned RAIN, so here are ideas from the book:
Rain Painting, Umbrellas, Making Rain, making a Rain Book, 7 Rain Nursery Rhymes, Counting Raindrops, Puddle Jumping and a list of recommended books about Rain.
Of course, you can get ideas online, but this book is a compilation in one big book.

ABCs & Numbers can be found online too, but you can find inexpensive books anywhere...Target, WalMart, any "Teacher" store, etc...
I have the older Theme-A-Sauruas book. Its awesome-:
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