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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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kcnjason 10:21 AM 04-16-2012
I'm stumped as far as what to incorporate into 1 day. This week we are working on the letter S, Sunflower, yellow and #7
In one day what do you do with this in mind? Do a project with an "S"? Make a sunflower? ideas please!!!!!
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annafaye1985 10:33 AM 04-16-2012
I actually just put my themes together. I start in June.... I did 2 week themes since their are so many projects for each theme. Have you tried pinterest? Teach Preschool is on there and have over 4000 pins for small motor to arts and crafts. I do my number and letter for that 2 weeks as well. There is a lot on the internet for free and I also subscribed too kidsoup its 40.00 for they year and they have print outs and craft ideas.
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Countrygal 06:59 AM 04-17-2012
Honestly, KC, I do a LOT of digging online for projects and ideas. It's the most time consuming part of putting together my curriculum for the week. I probably spend 2 -3 hours per week putting together the curriculum.

You sound a lot like me - lots of ideas but need some organization. That's why I go to a basic curriculum that someone else has set up and work from there. If I feel that curriculum has too much seatwork, I substitute some ethnic food cooking or some music or some dancing or what ever other idea I have from my "stash".

I also do not follow "weekly" plans. We go as long as we want with a theme. Sometimes the kids are just not "into" a particular theme and it'll last 3 days and sometimes another theme will last 1 1/2 or even 2 weeks. Sometimes our next theme will be a spin-off of our current theme.

For my program, flexibility is key. Some day we don't do our "theme" at all - the kids just need to be outside or are really misbehaving and we need to work that out. That's OK. It's all about what THEY need. That's what I get paid for!

This is just what I do and if you can pick anything out of it to use, GREAT!
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