A Joy-Filled Journey Through Preschool
$49.99
Make your child’s journey through preschool a joyful one. Filled with play, nature study, and a gentle introduction to math and phonics you are sure to build relationships and foster a love for learning as you meaningfully engage with your child.
A Joy-Filled Journey Through Preschool is a literature-based curriculum filled with engaging activities to awaken the imagination and invoke creativity in your youngest learners.
The lessons in A Joy-Filled Journey Through Preschool contain:
- Wonderful literature suggestions
- Music and poetry selections
- playful interactions with numbers and math concepts
- purposeful movement for fine and gross motor development
- sensory play
- phonics activities for various levels of development
- ideas for playing with your child
- artistic experiences
- encounters with nature
This curriculum is meant to grow with your child from ages 3 to 5, carrying you through 3 years of quality time with your preschooler. You tailor the phonics instruction using the provided activities and each lesson contains 3 math tiers to meet the needs of your child at varying stages of development. AJFJ Through Preschool is designed to be flexible, simple, and a joy to implement.
Details
Your digital download contains:
- 26 units with 4-6 lessons each, available in PDF for easy viewing on mobile devices
- embedded relevant hyperlinks for including songs, poetry, and pieces of artwork in your day
- parent guide to aide with implementation
- numeral flash cards, game boards, and other pertinent printables
- master supply list
- book list with 124 assigned titles and over 100 additional book recommendations
- access to the Facebook community full of encouragement, inspiration, and resources
Free Sample
Download a sample of A Joy-Filled Journey Through Preschool here.
Randi Williams (verified owner) –
I am a homeschool mom of 8, with children ages 15-2. I have homeschooled preschool 6 times. In the beginning, when I had fewer kids and more time, I did preschool by buying a $10 preschool workbook and using the content presented in the book to do hands on things that taught those concepts. This was time consuming but very inexpensive. Last year, I found myself needing to homeschool 9th, 7th, 5th, 4th, and preschool for three kids. I needed to reduce my planning time and increase the quality of time spent with my preschoolers. I decided to try A Joy Filled Journey with my 3, 4 and 5 year old. They were all at slightly different places academically and each had their own educational challenges, but I felt like this curriculum could meet those needs due to the tiered approach. My 5 year old wanted to learn phonics but struggled with play time. My 4 year old had absolutely no attention span and would only do “fun” things. My 3 year old struggled with short term memory and was not picking up letters, numbers, colors, shapes, etc with passive exposure. He needed something more concrete and repetitive that also included hands on ways to help him tie things together to aid in memory.
We used A Joy Filled Journey alphabetically, but I think the “seasonal” approach, as shown in the parent notes, would be my favorite way. It also lines up lessons like “pumpkin” to when you can actually get pumpkins!
Pros of A Joy Filled Journey:
-It’s hands on and fun. I am not creative but can easily follow directions to “scurry like mice” or “race pom pom balls by blowing through a straw.” This kept my 4 year old going every lesson and added “play” to school for my 5 year old.
-It’s tiered. I did simple math and just taught letters to my 3 and 4 year old, while my 5 year old could learn letter sounds and explore parts of numbers by “hiding” amounts and figuring out how many were hidden.
-The songs. There are links for the songs all throughout and we watched and sang them together. This was my kids favorite part.
-It’s only 26 weeks if you do one letter a week. This allows for lots of time off if you want to complete it in a school year.
Cons of A Joy Filled Journey
-The stuff you need. This curriculum asks for around 130 books and the list of supplies is 5 two columned pages. Therefore, you need a well stocked library, time to hunt them up, and plenty of money and space for all the supplies. So here’s how I managed: I shortened the list of books (see next point) and supplies. I didn’t buy 10 ducks for the D lesson or iridescent glitter for the S lesson. We did without or substituted. I instead created a well stocked supply bin. I bought a pack of multi colored play dough, pipe cleaners, beads, buttons, glue, paint, construction paper, counters that were fun, plastic tens frames for durability, pom poms, clothes pins, and a few other things. We made do with this and stuff around the house. It was fine. It just required me to be flexible.
-My 3 year old at first couldn’t make the connection between the letter, the book, and the activities. I realized this was because we were switching topics every day. For him, this was confusing. K was for Koala, kangaroo, kipper, King Bidgood, and King Jack. Daily activities varied just as much. For most children, this variety is fun and engaging, but he couldn’t find ‘K’ in it and my 5 year old couldn’t connect what ‘K’ said with so many different things. So, I simplified. I picked one or two topics for each letter and used those books. Then added a few books about the same topic. So for ‘K’, we used the two books about kings and then I found two more books about kings. This made everything connect for my 3 year old and by the end, he knew all 26 letters and still remembered that B was for bear!
Overall, I like this curriculum. It’s fun, engaging, and educational. I am planning on going through it again with preschoolers at a co-op I belong to that meets once a week.
Sara (verified owner) –
What I appreciate about A Joy Filled Journey is how adaptable it is. Time to focus on my pre-schooler is fairly unpredictable, but this curriculum doesn’t make me feel like I’m getting behind because it truly is focused on the journey together. Whether that means doing a whole purposeful unit with my littlest love or grabbing a few ideas to plop into an otherwise busy day, there is no limit to how you can make A Joy Filled Journey work for you.
Leslie –
What I love about this curriculum is that it is adaptable. My daughter is 3 and loves art and nature. I appreciate the various activities tied to each letter of the alphabet. I can choose to focus on activities that are geared toward her, or steer her toward things that she needs to work on to become more independent, such as gross and fine motor skills. We enjoy these lessons and highly recommend A Joy-Filled Journey through PreSchool!
Lyndsay (verified owner) –
I am 4 lessons into A Joy Filled Journey with my 5 year old daughter, for her first year of organized homeschooling. I have appreciated how easy and organized the prep has been. Personally, I scrolled through the letters I wanted to cover for the month, chose the lessons I wanted to complete (approx. 3 per week), and pulled from the prepared lists. Almost all of the suggested books have been available at my local public library. The ones that were not, I either found gently used, or found my own replacement to enforce the letter sound and still try to coordinate with the activities laid out in the lesson (ex: another children’s book about a pond and pond animals). I also like that I have felt free to choose the lessons in my own preferred order, without getting out of line with her learning abilities – each lesson is independent of the others, so we can build how I choose, rather than following a rigid system chosen for us that may not follow my daughter’s current skill. My 2 year old enjoys the story times with us, and my 2nd grader loves to join us in many of the activities, and I think it is great reinforcement for her on some of the skills being utilized! All in all, I am very pleased that AJFJ is full of things we can all enjoy together (which is a dream when homeschooling multiples!) and I look forward to hanging onto everything to use in a couple of years with my youngest two!