If you’ve made the decision to homeschool your children, you’re about to embark upon a life-changing journey with countless familial benefits. When done right, you can simultaneously foster a warm family environment and participate in your local community.
Oftentimes, this is the most efficient method of teaching because no one knows your child better than you. The learning becomes adaptive and, thus, more enhancing.
As you can imagine, saying the foundation for this type of learning all the way back in preschool has many benefits. Continuity, stability, and uniformity unfold when you start the way you intend to finish.
Below, we’re going to walk you through the ins and outs of the homeschool curriculum and, in the end, allow you to see how this will positively impact your preschooler. We’ll also demonstrate how this method of teaching improves your overall well-being as both parent and teacher.
What Is An All-In-One Homeschool Curriculum?
When wondering how to pick a homeschool curriculum, you may come across the term “all-in-one,” “boxed,” or “multi-subject” curriculum. Essentially, this kind of curriculum incorporates all the core subjects into one homeschool curriculum.
The most common subject areas include language arts, math, science, and social studies. Still, you’ll want to carefully study the descriptions to see what subjects each homeschooling company includes.
As you explore your homeschool curriculum options, you’ll notice some curricula include a mixture of each subject into each lesson, while others have individual lesson plans for each subject.
So, it’s important to see which will be your preferred teaching style and, perhaps more importantly, which style your child will respond to the most.
Is All-In-One the Best Homeschool Curriculum?
In a sea of options, it can be difficult to know which methodology will serve your children well. And, while your children come first, you also want to choose a curriculum that you’ll successfully be able to teach.
Let’s explore some of the reasons why this kind of curriculum is successful for families all across the globe.
Ties the Material Together
Parents often consider this to be one of the top homeschool curriculum choices because it ties all the learning material together. For example, in a themed preschool home curriculum, if it’s time to learn about bees, the language arts portion might contain a fictional story about a family of bees working hard to save their honey factory.
Then, in the math section, they might count one, two, three bees. As for science, the children might go outside to look for a bee and notice its wings in flight. Then, for social studies, they might read another story, but this time a nonfictional story about a family who raises bees and sells honey.
Tying the preschool curriculum together like this creates a focused approach. There’s a uniform approach to each subject area. While it may seem like it’s reinforcing bees, what it’s really doing is reinforcing common elements in a way that can maintain a child’s interest for extended periods of time.
As your children step out of a language arts lesson on bees and into a math lesson on bees, they’ll be able to say, “Oh! I know what a bee is!” and use their underlying knowledge to learn a new concept.
Lesson Planning Done Right
Whether you’re weighing the best 2-year-old homeschool curriculum in the balance or the best kindergarten homeschool curriculum, here’s what you’ll always find. It takes a lot of the lesson planning out of your hands.
A smart program will have the entire school year laid out in a suggested schedule for the year. In this manner, there’s no reason you should ever fall behind. You’ll never have to wonder, “What am I going to teach tomorrow.” It’s already outlined for you.
As you review the material the night before, you might feel compelled to print out an additional worksheet or activity for your preschooler. But, you won’t have to spend hours putting together the perfect reading list for every subject.
By and large, all the lesson planning will be done for you. You may even find recommended YouTube videos your little one will enjoy. All in all, you’ll know where to turn to in the text, what questions to ask, and what activities to perform.
This goes hand-in-hand with grading, too. Boxed curriculum like this will come with all the appropriate teachers’, or in this case parents’, guides. As you guide your children through the prompted questions, you’ll know which direction to guide them in.
Ability to Adapt
While an all-in-one homeschool curriculum is outlined for you, you don’t have to stress if you feel like you’re falling behind. It’s just a framework for you to follow. This is actually one of the benefits of homeschooling; no one knows your child better than you.
So, if you think you need to spend a little more time on the color yellow and a little less time making the “b” sound, then do that! You can mold each lesson plan to meet the needs of your child.
This is a major benefit to having the “lay of the land” spread out before you. You’ll quickly be able to see that, if you fall a little behind today, you can recoup tomorrow in a certain area.
Adherence to State Laws
In general, it’s a tad easier to provide proof of study and grades with a multi-subject curriculum. It will be plain to see how each subject area was covered and how your child performed.
In truth, adhering to state laws and providing proof are often the hardest parts of the job. After all your (and your children’s) hard work, you want to be sure you’ve checked every box and can move on successfully.
So, having everything detailed, outlined, lesson-planned, and graded in a cohesive way will take much of the burden off your shoulders.
Cost-Effectiveness
There are a few areas where parents absolutely do not cut corners: healthcare and education. Since homeschool curriculum is, in many ways, taking on the value of private school, it won’t be the cheapest endeavor you ever embarked upon.
However, it’s still lightyears away from the cost of private education. The cost of each cannot be compared and, yet, the quality of education can be equivalent.
If you purchase each subject area separately, the cost can quickly accumulate. However, all-in-one curriculum can prove to be far more affordable.
This is a well-known benefit all consumers take advantage of: when items are purchased in bulk, the discount can be great. When you have children of varying ages to educate, this can prove to be a substantial advantage.
Also, many curricula include supplemental reading materials. So, you’ve already paid for the books or resources that support the lesson.
When this isn’t done for you, you’re forced to go to the local library to hunt around for appropriate books or, even less cost-effective, purchase these supplemental materials. That sort of lesson planning can eat away at your budget very quickly.
More Free Time
When the lesson planning, worksheets, quizzes, and answer sheets are packaged neatly and ready to go, this frees up a tremendous amount of time for you to plan the extras.
With this kind of curriculum, the foundation is cemented firmly in place. Best of all, it’s designed by people with experience in childhood psychology and curriculum development.
With all this pre-packaged and outlined for you, it frees you up to plan the life that goes on outside the classroom. You can plan an overnight trip to the local science museum. Or, you can plan to plant a butterfly tree in the garden when you get to the unit on moths and butterflies.
You can research group classes and allow your children to socialize outside the house in some sort of local craft class, sporting activity, or volunteer effort. You’ll have the bandwidth to supplement and, thus, enrich their educational experience.
Balanced Life
Here’s the crux of homeschooling: you’re the parent, the principal, the teacher, the guidance counselor, and the afterschool activity leader. And that’s okay! That’s why you signed up for this wild ride called parenthood.
But, somewhere in the midst of all that, there must be balance (for both you and the children). When you begin your child’s educational journey all the way back in preschool with an all-in-one curriculum, you’re creating a well-balanced life.
Since the lesson planning and supplemental materials are already provided for you, this frees up a little evening time to tend to your garden, work on your embroidery, or rebuild an engine. Whatever your interests are, you don’t have to give them up just because you’ve made this choice for your family.
Everything we do is a model for our children. So, if they see you working hard to design and tend a garden, they’re going to witness the concept of reaping and sowing. If they see you troubleshooting a problem with your latest engine rebuild, they’re going to learn the value of pushing through until the end.
Now, you’re finding a way to weave enjoyment and proper modeling into your evening activities. It’s an all-around win-win. Your children will see that you’re an individual, too, with your own needs and moments of enjoyment. Setting this example all the way back in their preschool years is a fabulous foundation for the whole house.
Preschool Homeschool Curriculum
Preschool is the time to teach your little tykes the alphabet. The best way to approach this is to familiarize them with one letter per week.
From there, you can supplement animal stories (encompassing both language arts and science). As you read, you can point out and enunciate each phonetic sound.
You can dabble in math at this time, too, by teaching shapes. Take their classic toy where they must fit the correct shape into the correct hole. You can teach them words like “triangle” and “circle.”
This is also the time to introduce colors and pre-writing skills like tracing. In their little workbooks, they can begin tracing letters and shapes.
Teaching preschool is tremendously fun and rewarding. This is the foundation that will take them on to become advanced-level readers, science wizards, and expert mathematicians (with, perhaps, a particular affinity for geometry).
A typical school year for a preschooler is 180 days. That means you won’t have to put on your teacher’s hat all day, every day. But, here’s the trick as you advance from one year to the next: don’t leave a huge gap of empty time open as they’re learning to read.
Once they’re able to recognize their letters and make the corresponding sounds, don’t be afraid to start dabbling in the upcoming curriculum. You don’t want them to lose any of the valuable language skills they’ve started to develop.
The Best Homeschool Curriculum for You
In the end, you’ll have to decide what’s the best homeschool curriculum for you and your children. But, the ease that comes with an all-in-one approach is impossible to deny. It’s pre-prepared; it’s sensible; it’s a roadmap that won’t get you lost.
Here at Bee All You Can Bee, we’ve developed the most comprehensive preschool curriculum. We’ve taken a theme-based approach that supports the development of the whole child. It provides opportunities to support every developmental domain, including cognitive, motor, adaptive, and communication skills.
We didn’t neglect soft skills and character development, either. You’ll be able to watch your child’s communication skills develop, especially as they relate to self-discipline.
These skills, of course, will be translated outside the classroom, too. So, they’ll serve your family well in those crafts, pottery, and karate classes in the local community.
Come check out all of our curriculum guides, lesson plan books, supplemental materials, and more. We also offer workshops and training programs to ease you into your new curriculum.
Our trainers will walk you through each component in an effort to ensure all-around success. We look forward to working with you!