Preschool

Preschool Overview

enlarge image

For preschool, we offer a literature-based interdisciplinary curriculum package called Peak With Books .

At this age, literature can provide a great springboard into numerous areas of study. Children using these two programs will learn reading, writing, science, math, colors, letters and social studies and will have opportunities to explore drama, music and art.

This program will be a fantastic preparation for any school program, and is especially well suited as preparation for the Age 5-7 Moving Beyond the Page curriculum. We feel that Peak With Books provides the most complementary preschool curriculum to Moving Beyond the Page available.

Peak With Books - Overview

Peak with Books is an exciting, literature-rich preschool program that will engage children and will encourage a love of learning. It includes simple, easy-to-do activities and projects for 42 great books that every parent can share with their child to make learning a stress free and fun time. This curriculum will pave the way for years of future learning.

It has been shown that children who engage in frequent conversations with adults achieve a higher level of success in their early school years. Peak With Books will give you the opportunity not only to read and talk to your child, but also to listen to his ideas, opinions and feelings. Peak With Books will provide you with an opportunity to share great books with your child and engage in relevant projects to stimulate learning.

Peak with Books is not designed especially for gifted children, but we do believe that it is much more advanced than most preschool curricula on the market. Also, many of the researched best practices used in Peak with Books are supported and suggested in the field of gifted education. Peak with Books is designed to use with preschool and kindergarten children in a classroom setting.

Although not written specifically for homeschoolers, we feel that any parent can easily tailor the curriculum to working with a child in one-on-one instruction at home. We provide a handout that outlines ideas for homeschooling with Peak With Books. We know that many homeschooling parents are looking for the best educational practices in the curriculum they select and one that is written by experts in the field of education. This is what they will find in Peak with Books.

Peak With Books - Structure

Peak With Books provides activities that clarify and expand a child's understanding of the 42 stories covered in the manual. Activities are easy to implement. Moving Beyond the Page provides a separate handout that outline ways to modify the curriculum for use at home. At Moving Beyond the Page we suggest taking a “thematic” approach to the recommended literature in Peak with Books. This will make the stories and information more meaningful and will allow your child to draw connections among books and characters. This will also prepare her to begin thinking about the “big ideas” or concepts, which are very important in the following years of Moving Beyond the Page.

We have divided the books up into the following thematic units:

Family and Friends (Relationships) (7 weeks)
Animal Stories (Living Things) (8 weeks)
Numbers, Colors and Letters (Basics) (7 weeks)
Stories of People and Places (Diversity) (6 weeks)
Rhyming Books and Traditional Tales (Classics) (8 Weeks)

We have suggested 36 books, one for each week of the school year. Before beginning on Monday, look through the literature unit and decide which activities you will implement on each day of the week. We recommend reading the book every day of the week. The activities in each unit are not divided into days of the week, which gives you the freedom to decide which days you want to implement the different activities.

Our suggested “schedule” is as follows:

Monday – Setting the Stage, First Reading, and Getting Involved,
Tuesday – A Closer Look, Story Time Extension, and Poetry,
Wednesday – Involvement(1-2 Activities), Integration (1 Activity),
Thursday – Integration (2-3 Activities),
Friday – Continue Integration (1-2 Activities) and Everyday Learning Activities (2-3 Activities)

Curriculum Samples

Preschool

Theme 1 - Family and Friends (Relationships)

Bedtime For Frances