Free preschool curriculum for homeschool prek (2024)
Are you thinking about homeschooling? More and more families are choosing to homeschool their children. Homeschooling for preschool is a great option for many. Beginning homeschool preschool gives you the opportunity to explore learning with your kids through hands-on printable activities, great books, and lots of play. But what is the best free preschool curriculum to use at home?
There are a variety of free preschool curriculum options you can use to help you meet your preschool education goals. Are you ready to learn more about what to teach and how to teach preschool at home? Keep reading to learn more and get some tips from the pros for homeschooling pre-k with your kiddos.
And even download free preschool printables like this editable handwriting page and free letters of the alphabet printables too.
Get Started with Free Preschool Curriculum
Getting started with homeschooling can feel overwhelming at times. Sometimes having a preschool curriculum that’s ready to go is all you need to help you get started on your homeschool preschool journey. Fortunately, there are a few free preschool curriculums you can access online to help you get started on the right foot.
ABC Jesus Loves Me
This preschool curriculum is based on the Bible, so it’s a great option if you’re hoping to incorporate Christian religion in your preschool lessons. ABC Jesus Loves Me includes parent training videos and a spiral bound planner to help you feel confident about teaching and keeping homeschool records as you begin your preschool journey at home.
The curriculum is free for families to use. You can purchase a complete set of curriculum guides and workbooks for any age if you plan to use ABC Jesus Loves Me in a more traditional classroom. The complete set is perfect for Sunday School use or Co-op groups, but you can use the free curriculum in your homeschool preschool lessons free of charge.
Lessons are set up in focused unit studies based on bible stories with digital downloads for extra learning fun. It’s a great way to help your preschoolers become familiar with important bible-based curriculum stories and their themes while learning biblical morals too. Plus, you’ll want to check out the supplemental educational activities for more hands-on learning fun to practice motor skill development with your preschool learners too.
Easy Peasy All in One Homeschool Curriculum for Prek
Easy Peasy is a totally free and online preschool curriculum. All you’ll need to get started with your preschool year at home is paper, pencil, and a few basic supplies like crayons and scissors. There are no books to purchase since all of the reading supplies are included.
This curriculum incorporates hands-on activities, computer activities, and printables to create a well rounded preschool curriculum that focuses on early math, literacy, and fine motor skills your preschool learner will need to succeed academically.
One of the best resources in Easy Peasy’s all in one preschool curriculum is the phonics coloring book. This printable book comes with coloring pages for every letter of the alphabet with silly phonics stories that help young children learn and remember letter sounds. It’s a great way to help kids practice visual and auditory discrimination skills while building fine motor skills as they color the pages too.
The Primary Parade Free Preschool Curriculum
Both ABC Jesus Loves Me and Easy Peasy are Christian preschool curriculums for homeschool. If you’re searching for a secular preschool curriculum that’s free and easy to use, you’re going to love my resources at The Primary Parade. You could even use these as free Kindergarten homeschool curriculum too.
My activities incorporate language arts, math, art, social studies, and science lessons for preschoolers to help them develop important early learning skills while exploring and having fun too.
There are hundreds of free printables on my site available for preschoolers to practice important early learning skills at home through my activity ideas.
They’re all housed in one easy to locate area and also scattered throughout various blog posts.
One of the most fun things about free preschool curriculum at The Primary Parade is the way we incorporate hands on art activities and science experiments to encourage creativity, imagination, and help kids build confidence as they create.
Encouraging important STEAM skills like these make The Primary Parade a fun way to homeschool preschool that’s free for a homeschool mom or parent to use.
What To Teach Your Preschooler At Home
Preschool is all about academic readiness. Use this year to help your child develop motor skills, visual and auditory discrimination, and sensory skills. There are so many exciting ways to learn during the preschool years!
Strengthen Sensory Skills
As you homeschool preschool, focus on the five senses: sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. Strengthening these sensory skills will help your preschoolers to prepare for bigger academic challenges in the years ahead. You can use sensory activities to help prepare your kiddos.
Here are some of my favorites:
- DIY Preschool Sensory Bin Ideas
- Sensory Bin Letter Activity
- St. Patrick’s Day Sensory Bottle Activity
Sensory skills are perfected on a cluttered path strewn with games, story books, inquisitive conversations, and lots of giggles. Remember, Ralph Waldo Emerson famously said “it is a happy talent to know how to play.” The preschool years are a great time to explore through play and learn along the way.
Develop Gross Motor Skills
Developing motor skills includes two different skills: gross motor development and fine motor development. Large muscles (gross motor) develop before smaller ones. Therefore, it’s important to develop gross motor skills with your preschoolers before attempting to focus on fine motor skills which use smaller muscles.
There are lots of fun activities you can engage in with your preschoolers to help develop these important motor skills for learning! Try some of our favorite gross motor activities:
Some of these classic gross motor preschool games are a great way to build motor skills too:
- Hopscotch
- The Floor is Lava Game
- Walkthrough Maze
- Red Light, Green Light
Develop Fine Motor Skills
Fine motor skills sometimes get overlooked in homeschool preschool curriculum lessons, but they truly are critical to academic success in the later years. Helping your preschooler to develop good fine motor skills will ensure success with a variety of tasks that require nimble fingers like buttoning, zipping, and tying shoes. Plus, developing strong fine motor skills will help your preschoolers to learn and practice handwriting when the time comes.
There are so many simple and engaging ways for preschoolers to begin developing strong finger muscles! Here are some of our favorite fine motor activities to do in preschool:
There are lots of great ways to help your preschoolers develop their fine motor skills. Try some of these simply fine motor skill building activities with your kiddos to build strong finger muscles:
- Stringing beads
- Cutting with scissors
- Playing with playdough
Practice Visual Discrimination
What is visual discrimination and how can you help your preschoolers to develop this important early academic skill? Visual discrimination is all about recognizing similarities and differences. It’s an important early skill we use for reading, writing, critical thinking, and problem solving.
You can practice visual discrimination with your preschoolers in a variety of fun ways. Sorting, patterning, and sequencing are all good ways to practice visual discrimination skills and early math skills with your preschool learners. Check out some of our favorite sorting, patterning, and sequencing activities:
Playing visual memory games with your kids is another fun way to help your littlest learners develop visual discrimination skills. Begin by showing your preschoolers a picture and talking about it. Then, cover the picture and ask how many details they can recall.
You can practice this skill with trays and 3 dimensional objects too. Use four or five objects and give your preschoolers time to memorize what’s on the tray. Then, remove one object and let your kids guess which one is missing. It’s a fun guessing game that will help them to practice this important early learning skill too.
Finally, try playing these games to build visual discrimination skills with preschoolers too:
- Scavenger Hunt
- Hide and Seek
- Easter Egg Hunt
Practice Auditory Discrimination
Another important preschool skill to incorporate in your homeschool lessons is auditory discrimination. The ability to discriminate between two different sounds, auditory discrimination, is an essential part of mastering phonics. You can help your preschoolers practice auditory discrimination at home with all kinds of fun activities!
Here are some of our favorite auditory discrimination activities and printables:
Other fun ways to practice auditory discrimination with preschoolers include:
- Reading poetry
- Playing rhyming games
- Clapping patterns
Preschool Themes
Are you looking for a great preschool theme full of crafts, hands on preschool worksheets, free printables, engaging preschool activities, and printable lesson plans? Then, you won’t want to miss out on my monthly themes and preschool lesson plans.
In Conclusion
I hope learning about the important skills to practice in your preschool classroom and some of the best curriculum options have helped you to feel more confident as you embark on your homeschooling preschool journey. This is an exciting time for you and your children!
Have fun learning together with all the fun preschool themed activities we have here at The Primary Parade. Don’t forget to share your preschool teaching tips and homeschool ideas in the comments. I’m excited to read all about your homeschool preschool learning journey.
I’m very excited to find this site! My wife & I are retired and we care for our two grandchildren every other week while my son and his wife both work. The kids are ages 3 and 3 months. We’re ready to get involved but are exactly sure how best to do that.