Customer Reviews

Big Learning for Little Learners

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This is a wonderful resource for daycare providers, Sunday School teachers or anyone trying to keep a group of young children occupied with structured, fun activities for long periods of time. It has a year's worth of lesson plans, subjects, projects, kid recipes, finger plays, songs, etc. and even recommends books to get from the library dealing with that particular month's topic. BUT this book is VERY expensive for a paperback reference. Check it out from your library before you lay down the cash to see if it's appropriate for your particular situation.

As a homeschooling Mom, I was so excited to get this book! My disappointment was thick as I flipped through the pages the first time to discover crooked typesetting that looked like it was done on someone's antique typewriter, ideas that made me shudder (axe coloring pages with lyrics about how to chop off a turkey's head for a gentle Thanksgiving theme?), and embarrassing disorganization that made me regret having paid even the used price. This thing (truly it doesn't deserve all that paper and ink) is what your grandmother's Sunday School teacher may have used on occasion when she ran out of ideas and spent all her cash on prune juice. Do yourself a huge favor and invest in a good "Theme-a-Saurus" book (we love Storytime Theme-a-Saurus) or even "Story Stretchers".

I was putting together this years' preschool curriculum and pulled out this book. A friend and I bought it together because the price was really steep for our homeschool budgets, but after a cursory browse in the store it seemed useful.

The text contains a complete month by month curriculum, covering all the relative topics (Art, music, science ect.). It has library resouces, materials lists, songs with tunes, and reproducible drawings. Additionally it has each day's lessons laid out in a chart.

The negatives to this book would be it's
1)poor type setting and typeface choice.
2)library resouces are out of print or hard to find
3)Some of the activities are out of step with life in 2002
4)lack of instruction on how to teach or enhance some of the lessons

Still, since most of the curriculum's lessons are complete (main ideas, goals ect.) you could potentially adapt this curriculum in any way you need.

I'd recommend it with reservations. For newbies to homeschooling, "Big Learning for Little Learners" can set you on the right track and boost your confidence because of it's "completeness". For the experienced out there it's a good fall back if you don't have time to pull together daily themes.

This book is not slick. No color graphics; no PC buzz words. Just simple activities that will remind you of when YOU were in Kindergarten. Best features: Monthly Lesson Plans, seasonally themed, as well as a materials list & reading list for each month. Projects are SIMPLE and use commonly found materials. With 477-pages of content, you can pick and choose as you see fit. A really broad range of subjects are covered -- US History, P.E, Cooking, Music, Nursery Rhymes, Science, but at a Kindergarten level. Although many suggested books are out of print, making substitutions really isn't that hard at this level. The typeface that looks like a typewriter did it and the hand-drawn graphics are jarring in an on-line world. If you can't get past the typeface to the words, you won't like it. If you like the common-bond of traditions, you will. Would be great for a homeschool co-op.