I am super excited about this next series! As a former kindergarten teacher and literacy lover, making sure my child goes to school more than prepared is big on my list of to-dos. Teaching the alphabet was first on my list.

My oldest has about a year and a half before she will start kindergarten. She is very inquisitive by nature and has been asking to learn how to read. My teacher heart can’t tell her no. So I’m designing a homeschool, preschool curriculum that focuses on learning to read starting with teaching the alphabet.

I taught for 10 years and have a Master’s in Reading Education. Teaching reading has always been my thing. So I’m super stoked to share this with mommies like me!

I have a ton of things in the works for this, but I am starting with letter of the week lesson plans. Each week will include FREE downloadable
lesson plans that are already completed for you with tons of fun activities to do and a list of all the materials you need.

In addition I share the pins to these activities in my weekly blog. I’m telling you…it’s all done for you! I have also created a set of letter/keyword flashcards that I will be offering as a free download as well. These are an important part of the curriculum as I will explain further.

Letter of the Week Lesson Plan

This is a sample lesson plan. Each week I will post a new lesson plan with activities for the week. If you prefer to create your own plans and wish to use my template you can download it by clicking on the picture.

I didn’t include days of the week in the plans because as a Mom myself… I get it. Life happens. Especially when there are children involved. The beauty of this is that you can just pick up right where you left off the next day. One week’s lessons may run into two and that’s ok too. It’s called being a mom!

Also, your preschooler is not designed to sit through each days lesson in one sitting. Their tiny attention span cannot take that. We typically break these up throughout the day. Sometimes, we can manage two activities back to back, but generally we will do one thing, and do

You will notice that these plans are divided into 5 main sections. In each blog I will share more information about the sections as well as links to the pins where you can save these ideas for yourself!

Flashcards:

Be sure to sign up for my email list to get my free flashcard set. These are essential to the activities we do weekly. These cards were created with good old rote memorization in mind. As boring as it sounds, it works. I try to vary our activities and include some games to keep it fun (I’m working on a blog post where I will share these ideas with you).

These flashcards are designed specifically to help your child quickly commit each letter and sound to their long term memory.

Each of these flashcards displays both the upper and lowercase letter along with a picture. They are designed to serve as prompts. When your child sees the card she should identify the letter, state the name of the picture, and then say the sound the letter makes. These need to be reviewed daily. Be sure to mix up the order in which you do them to make sure your child is not simply memorizing the order.

Books:

This is always a favourite of mine. The books we use each week usually popular titles and can typically be found in public libraries. However, I will also include the Amazon link to them as well. We have amassed a great bit of our collection purchasing books on Amazon. Each day when we read a new book and discuss words we can find with that letter. We also occasionally re-read these books throughout the week as bedtime stories.

Crafts:

This is my daughter’s favourite part of every day. She loves to create these cute projects. I have recently updated these crafts to include free printable templates.  I’ve done these with my girls twice now and realized how time consuming creating these craft templates by eyeballing designs was.  I wanted to make it as easy as possible for you, so I created craft templates for almost every single craft in the series!

Activities:

These are activities that supplement our weekly letter. Often I put activities that help develop fine motor skills. You will notice my curriculum doesn’t focus much on actually writing the letters. That comes next. Sweet little preschool hands are still developing foundational motor skills, so I don’t stress over this aspect at all. However, these fine motor focused lessons help fine tune these skills and better prepare them to write.

Worksheets:

As a former teacher, I’m not crazy about worksheets. I’m really not. But, they can provide good practice and my crazy kid enjoys them, so we do a couple each day as well. I’ve created a series of worksheets to be completed each week with specific learning targets in mind.

One of the biggest focuses of these sheets is learning to differentiate between upper and lowercase letters.  This is important to do not only when isolated from other letters, but also when occuring amongst other letters.  I’ve created sheets that target each of these skills seperately.

I’ve also designed some beginning sounds practice sheets because learning to isolate the beginning sounds of words is crucial to learning to read.

I don’t focus much on handwriting in this series because a lot of kids aren’t ready for it, espcially 4 and under.  However, I’ve included a sheet to introduce proper letter formation as well.

When we have extra downtime, we will pull activities from the additional resources and do those as well.

At the bottom you will find sections for additional books, materials and extra activities. The extra activities will be pinned onto my Pinterest board.

I’d also like to note, these plans do not have to be done in ABC order.  In fact, as a teacher, I recommend they are not.  I’ve dedicated another post to explaining the order in which you should be teaching the alphabet.  There’s alot of science to support the way you structure teaching letters.

Go ahead and follow me here. Be sure not to miss any new pins as I find great things daily!

Without further adieu, click through to visit the first week’s lesson plan for the Letter Aa!