Preschool & Kindergarten Phonics Curriculum -

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It’s almost time for Kindergarten!

I can’t wait to continue our preschool days of playing dress-up, sculpting masterpieces with play-dough, and traveling to the land of make-believe.

Kindergarten Readiness Checklist - Phonics Curriculum Choices for Preschool & Kindergarten - Pool Noodles & Pixie Dust

Letter of the Week Curriculum

First, if your child still needs work on letter recognition you should check out our letter of the week series.

This A-Z series of articles and printable letter notebooks focuses on one letter each week, focusing on the sound(s) for each letter, recognition, crafts, and fun.

You can find our letter notebooks individually or bundled for savings in our shop.

Purposeful phonics lessons

We’re starting the journey into learning how to read this year. Yikes! It’s exciting, but a little scary. The weight of teaching your child to read can feel heavy.

Luckily, I have found a great new resource called Phonics with Penmanship. It is a Pre-K & Kindergarten Curriculum by Misty Leask of Year-Round Homeschooling.

It is a two-year program and I’m starting with the first year to make sure we are solid on all of our phonics before moving on to the second year. We’re pretty laid back with school around here, so I plan to move at my daughter’s pace and speed up or slow down as her needs dictate.

I wanted to share with other moms of Kindergarteners or preschoolers about why I like this program and how we’re using it with our reading lesson book Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, this year in our homeschool.

Looking for Letter of the Week printables for preschool or kindergarten? I just started a new series. Check out Letter A and grab the free letter A pack.

1. It combines Sound, Sight, & Touch

No child learns in just one way and the more senses you get involved the better. The program is set up to teach the phonetic sound, ‘A’ says ‘ah’ as in apple for example, and then your child writes the ‘A’ while saying the sound. It is a simple yet effective way to reinforce those phonics.

My daughter loves the workbook pages. She’s a worksheet girl, and writing the sounds is perfect for her.

We also add in games and hands-on learning and she is loving these Phonics Dominoes that I made.

How I’m Using Phonics with Penmanship

I printed out the workbook and put the pages in plastic sheet protectors in a 3-ring binder.

This keeps everything in one place and makes it easy for her to pull out on her own.

I love using dry erase, check out my post on 6 Easy Ways to Use Dry Erase Markers in Your Homeschool. It cuts down on printing multiple practice sheets.

My kids love the colored markers and they can do the same sheet multiple times for practice without added paper.

My daughter was so excited when I told her she could use any colors she wanted to write the words. And, even chose to make each letter a different color.

She sang the phonic while writing,” a for ant, a says ah for alligator, a says ah for apple.”

Look at that sweet girl loving penmanship practice:)

2. Phonetic Cards with Example Words

The program provides phonetic cards for each letter of the alphabet in year one and digraphs in year two. I don’t know if it’s just me, but it is really hard to remember to say the phonic correctly every time.

I love the phonics cards for this.

Each card features a letter and an example of its phonetic sounds, for instance, the “A” card lists 3 sounds for “A” and two corresponding example words for each.

I don’t have to try to rack my brain trying to find a word that makes the right sound and possibly say the wrong one and confuse my kid.

Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons provides only one chart with the phonetic sound and an example word at the beginning of the book. So, these cards should help me quickly and correctly say the phonetic sound as we work through the lessons. Year two of the program introduces phonetic combinations, like ph, sh, ch, so I will print those cards and use them in the same way as we get to that in the book.

I printed each card on colored card stock because I don’t use color ink in my printer. Then I hole punched them and put the stack of cards on a ring.

They are hung up for us to easily grab throughout the day.

My daughter especially loves matching the animal graphic on each card to the sound its letter makes.

I have already seen a change in her confidence in her phonics.

And, It’s awesome to watch.

3. Simple to Use

I am a fan of simple.

Make it easy to use and spell it out for me.

The teacher’s manual contains links to resource pages on Misty’s site, Year Round Homeschooling, where you can find several activities, recipes, crafts, books, printables, and more for each phonic. You don’t have to plan your own to go along with the program. It’s all done for you.

So, there’s no stress over finding and planning activities around the phonic you’re working on.

Also, she’s doing the program as a drip campaign. Which means that each week, through e-mail, you’ll receive the activity pack that goes along with the phonic you’re teaching.

Just print out the activity pages for the phonic of the week and you’re ready to go. No sifting through your digital files to find what you need. Or, printing them out ahead of time and losing them somewhere.

Phonics with Penmanship Pricing and Details:

$29.99(Pricing is for EACH year course)

Important Details:

Each year includes a student workbook, a Teacher’s manual with lesson plans, an organized page of resource for each phonic, a complete set of phonics cards and a weekly drip campaign containing a fun activity pack featuring the focus phonic of the week.

Year One is a 40-week program and Year Two is a 44-week program

Are you ready for Kindergarten?

Find out with my Kindergarten Readiness Checklist that assesses name writing, upper and lower case alphabet recognition, and number, shape, and color recognition. Or head to my FREE Kindergarten Readiness Assessment post and grab a full 7-page assessment including the checklist!

Grab your FREE Kindergarten Readiness Checklist HERE!

Thanks for reading,

Heidi