Since it’s that time of year, going back to school and all that jazz, I thought it might be a good idea to feature a post with a little information on my book, Picture Book Preschool. Also, it seems to me that Picture Book Preschool would be a good resource for all of you parents of preschoolers, homeschoolers or not.
Picture Book Preschool is a preschool/kindergarten curriculum which consists of a list of picture books to read aloud for each week of the year and a character trait, a memory verse, and activities, all tied to the theme for the week. You can purchase an updated, downloadable version (pdf file) of Picture Book Preschool by Sherry Early at Biblioguides.
The book mainly consists of these lists, one for each week of the year. You should be able to find most of the picture books listed in Picture Book Preschool at your local library. If you can only find five out of the seven or six out of the seven for a given week, that should be enough to keep you busy. I have collected many of the picture books listed in Picture Book Preschool for my own children by browsing used bookstores. So when I read these books to Z-baby, I read some that we owned and some that I got from the library.
As far as comparisons go, I am familiar with the curriculum Five in a Row, and I like it very much. In Five in a Row you are encouraged to read one picture book, such as Lentil by Robert McCloskey, for five days in a row. (Children generally love to read favorite picture books over and over again.) For each day of the week this curriculum gives lesson plans related to the books of the week covering science, mathematics, history and geography, and language arts. Five in a Row is a fully developed curriculum with loads of activities to keep your homeschooled preschooler or kindergartner busy and happy.
Unfortunately (or fortunately) for my last preschooler (she’s ten years old now), I was also homeschooling six older children. I didn’t have time to do all the activities in Five in a Row, and I liked the variety of picture books we read with Picture Book Preschool. Picture Book Preschool introduces your child to the best of children’s picture books, and it takes only a few minutes each day to read the book for that day, talk about it, and see where it leads you. Maybe you’ll pretend to run away from home with Frances or stack caps like the peddler in Caps for Sale or make up a poem of your own after reading The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown. I suggest a few activities in Picture Book Preschool, but it’s left up to you and your child how far you want to go with each book and with the theme for each week.