Winter Wonderland 12 Week Curriculum
(Preschool-Kindergarten / Ages 4-6)
CLICK HERE FOR PDF
Here is the second preschool/Kindergarten term that I know many of you have been anxiously waiting to see. It has a very similar rhythm to the Harvest Time unit with a focus on animals in winter and simple nature studies. Enjoy!
(I have noticed that for some reason Winter Wonderland has the alphabet scheduled in alphabetical order whereas the other units are scheduled base on the ETC order. Updating the unit to flow with the ETC is on my to-do list… in the meantime I just wanted readers to be aware of the mix-up. Use the order that works best for your family.)
If you are working on the unit and would like to include the button on the blog… here it is. You can copy and save it to your computer or just copy the text below and paste it on your page.
Thank you so much. I can’t believe how generous you guys are. I’ve been doing your crafts for a long time. Now your curriculum has come just in time for me. I wanted to homeschool my 5 year old but I was nervous. I’m hoping that by following this with you guys this year I’ll be ready to tackle it myself next year. Bless you Wee Folk Art!
We have been learning at home (and everywhere else actually) for almost a year now and LOVE it. We are trying to infuse a love for nature while living in suburbia, which can be challenging to say the least. This will be so helpful! Thanks so much!
Thanks for sharing this – so many fabulous ideas! I’m sure the littles and I will be doing many of them. 🙂
Although my son attends a parochial school and my daughter is in pre-school, I love this resource. It is something that I can use whether or not I homeschool.
Thanks a bunch!
Just wanted to say thanks so much for sharing your time and talent! A group of Alabama homeschoolers have been inspired by the Harvest Time curriculum and we are having the BEST time enjoying field trips and fun! We’re excited to dive into Winter Wonderland in January (we’re currently only in week 5 of Harvest Time, got a late start)…there is a typo on the cover page of the Winter Wonderland Curriculum PDF. The image shows a winter scene but the text still says, “Harvest Time”. 😉 TOTALLY understandable, almost didn’t point it out but thought it might confuse someone new to this wonderful curriculum. <3 Thanks again and many blessings to you!
I’m so glad you are enjoying the Harvest Unit. Thanks for catching the typo! Yeah… one on the cover should be fixed. LOL. I will add it to my to-do list. I’m also hoping to get a chance to work on the Spring unit before the holidays.
Thought you might enjoy these little acorn friends we made using some alpaca fiber from the farm we visited. 🙂
These are adorable. All that wild hair and perky little berets… cute! Thanks for sharing them with us.
Hi,
Thanks so much for posting your curriculum guides. I am a Montessori teacher and the director of our Extended Care Program for 2-6 year olds. I have been working very hard to have a meaningful program for the little ones that stay till 5:30. I look forward to reading the guides more indepth over Christmas break.
Blessings,
Tracy
Do you have other grades that you put curriculum out for?
I was wondering if you have curriculum for other grades too…or what curriculum(s) you used for 1st grade.
Thank you so much for being generous and posting these for free!
We have some older stuff in the works but no idea when we will have them ready to share – I’m still polishing off the Spring Bs unit. For 1st grade I did my own science units based on what the kids wanted to learn about and did ancient history using some of the Story of the World book but adding in more story/picture books. If you are interested in a literature based complete curriculum I would recommend looking at Winterpromise or Sonlight.
Thanks for taking the time to post what you used! I was thinking of doing something that sounded similar to what you did with science and history. We’re loving the kindy curriculum and are excited about Spring B’s. Hopefully for many of us you’ll have time for upper grades but I know how busy you must be 😉
I’ve looked at Sonlight and wow..really expensive! I haven’t heard of winter promise so I’m heading off to go look at it now
Thanks!
Can’t wait to try this with my two little ones. They are eager to have school like their big brother! This looks perfect for us. You are so generous to make this available for us!
I just wanted to add a quick thank you for your fantastic curriculum. We dabbled with the Harvest Time Curriculum in the fall and are jumping in to the Winter Wonderland. I have all the books and we started last week – so much fun! So sweet, so gentle and so inclusive. My 2 year old can participate while my 5 year old is learning everything she needs to learn. Thank you, thank you, thank you – I just can’t thank you enough!!
My oldest son and I are loving your curricula. We did the Harvest Time last fall and we just started Winter Wonderland this week.
Just in case anyone else is GF/DF: We have had great success modifying all the recipes that come with it to be gluten and dairy free. Wendy Wark’s Gluten Free Flour Mix (google if interested, it’s on celiac.com) works great cup for cup in all the recipes. We use Nucoa margarine instead of butter. It’s great that my kids don’t have to miss out on all the fun recipes because of their allergies.
We are wrapping up our first week of the Winter Wonderland Curriculum. This week for art we did Salt painting, and colored the Jasmine Fairy. We had Jelly Belly day, which goes against a lot of what I stand for as far as corporate marketing to children goes, but it was super fun. We worked three nature studies..Ice Melt with salt, Winter warmth with the natural materials, and the winter breath outside. We read the Jasmine Fairy poem, Lets look at Winter, All in a Day (Cynthia Rylant), and Sophie’s Masterpiece (Eileen Spinnelli). Our poem for the month is Snow Clown from the book Swing Around the Sun by Barbara Juster Esbensen. We also are using Right Start Mathematics (LOVE THIS), Explode the Code, and two D’Nealian workbooks.
I blogged about our experience with water colors and salt. Thank you so very much!
Much love
Amanda
Sounds like a great first week. And for those of you interested, check out the lovely pics of Amanda’s family’s winter scenes. They are lovely. Thanks for sharing, Amanda!
http://ava-like-a-bird.blogspot.com/2011/01/winter-watercolors.html
This week I decided to try a blog post about our week in home school. We are loving the Winter Wonderland Curriculum. Thank you ladies, thank you so much!
http://ava-like-a-bird.blogspot.com/
We just finished our first week (we started with ‘week 2’) with the Winter Wonderland Curriculum. Our 4 and 6 year old really enjoyed it, and our 2 year old even joined in on some of the activities. I have found almost all of the books at our library and have just had to substitute a few of the secondary ones. Looking forward to the Spring curriculum. I’ll definitely be adding a button to my blog!
We haven’t had any friends come visit our bird feeder yet and we’ve had it up for three weeks. Any suggestions for attracting birds? My son has been very disappointed!
It takes a while to attract birds to a feeder. Experts suggest setting up your feeder at the end of summer/early fall so birds include your feeder on their daily rounds. Eventually you’ll get a lone bird to come and he’ll tell two friends, and they’ll each tell two friends, and before you know it you will have birds.
To try to speed the process, there are several things you can try. There are birdfeeder "feeders" and ground "feeders". When you put seed in your bird feeder, make sure to sprinkle some seed on the ground to attract birds that don’t use feeders.
You can also "sweeten" the pot. Splurge and put out some whole peanuts, perhaps a block of suet, and if you are using an inexpensive blend, add some whole or medium chopped sunflowers to the blend.
Also, birds need water as much during the winter as they do in the summer. If you can afford it, add a bird bath near your feeder. If you live in northern regions, it will have to be heated. You can either purchase a heated bird bath, or if you already have one, you can just buy a heating element to add to your bird bath. This can be found at most good hardware stores.
Birds also need to feel safe. Is your feeder somewhere that provides protection for a bird? Are there trees or bushes around?
But for the most part… if you put out seed, they will come! Remember, though, once you start feeding birds, make sure to continue until the weather gets nice and they can easily find food on their own. Birds come to depend on a food source and to lose it over night can create problems for our little friends!
Good luck and keep us posted 🙂
Turns out we had the wrong kind of feeder. We had one day where the snow melted away and several birds came to feast on the newly bare ground. So I tried spreading seed on the rails of our deck and on the ground. In just a few days we have had over 30 birds come to visit our backyard! At one time we had six bluejays, three cardinals, a woodpecker, several sparrows and some chickadees visit. We have really enjoyed it! This is the first winter I have fed birds and we have all really loved having breakfast with the birds every morning!
Thanks for all the tips. We did buy a good bird seed, mostly sunflower seeds and cracked corn. I throw some nuts out there too and they really seem to love those.
My son has really become interested in the birds. My mom is a retired teacher and has a ton of old Copycat magazines. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen them, but they have great monthly projects. One of her Jan/Feb had a bird mobile activity with all the winter birds we have seen at our feeder and we really enjoyed putting that together this week.
We also love the Come Look With Me art series that you introduced. I think I will continue using those in my curriculum for a long time. Each week we have made a similar type art project to the print we are looking at. This week we made prints out of foil. Last week we drew an illustration of our favorite book, etc.
Thanks so much for making our transition into homeschooling a fun and easy one!
Our home was hit by illness last week, so our homeschool life was modifies just a bit. I wrote a wrap up blog post about our activities.
Ladies, I continue to be in your debt for the wealth of information you’ve provided for my family.
much love,
Amanda
We worked with groundhogs, shadows, and winter turning into spring this week. I’m getting first grade all set up, and I am so excited! I hope you continue to blog about your curriculum, so I can keep gleaning fantastic ideas from you!!
Are there any other families out there that are blogging about the Winter Wonderland Curriculum? I would love to see how other families are making it work.
much love,
Amanda
here’s a link to this week’s wrap up
http://ava-like-a-bird.blogspot.com/2011/02/c-week-wrap-up.html
What a great week for crafting with children! Valentine’s Day provides such a sweet holiday to create. Thank you ladies for all you inspiration, I can only imagine where I’d be today if it wasn’t for your incredible influence your website has had on my family’s homeshooling life!
much love,
Amanda
http://ava-like-a-bird.blogspot.com/2011/02/l-week-wrap-up.html
Looks like you had a wonderful week. Looking forward to seeing what you do with all those hearts!
oops! I forgot to tell you that I posted a week seven wrap up
http://ava-like-a-bird.blogspot.com/2011/02/g-week-wrap-up.html
Last week our theme was centered around the trees changing. I really wanted to make maple candy, but we didn’t get to it. Now I’m craving it (based solely on the picture in the Winter Curriculum) and I’m trying to think of new ways of working it into our days. Maybe I’ll just have to forgo the idea of a ‘reason’ and just make it!
Thank you ladies!
Much love,
Amanda
We have a couple of wee ones, and not so wee ones, with "sweet tooths" around here. The thing I love so much about maple candy is it is all natural 🙂 Indulge… find some time to make some. YUM!
I had a bit of a lag in my updates, but I got all caught up this week!
My eternal thanks!
much love,
Amanda
weeks eleven and twelve are now posted! I’ve added a new science curriculum to the mix, and I’m supper excited about it. We’re taking a week off for spring break. We are having such a blast, and I can’t wait to start Spring B’s April 4th!
Thank you Thank you Thank you!
Amanda
http://ourfamiliesconnect.blogspot.com/
^^^
We started the Winter Wonderland Curriculum this week! Harvest Time was wonderful and fun, Winter Wonderland will be too. Thank you again for sharing this great curriculum!
Heather
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