The goal of these courses is to prepare kids to use the main Easy Peasy curriculum. In order to accomplish that, the primary focus is on reading. Once they are reading independently, they will be able to use the site independently and so much learning opens up to them.
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PRESCHOOL
In Preschool they are learning the alphabet. They will learn a letter a week, as well as the alphabet song to learn the order of the letters.
There is an animal story that introduces the letter sound for each letter of the alphabet. The story builds throughout the year and involves all the alphabet characters. Every few weeks there is a review week where they will also be working on shapes and colors as well.
Preschool goes through the whole alphabet. It also includes pre-math concepts like shapes, colors, one-to-one correspondence for beginning to count, as well as puzzles and pre-writing skills like cutting and tracing.
This is available as an offline workbook. In order to use the online course, you will want to print or purchase the printable worksheets and activities used in the course.
AFTER PRESCHOOL
Most Easy Peasy courses only do 180 days, a typical school year. I don’t like having the little kids take such a big break while they are working on learning to read. So, when they finish preschool and can recognize the letters and know their sounds, they should move directly on to the Kinder Learn To Read courses. These combined reading courses (sight reading and phonics) are over 200 days, about 5 weeks more than the regular courses. They could be worked on 10 minutes a day starting over a summer break and then the rest of school added in when you are ready. (If you really want to finish all at the same time, complete 36 days of reading before starting the math and writing. HOWEVER! It’s best to work at your child’s pace.)
KINDERGARTEN
Kindergarten includes math, reading, and handwriting.
Kinder Math teaches counting to 100, an introduction to addition and subtraction, writing number names to twenty, Roman numerals, calendar, patterns, puzzles and more.
Kinder Handwriting teaches how to write all the letters and numbers and has them writing words and sentences towards the end of the year.
Sight Reading – Learn To Read uses McGuffey’s Eclectic Primer, revised edition and McGuffey’s First Eclectic Reader, revised edition to teach sight words. That is followed by the Phonics – Learn To Read course with systematic phonics lessons. The phonics will be easy for your child because they will already know how to read. It’s purpose is to help them decode unknown words and to help them with spelling.
If your child is stuck on the sight words, you might want to skip and try the phonics course first. For some children, phonics will be easier than sight words. I have two boys that struggled with reading. One would even start sounding out words with the last letter. I stopped the sight words with them, jumping to phonics, and then went through the whole learn to read program again. They ended up happy readers who are reading on level. Because they are starting so young, a child who goes through this easily will be an advanced reader. One who takes extra time can still end up right on track, so take your time and give your child what they need.