What is a Letter of the Week Curriculum?
Welcome to our FREE Letter of the Week Curriculum. Chances are you’re looking for a fun and manageable way to educate your toddler or preschooler at home.
Are you planning to fully homeschool? Or maybe you’re looking for some supplementary learning to fill in gaps you notice in your child’s early learning or preschool program? Either way, you’re in the right place!
What exactly is a Letter of the Week Curriculum and how does it work?
While there is no dictionary definition of a letter of the week curriculum, generally speaking, it is a gentle way to introduce early learners to the alphabet in a fun and engaging way. I have done variations of this curriculum for both of my children, and it has looked a little different for each of them!
The wonderful thing about using a curriculum like this is that it is completely flexible and customizable to your schedule. You can also tailor it to your child’s interests as well as the specific skills they may need to spend more time learning.
Many letter of the week curriculums spend 1 week on each letter of the alphabet, working on letter recognition and letter sounds through activities, crafts and books. I have found that many letter of the week curriculums focus on one ‘theme’ per letter (ie. apple for letter A) and all learning tools are geared toward that theme.
Our Letter of the Week Journey
For my first child, I began looking into this concept when she was around two. I felt we needed some structure in our days. We began incorporating fun activities and crafts each day that went along with a letter theme. She LOVED it, and looked forward to a break in our pretend play routine (not to mention it gave me a break too!)
At her age, we did very few ‘worksheets’ and primarily focused on books and crafts. We would spend 1-2 weeks per letter theme consisting of about 20 minutes per day, before moving on to the next letter. This seemed like a good pace for us. BUT, it took So. Much. Work.
The Need For A Better Letter Learning Curriculum
I was spending HOURS searching the internet and Pinterest to find books and activities that fit our letter theme and that would be fun for my daughter. While there were lots of ideas out there, I couldn’t find a cohesive and comprehensive ‘curriculum’ that put everything together. I wasn’t interested in purchasing something that I wasn’t sure would even work for us…
With my second child (a boy), our days looked a little different because now my children had built in playmates with one another, and the need to include more structure wasn’t as necessary. By this time, my daughter was attending preschool. I was still looking for learning activities to supplement my daughter’s twice per week preschool program. My internet searching continued!
We began homeschooling the following year, and my son began showing interest in ‘school’ because he saw his sister learning at home each day. For him, I didn’t organize many activities. I had him do lots of fine motor practice, some wipe clean tracing pages and would have him repeat the alphabet and numbers along with his sister, who was then in Kindergarten.
Around the time he was three, he seemed eager and ready to begin more crafts and letter learning activities. So again, I embarked upon my long weekly planning sessions of scouring Pinterest and blogs to find letter learning crafts and activities for him.
Seeing a trend here? So much searching for activities! With no central place to go to get good ideas for young learners.
After a year of recreating a similar experience as I had for my daughter, I decided that I needed to put together all of my research, and create something that would save other parents time and energy.
I wanted to create something that would:
- Allow parents to choose from a list of activities and printables
- Provide a completely free resource that parents could take from what works and leave what doesn’t.
- Free parents from searching Pinterest and the internet for hours (no scrambling to find next week’s books)
Instead of all that hassle, it is all here for you, lovingly and thoughtfully prepared for you and your child to use and enjoy.
How Does The Letter of The Week Curriculum Work?
The Letter of the Week Curriculum included on our site is quite comprehensive, very easy to use and requires little to no preparation on your part! The activities and printables included are geared toward children ages 3-5, but it can be used and modified for children as young as 2 if there is an interest to learn.
What Do You Get With The Letter of The Week Curriculum?
Each letter segment comes with a set of free printables that include several early learning skills such as letter recognition, letter sounds, shapes, cutting, pre-writing, tracing and more! Each printable pack contains 50+ pages for you to utilize as you see fit for your child. With all the variety in printables your child will not become bored with the same pages for each letter – you can switch it up and always keep them on their toes!
In addition to the letter of the week printables, the free curriculum also includes several other learning tools to save you time and help your child learn even more with each letter! These learning tools include: around 20 books to choose from that go along with each letter, letter themed crafts and activities, snack ideas, educational videos and fun songs and even a list of extras including toys and games that go along with the letter themes that you could decide to purchase for your child to use alongside the curriculum and beyond!
It’s a LOT. Do You Need To Use It All?
As mentioned above, the curriculum has more pages than you will likely need to use with each letter. This was done on purpose to provide variety and different learning opportunities each week as your child’s skills grow. They may not be ready for a specific page early on, but they may be later into the curriculum, so your child can continue to build skills and master them as they go along.
The letter of the week curriculum is also meant to be flexible on how you pace your child’s learning. If your child is younger and just beginning to learn these concepts, you may wish to spend more than one week on each letter, and take your time going through several books, activities and printable pages. On the other hand, if your child is already familiar with some letters and sounds, moving through the activities that most benefit them throughout one week may be a good pace for them.
In my personal experience, each of my children went through the letter of the week program differently. My daughter showed an earlier interest in learning, so she began letter learning around the age of 2. We focused primarily on crafts and books with a couple of printable pages here and there, and spent 1 ½ -2 weeks per letter. My son didn’t begin letter learning until around age 3, and caught on much quicker as he was older, so we spent 1 week per letter, and did a different letter theme each day, as he enjoyed the variety and change each day. Both of my children were well prepared to begin preschool learning at an age appropriate time and were very comfortable and confident in their letter recognition.
What Things Do I Need To Prepare In Advance To Begin The Curriculum?
This letter of the week curriculum was designed to be easy to use with very little preparation needed. I would suggest heading over to the common letter of the week supplies page after you leave here to review the most commonly used supplies to complete the majority of the printable pages, crafts and activities. There will, of course, be some things you may need to purchase ahead of time for certain letters based on the activities and crafts you choose to do. In our supply list, I have included the most frequently used items, and have chosen many crafts that use similar supplies so you aren’t constantly buying different things for each letter craft.
One of the most frequently used things you will need is a good printer! When we began our homeschooling journey, we were going through ink in our printer like crazy and spending so much money to print off all the crafts and activities at home! When I had to start printing homeschool curriculums that were hundreds of pages, we knew we needed something more cost effective. The printer we chose is listed over in the supplies page, and we just couldn’t love it more! I print hundreds of pages, in color, each year, and in the first three years we had our printer, we only had to refill our ink twice!! It is incredible, and such a great value for printing. The quality is great too!
What Does a Day of Learning Look Like With This Curriculum?
Included with every printable pack in the curriculum is a sample weekly schedule that has been put together for you to give you a starting place for how a day or week using the curriculum might work.
This is not a set-in-stone schedule and should be used as a starting point as each child and family will approach this curriculum differently. Each child will need to utilize different learning tools within each printable pack. So how many printables or activities your child completes each day will be up to you once you have observed their learning style and skills to focus on.
Other than letter of the week learning activities, for my children, we also created a daily schedule which included alphabet review, calendar learning and fine motor and creative play. Here is what a day looked like for us while my children were learning with a letter of the week curriculum:
- In the morning, there would always be a ‘learning bin’ set out for my children to explore and play with quietly while breakfast was being prepared. These bins include things like magna-tiles, brain flakes, finger puppets, puzzles, etc. (a full list of our learning bins can be found on the supplies page if you are interested)
- When we were ready to begin our learning time, we would first complete our calendar activities using a large wall calendar. This included discussing and counting the number date, the day of the week, and the month of the year. Then together we would practice and sing the ‘days of the week’ song as well as the ‘months of the year’ song.
- We would then use our pocket chart to review numbers 1-10 (found on individual letter learning pages), and also either introduce or review the letter we were working on that week using sandpaper letters for them to trace with their fingers, along with the pocket chart cards (included with each letter of the week printable pack) where we would review each picture and talk about the sound the letter makes with each item. After our pocket chart review, my children would use the alphabet cards (found in the Additional Resources download) which were hung on the wall, to sing the alphabet song while pointing to each letter as they went along.
- Once our daily review and calendar was complete, they would work on 2-3 printable pages for the week’s letter, then we would read our chosen books for the day and finally they would complete an activity or craft.
All that is listed above would take approximately 30-40 minutes to complete once we began our daily calendar. Depending on how engaged they were that day would really determine how long we spent on printable pages and activities.
Some days we may do an extra craft if they wanted, or read an extra book if they were interested in doing more. On the other hand, if they seemed uninterested or very distracted on a given day, we didn’t force it, but just lightened our load for the day and finished quicker.
I hope that this Letter of The Week overview page helps you to feel more confident and prepared to begin using the curriculum with your children. As mentioned above, don’t forget to head over to the common supplies page so you can start to gather things you will need before you begin. If you have any questions or need some additional guidance as you get started, feel free to head to the contact page where you can email us directly. I hope you and your child will enjoy using our free curriculum!
Where should you go next? To our supplies page, or, if you’re ready to jump in, head over to our Letter of the Week page, where you can find each letter page and download the free printables for that letter!
Don’t forget to head over to our Pinterest page to find all of our letter of the week links along with some extras!