ABEKA PRESCHOOL REVIEW | Preschool at Home | Homeschool for 2's and 3's | Homeschool Curriculum

Hayek Morgan and welcome to the doves nest in today's video i'm reviewing the Abeka preschool curriculum hi everyone and welcome back to my channel for those of you who are new hi my name is morgan dove and i'm so glad to have you on this channel i typically make housekeeping videos where i'm teaching myself routines to help me keep my house clean and my life in order but occasionally I do make homeschool videos and that's because let's be honest we're all homeschooling right now a few years ago I decided to homeschool my son we did an early preschool at home and I called it tot school and I made a few videos and I will be sure to link some playlists in the description bar as well as in the I cards up here but when we did the preschool at home I used the Abeka curriculum for preschool now the reason I used a Becca's curriculum was because it was the only one that I could find that was meant for not only three year old preschool but also two year old preschool and at the time my son had just turned 2 and while I knew what I needed to teach him I didn't know how to present those kinds of materials and I thought that maybe just throwing a game that had to do with ABCs or numbers at him wasn't quite the right way to go so I was really excited that I found this curriculum for two and three-year-olds so I filmed a very in-depth look at the entire Abeka preschool curriculum I will be sure to link that video up here again it's a super in-depth walkthrough shows you the lesson plans shows you examples of all of the things that you can purchase until recently that video was the number one most popular video on my channel and I realized that I never did a follow up video or a review of that curriculum like I said it was simply a walkthrough video I did want to film today's video three years later because I know that this fall many families are choosing to homeschool their kids or are just simply looking for activities for their kids to do and don't know how to present those activities just like I did so I wanted to get this video up so that there's still time if you choose to purchase some of these men you have plenty of time to do so so in today's video that's what I'm going to do I'm basically going to review the curriculum tell you my personal thoughts and opinions and then I'll be sure to mention what I would purchase again and what I would not purchase again if you'd like to follow my journey for more homeschooling and housekeeping videos be sure to click that subscribe button and if this is the kind of content you like to see give me a thumbs up it really helps me know what kind of videos you guys like to see on this channel now if you purchase this curriculum in its entirety the subjects you can expect to learn our Bible the alphabet numbers and very beginning math skills science and social studies art music and character it covers the gamut of everything you could want to teach in a home school however when I got on the Abeka website to try to figure out what I wanted and what I needed I found it very difficult as a first-time homeschooling parent to know exactly the resources I needed for the subjects I wanted to teach I was actually just scouring their website currently and there is no longer a parent kit or a student kit except for the Bible curriculum when I purchased this curriculum three years ago there was a kit or a sort of combined parent materials of everything the parent would need as well as a kit of student materials which covers kind of the workbooks or the things that the student would personally use to write in or color in and those are no longer on the website everything is sold separately and that was kind of my first complaint about the Bekaa is it's expensive and you have to buy everything separately and unless you know what you want to do or have maybe been to one of their book shows I forget what they're called a book show I guess I'll say that it's really hard to know what materials you need and what materials you might not need now just after we moved into our house three years ago I got really lucky because the Beco is having one of their little book shows right up the street from my house so I took my 18 month old and my two and a half year old and we drove up the street I went and I got to flip through everything and touch it and so I was better able to see what I wanted to purchase I also got a discount because if you attend one of their shows or sometimes they do webinars online and if you attend one of those that will give you a coupon code for like 10 to 15% off so I think I purchased everything for 15 percent off and I still spent a lot of money so after I attended that show I gave them my email address and then they did send me a coupon for fifteen percent off so I was able to get everything at a discounted rate which was really helpful because it's not cheap stuff well I feel like such a dope because I was able to find all of the materials that we purchased except for the preschool homeschool lesson plan manual so what I'm gonna do is for the whole time I'm talking about that manual I'm gonna post a picture of it up here I'm gonna scoot over just a little bit so that editing Morgan can stick a picture right there for you because I have searched high and low and I cannot find that manual now I did have all of our home school supplies and educational activities organized nicely in a closet but last year our house flooded I will link a video of talking all about that up here and so all of my education materials have been displaced they are currently in multiple boxes thrown in a closet and I'm gonna have to declutter that when I get to it so if you're here for my declutter videos stay tuned because I've got lots more coming probably later this summer anyway let's get back to talking about a Becca preschool the first thing I wanted to talk about is the lesson plan manual for preschool homeschool it seems counterintuitive especially if you're a first time home schooling parent you don't really know what you're doing and you think I just need somebody to tell me to hold my hand and tell me what I'm supposed to teach my child you may think that you really need this manual I don't think you do I didn't use it like at all at all because I don't have it I can't flip through and explain to you but you can go back and watch my video again it's linked up here and sort of see the walkthrough of how everything is laid out the biggest thing the lesson manual did was sort of helping me stay on top of the teaching schedule so what I mean is it told me what letter and what number we were learning that week as well as what character trait or other activities we would be doing that week the thing that the lesson plans didn't do but I really wanted them to do was give me a lesson to teach my child as I said I already knew what he needed to learn I just didn't know how to present it and so I was expecting this lesson plan to be open and go where I could simply read something to my child give them an activity or give them a colouring sheet and then he would know what to do with it and this lesson plan didn't do that at all so for just over $21.00 I would completely skip the lesson plan manual the next thing I want to talk about are the animal alphabet friends flashcards now in case you didn't know the Abeka preschool curriculum does follow a letter of the week approach to teaching your child letters and numbers we really loved these cards I thought they were fun it was just enough information without being overwhelming and so for $40 I definitely think it was worth the investment and the reason I say that is because let me pull out a card here and I'll show you so every week your child learns a letter so in this case we have Oscar otter now why I like these cards so much is because you have your uppercase letter your lowercase letter your word that starts with that letter as well as other examples of words that start with that letter on the back there's the lessons that were not in the lesson manual so they are all on the back of this card so what it comes with it comes with a story that has lots of alliterations the use of the letter O to tell this story and then it also has review questions for when you're done now once you finish with the story you can come on over here to the letter shapes and sound and what you have here is obviously a picture of the upper and lowercase letter and then a story that teaches your child how to write or draw those letters so in this case you have the mother otter and the baby otter and they lay on top of the water in the ocean and then they get hungry so they dive down to the ocean floor to pick up some clams and then come back up to sleep on the water so that's kind of a nice little section just for initial handwriting if you're teaching your child handwriting at this age next in this column you have some fun activity ideas so for example there's a learning game so it says get some seashells either real seashells or paper seashells and have your child practice diving down on the floor and getting their clams for dinner there's an activity here where you can wrap up in a blanket and pretend like you're an otter wrapped up in seaweed floating on the ocean for enough there's some fun facts there's the letter song now the letter when it does is it teaches the letter sound and then you also you know you practice the otter the ostrich the on and off the octopus and the oxen there is a CD that you can purchase with the animal alphabet friends flashcards is the animal alphabet CD and it has the words for all of the letter songs we didn't buy it I kind of just made up my own song and it was fine and then there's some vocabulary if you wanted to talk about some extra vocabulary and then again those extra words are down here at the bottom so we really liked those again it was included in both the two-year-old curriculum and the three-year-old curriculum so as far as the animal alphabet friends cards we love them we thought they were great if I decide to home-school I'm still kind of on the fence this fall we are going to be using these with my daughter I know some people will ask so I'll just say as far as preschool where we live there is no free option for preschool so she goes to a school it's I think pretty expensive for preschool I guess it's a normal price tuition but if we're going to pay for preschool where she has to socially distance from other students they took away the Lunch Bunch activity portion which was an extra hour and a half of the preschool day but they got to spend outside doing science activities and nature studies and that was taken away they took away their snack time like I just kind of think again as I mentioned in my other video all internal here that I think preschool and school in general could just be a very miserable experience and so we've gotten accepted into a charter school I'm working with them to kind of you know convince me that everything's going to be fine if I could do home school but if we do homeschool with her we are for sure using the animal alphabet friends flashcards [Music] now the next thing I want to talk about are the language development visual cards the biggest difference between the language development visual cards and the animal alphabet friends cards is that these cards are two sided with poster pictures there is no lesson on the back so where do you get your lesson from here's a hint it's not that home school preschool lesson manual you actually have to purchase the language development visuals teacher guide and as you can see for butterflies there is your butterfly lesson it's two pages the lesson here is just looking at the poster and you know sort of discussing this section with your kids then there's a learning more so some more facts and if you have maybe three-year-olds or older children you're working with or maybe if your child has like a longer attention span and a two or three-year-old you could add in these little facts so for example these are like basically butterflies have two wings they're beautiful how many legs do they have down here it starts talking about how butterflies pollinate flowers and then life cycles of the butterfly goes into this part then you have some questions that you can ask your kids a learning game so you can make some butterflies out of construction paper and then on this next page there are three more ideas for activities or little projects and as always there's a poem right at the end here now most of the topics covered in the language development visuals have to do with science or geography or even history so if you're looking to add a little bit of science and social studies to your preschool curriculum this is a great way to do that now we loved these cards like we loved them and I made a whole video about it up here now if you're following the preschool lesson plans exactly as they're stated in the lesson plan manual it will tell you which of the language development visual cards to use on what day of the week if you're doing the two-year-old program you only do three cards a week so that's the animal alphabet friends on Monday and then on Wednesday and Friday you can choose which of the four other options you want to use and in the three-year-old program do a language development visual card Tuesday Wednesday Thursday and Friday so for example if you're on the B week you'll do your bet CB card on Monday and then you'll open up your lesson plans and you will see that on Tuesday you'll learn about Bears Wednesday you'll do butterflies Thursday you'll do Birds and then Friday you'll do buses and boats and again each one of those cards has a lesson a lesson extension some questions you can ask activities and a poem to go with it so it's a really great alphabet curriculum the problem is is the press while the animal alphabet friends cards will set you back about forty dollars just over forty dollars these come in at sixty two dollars and twenty five cents it's expensive now if you didn't want to spend that much money on the language development visuals portion of the curriculum like I said we loved it and I would 100% recommend it but I do understand that price is a huge factor but one thing you could do is when you purchase the animal alphabet friends cards you can look at the other things that start with that letter and then create your own activities and read books that have to do with those things so for example for the letter A we had Alexander alligator was our animal alphabet friends cards and then some of the other A's that went along with it were apples astronauts ants and Africa and so what I did was I gathered all of the activities I could find in my house that had to do with any of those things and if I didn't have something I just find a quick free printable online printed up or create a game so I will link the video up here of our letter a weekly walkthrough that shows all of the extra activities that we did that week just based on what was on our card I also would go to the library and I would get every children's book possible that had to do with that subject so again I'll link an example video from our letter a up here it was our letter A books that we read that week if we do this curriculum again in the fall I do plan to continue the videos with all of the letters it's just really hard to a teach home school to a young child be plan and prepare and get all of the activities together and then film and edit and everything on top of that oh and also request all the library books takes forever so it's a lot of work to put those videos together every week so I only made it through I think four or five weeks from when I did it with my son but if we do with my daughter I will definitely link those videos but again I do highly highly recommend the language development visuals portion of the curriculum even though it is quite expensive now the last part of the language arts curriculum that I purchased was the letter sounds for threes it's a fairly thick book and you can see that we literally did like almost none of it basically what it is let me find this here so if you have your animal alphabet friends card you have your Connie cow letter C with all the things on it your lessons and things on the back the letters and sounds for three student workbook basically has that same card just in a smaller version there is no letter on the back and now it has them for every letter of the alphabet plus some of the things that are in the language development visual guide so this book is meant to be sort of a phonics style workbook for your child however you can see that every page in it is literally a picture and letters now your student can trace them sometimes the book will say you know get like some beans or some glitter glue and trace the letters that way to try to make it more fun but for sixteen dollars I would not purchase this again I felt like it was a huge a huge waste of money for any literally it's kind of very very beginning hand right I think there are other better things for handwriting specifically handwriting without tears if you really wanted to encourage handwriting at the three-year-old age I still think three is too young for handwriting so I would skip handwriting altogether and I would have to say for sixteen dollars I would skip this book as well if you are intent on using a workbook for your child there are so many things for less money that I think do a better job now for example I have this one here this is a spectrum workbook and this is for ages two plus it's also very simple but I think it's more engaging so for example this is the letter A you'd be able to see that let me see if I can darken this a bit okay so I've darken little bit so for example you have a quick little lesson talking about the letter A directions you can finger trace it you can color it you can glue some kind of manipulative in there whatever you want and then there's like activities over here and it sort of just does that for every letter of the alphabet and you guys this was like three dollars online so I mean sixteen dollars verse three I would find something else rather than purchase this workbook all right let's talk about math now for this curriculum I purchased all of the things now as I said at the time my son was two and so I purchased the student math workbook for two-year-olds the learning numbers with button bear as well as the numbers and skills with button bear for three-year-olds honestly it's the exact same as with the letters and sounds workbooks I would skip these again there are about sixteen dollars each the learning numbers with button bear is very basic it has a number it has the number of objects that it states and you color it the biggest issue my son had with this was he was livid that the objects were mostly already colored like he wanted a red balloon and felt like he couldn't color the balloon red because one was outlined in purple and one was yellow and they are all that so for each number you get a few different pages so there three there's three three three I mean you get quite a bit of practice but again they're mostly in color and all you're doing is coloring and Counting for the entire book we did one page and as I said my son was not happy with how it turned out wouldn't do another one because it wasn't how he wanted it so for sixteen dollars I would skip this also with the numbers and skills it was exactly the same as the two-year-old workbook except there were a few other skills so for example number eight count and color the apples in the tree count eight apples you cut the apples again it's mostly already colored so it's not even like a really good coloring book page or even normal workbooks they might let you color more there were a couple of skills however so for example this was kind of just like you know a standard work page where you're counting and circling so there was an occasional something like that here's an occasional skill of like you know matching and sequencing sort of a thing and then there was a few little cut and paste activities but not a ton again as far as these workbooks I would skip them and you can find something for much less money that does the exact same thing so for example in this spectrum workbook count and color the apples and again it's this thing most of the picture is colored except the apples and again with the numbers you know it's got some more it's just got a little bit more variation in the activities that it offers and I think it was like four dollars so for the price and for what you're getting for your money I would skip those workbooks the next thing I bought was the numbers concepts of flashcards number six with six birds this set of flashcards with seventeen dollars and you get numbers one through twenty with the numbers on one side and an object in that number on the back for $17 you guys you can find the same thing at the Dollar Tree so again I would skip this the last thing for the math curriculum that I purchased was the numbers flashcards now these are cards that go from 0 to 200 and as you can tell I didn't even cut these out it's literally numbers written on a card and we didn't cut those out now in the home school preschool lesson plans and the very beginning of the book there are five different activities it lists to do with the numbers concept flashcards and six activity ideas to do with the number cards now these are super super basic activities and once you actually get into the lesson plan for example for the three-year-old program math days are like Tuesdays and Thursdays and so you open it up and it says do number concept card number 18 and that's all it says and so you're like okay but what do I do with number 18 this is why I don't think you need that lesson plan manual because it doesn't actually tell you what to say or what to do it just says do it and so for example one of the activities might be you know draw your 18 card and then flip it over and practice counting out loud to number 18 or for example show the number 18 card and clap 18 times while counting 1 through 18 so they're very simple activities and for there not to be a lesson or a guided reading for the parent that actually teaches the numbers I just don't think anything in the math curriculum is worth your money and again as well as that lesson plan manual for preschool I just don't think it's worth the money I think any parent could probably come up with a more fun activity on their own and if not more fun at least the exact same activities that are offered in that lesson plan manual but for the price again I don't think these cards are worth it go to the Dollar Tree and get a one dollar set of flashcards some other things that I personally consider math skills or grouping under the concept of math skills are things like geometry which would be shapes and colors now those things aren't actually taught even in the math program again they're taught in the language development visuals so you actually spend your first two weeks talking about let's see oh this one sideways you've got colors here with your color balloons and you've got more colors up here with all these different objects and then I want to say it's week two or three that you move on to learning about shapes so as I said for the money I don't think anything in the preschool math curriculum is worth purchasing I think if you're going to teach your kids colors and shapes you can do it better with again a cheaper workbook if you're into a workbook or just through play and activities things like playdough and cookie cutters or I mean lakeshore learning and learning resources has tons and tons of activities dealing with colors and shapes and so I think your money would be better spent looking into something like that okay the last couple of things I want to talk about are the fun poems and fingerplays book the nursery arts-and-crafts book as well as the growing up with amber lamb now I'm gonna start here with fun poems and finger plays linked aronia school started in my house I took over our teacher wasn't sending anything home from school and so we just went all in with what I wanted to do and I will be sure to link that curriculum video up here but one thing I realized is that we rely heavily on song in our home school we sing all day because I personally think that you retain so much more information when you learn it in song for example you probably can't remember that thing about biology that you learned in college 20 years ago but you can remember a song that was a hit on a radio when you were 6 or 7 years old and you can sing every word right now so I love singing so I was excited about the fun poems and finger plays as I mentioned in the curriculum walkthrough video it's set up really cute so / alphabet I don't know if you can see the other if it's too bright and so on every page you know you have a full page of little poems that have to do with that letter for example there's some end poems and it's great they're really fun so it's a really great resource to have if you have nothing else this little book is right around $19 for the price you could go buy a really great mother Goose book or a nurseryrhymes book or a children's garden a vs. book and then there are so many free resources online or even on TV nowadays I know we have a channel on our we use the Roku system and we have a channel called the happy kids Channel and it's Chuck full of songs I mean we call it songs when my kids like I want to watch songs we turn on the happy kids Channel and it's Nursery Rhymes and singing and so I just think there are so many less expensive and free resources to help you with the same thing now there is a musical set offered with this curriculum we didn't purchase that again because I know Nursery Rhymes and I can just sing them with my kids I don't need to purchase a CD and a book of nursery rhymes but I kind of feel the same if you want just tons and tons of poems that have to do with the letter of the week that you're working on and you don't mind shelling out 19 dollars it's probably a really great resource to have I personally would not purchase it again next we have the nursery arts and crafts now this is for 18 to 24 months so even when my son was two-and-a-half years old this was very under level for him and the reason I went with the nursery level as opposed to the two year old or three year old Arts and Crafts was because my son even as much as recently as I've mentioned until we started using handwriting without tears he had no interest in drawing or writing or coloring it was just not something that he enjoyed and so this book again is very simple so for example color the dress another one would be you know we're learning the color purple color the crayon purple so if you are teaching a very young child 18 to 24 months this might be something kind of fun for example if you color the purple crayon when you're learning the color purple then you have purple tulips and you have purple jam you also have a purple popsicle so it really sort of reinforces and emphasizes that color and it goes through all the colors but as I said my son didn't enjoy coloring or writing he was super bored with it and then just looking at it the fact that like he was so excited to color a firetruck and then when most of it was already colored for him he was not having it so for $16 I would definitely skip this book you guys you can get amazing amazing coloring books from Michael's or Target and even the dollar store has some really great coloring and activity books and I think for just very beginning arts and crafts even this Falls a little bit short we did try to use this during Corona school with my daughter who loves coloring and loves tracing and handwriting and all the things but she was even boards with this she didn't want to have anything to do with it so next I want to talk about the growing up with Amber lamb flashcards these were kind of cute again it mentions in the home school preschool lesson plan when to do them but it doesn't tell you what to say these are sort of like the animal alphabet friends flashcards where you have the picture on one side and then the story on the other side now these cards sort of introduce your kids to basic life skills basic life experiences some beginning character for the most part I felt like these were good things for my kids to learn I mean there's a whole stack of them it's a pretty big set there are 60 cards in this pack we did not get through all of them because my kids were just bored so for example to read a whole story for a preschooler where they only have one picture to look at like they just got bored kind of sitting and listening to it and kept asking like is it over yet is it over yet we done can we move on there are really good lessons in here and again introductions to life experiences maybe your kids never been to the doctor so you might you know read a story about Amber's going to the doctor maybe your kids don't know about police officers so there's the whole card here about police officers and what they do there's one here called baby lamb is born and it's all about a new little sister and again just gently introducing your child to these experiences so as I mentioned it my kids were just kind of bored listening to a whole story and only looking at one picture and for the most part they'd already sort of been introduced to those concepts or those experiences in a way I mean not fully but like my kids knew what police officers were because they watched paw patrol and chases the police officer do you know what I mean my son knew about having a new baby because I had had a new sister right before we started this program and so I think they were cute I think for a classroom setting it might be a very good idea I think for home school and for the $40 price tag I would skip these as well I just think there are other ways to teach those experiences again picture books you know we love reading we do tons and tons of reading in our house and I think just picture books or simple discussions or question and answers are ultimately going to be a better less expensive way to teach these same things now the last thing I purchased from the preschool curriculum are the learning games now these are essentially file folder games and I've got them here actually in a file folder there's a total of 31 games and so show you a little bit of them so essentially what you have you have a card and it's got two sides there's one side and there's another side and then you have like perforated sheets where you can just go pop out all of the little pieces so for example this game is Peter Rabbit and so in this little baggie you have like a little scarecrow and little carrots that you can plant and then it comes with a teaching tips book this comes with the learning games and so for example it will tell you some ideas on how to use the game you can use them with the flashcards for example you know take a flashcard and place that many carrots in the field right you could hide the carrots around the room ask questions that they learned in their learning development visuals study and every time they answer a question right go find a carrot and then put it on here and so it's kind of a fun little additions as I mentioned there are 31 different games this one's a Noah's art game and I love file folder games like I love file folder games if you look at my weekly walkthrough videos you'll see that we use file folder games I have a ton that we use for our devotional studies I've got lots of learning games and all of those I found just free online through different free school websites and Pinterest the nice thing about these was that they come perforated and so you know it's really easy to just sort of pop out all of the pieces as opposed to cutting everything out yourself which you often have to do with file folder games and then the fact that it came with some learning guide teaching tips I thought that was very helpful however the price tag on this is right under 17 dollars you can get file folder games at the dollar store or again you can get them for free online one thing I do want to mention nowhere in that preschool homeschool lesson manual doesn't mention now pull out this learning game because it coincides with this lesson it doesn't tell you when to do them or whatever sort of at your discretion if you feel like doing one of these little learning games you can it won't tell you when it's kind of another reason why I think the preschool homeschool lesson plans are just sort of a waste of money they just don't really tell you how to do anything they just sort of tell you when to do things except when it comes to the extras like these learning games so again it's a fun little addition I I probably wouldn't repurchase it but I'm glad I have them because we have used them for example just recently in our Corona school we did a unit all about bumble bees and so there happens to be one here about bumble bees and so I've I have gotten use out of them and pulled them out and just sort of you know let my kids play with them is sort of a quiet time activity I've even taken them to church and just sort of let my kids do them and glad I have them but you can definitely find similar activities for cheaper if not free alright everyone that's it that was a long video and a long time coming thank you so much for sticking with me if you enjoyed it be sure to give it a huge thumbs up just to summarize again if I were to purchase the Abeka preschool homeschool curriculum again I wouldn't purchase most of it now if you've been following along with the receipts you will see that I spent even with my 15% discount roughly two hundred and seventy five dollars on the Abeka preschool curriculum and honestly for the price I just think there are other things that you can do you don't have to spend a ton of money to teach a two-year-old or a three-year-old their letters and their numbers you just don't and to be honest most of it comes naturally so I guess the biggest question is would I purchase these items again and what would we use instead if we had to use things differently I feel like now I'm much better versed in terms of preschool curriculum as far as what's out there and supplemental activities and reading and so knowing what I know now the only things that I would purchase from Abeka for either a two year old preschool or a three year old preschool again are the animal alphabet friends flashcards the language development visuals teacher guide as well as the language development visuals cards now as luck would have it you guys I am most likely homeschooling my preschooler this fall I'm like 98% sure that we're gonna be doing preschool at home so be sure to click that subscribe button and if I get to 100% sure that we are going to be homeschooling this fall I will make a video in the upcoming weeks talking about everything that I choose to use with my three-year-old preschooler thank you again so much for being here if you found this video helpful be sure to give it a thumbs up and as always I will see you in my next video

Channel: The Dove's Nest

Views: 4,604

Rating: 4.9515152 out of 5

Keywords: abeka preschool curriculum, preschool curriculum review, abkea review, abeka preschool, abeka two year old, abkea three year old, curriculum review, abeka unboxing, abeka walk through, look at abeka, totschool, preschool homeschool, homeschool totschool, homeschool preschool, homeschool tot school, abeka for 2's, abeka for 3's, button bear, amber lamb, animal alphabet friends, abeka, preschool math ideas, preschool alphabet, preschool reading, confessions of a homeschooler

Id: LwoIEomuyx4

Length: 37min 42sec (2262 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 11 2020