welcome to
PreK & Kindergarten
Educating Children in the Lord's Way
Search
Ponder
& Play.
Leading & Guiding PreK to Kindergarten Children to Learn Through Discovery.
Be a Part of our research Team
Use this program fREE.
What is this?
This program was originally a component of the parent manual for our general curriculum. It is a fun and organic way to guide young learners to approach life-long learning.
How do I use it?
Search, Ponder, & Play is being published as stand-alone manual. However, we have received so many requests for it NOW, that we decided to publish it here – to use FREE.
How Do I Start?
Every week we will post a week’s worth of lessons. You may use the lessons without charge. We also ask that as you use it, you share feedback & suggestions with us HERE.
Start Here
Intro
1. You’ll need to establish a place where your child can explore, draw, paint, spill sand – basically get messy – without upsetting you. He/she can certainly participate in clean-up.
2. This program has been written to correlate with our academic rotation. You may follow our Volume 1 Table of Contents for history stories, or you can use Come Follow Me. Note that some of the history suggestions may not correlate with your chosen history. You can always create your own.
3. Parent Note About Search, Ponder, and Play: In order to make this area of the program more effective for your child, we recommend you purchase or gather the following items:
A. a PreK-K composition book (it has a section on each page for writing and a blank area for drawing a picture),
B. “Early Writing” handwriting paper (you can purchase this or print paper from the internet);
C. a binder with pre-punched sheets of cardstock which will become the pages upon which your child creates as he learns numbers, letters, colors, and many things about himself, his family, the gospel, and the world around him. 11 x 17 size sheets would be optimum.
Create a title for his book. We will refer to it as the “Look What I Learned” book.
D. When accessing links on the website of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, click on the graphic in the article and it will send you to the graphic that can be downloaded and printed.
Start Out slowly.
There is no intended pace for the activities in this book. Activities have been placed in a particular order because they build on each other. This process helps build retention and skill. For young children, enjoy an activity together until he/she is fatigued or bored. Learning ceases to be effective when boredom sets in. Keep things casual at first and get to know your child’s absorption rate. As he expresses a desire to move forward with more activities, let him move on.
The first week’s lessons will be based on STORY TIME with you and your child. Specific learning activities will begin at Week 2.
Gather some supplies.
A child learns well simply by being allowed to play and explore. However, tools for learning can really add to his enjoyment and creativity. We suggest these items:
1. Large 8-pack crayons (There’s a reason to have only eight. Don’t go overboard with this one – just 8 fat crayons.)
2. Safety scissors – Get 2-3 pairs. These are lost easily.
3. A large preschool pencil
4. Several glue sticks or school paste, Pourable school glue
4. A package of white copy paper and colored paper
5. 8 pack washable markers
6. Water-based finger paints and water color paints
7. Painting smock – An oversize shirt works great.
8. Play dough – You can make your own.
9. Molding clay – red, yellow, blue, green
10. Macaroni or other larger pasta – These can be colored for more fun.
11. Letters of the alphabet (Buy or create sans-serif letters)
13. Numbers 1-20
14. Sand for tracing letters and numbers (A large rectangular storage bin with a lid would be good for storing sand when it’s not being used. )
