Flowering Baby, LLC is a new company to me, but one I will be recommending often. The program is a collaboration between two mothers – Martha Saunders and her own mother, Carolyn Schulte. When Martha’s son was a preschooler she began putting together this curriculum. Her mother is an early-childhood education expert and has long been involved working with children and teachers both.
Flowering Baby has taken all the fun and learning activities that little ones love and organized it. Many of the activities are things I have done with my children on my own — especially my older girls. As my family has grown, I did not realize that my younger ones were not getting the same focus that their older siblings had. I have been using the Three to Four program with my newly turned three-year-old son. Having lessons and activities organized has made such a big difference in actually doing these things with him. Reading books has never been a problem, doing anything more has been.
Flowering Baby is not just for your preschoolers, though. Their whole program is broken down by age level from birth through age five. The levels are Birth to One, One to Two, Two to Three, Three to Four and Four to Five. The earliest years of the program are more focused on exploring the world around them, interacting with mom (or other caregiver, older sibling, etc.) and play. The activities are often simple and require things you have around the house. The activities are not meant to add anything stressful to your day, but help you to include fun and learning as part of your day to day routine. Examples are included on each levels page along with a link at the bottom of the page to a full month so you can see the layout.
I really appreciate how various activities are introduced or explained. It helps to see what areas of development are being worked on with certain activities. This is helpful for both new parents and more experienced ones. If you see that you are not stimulating an area of development, you can focus on adding more of those activities. I like that the approach is from the angle of playing and this is what developmental skill it builds rather than here are skills your child should be doing – here is how to do it. It leads to a much more natural part of your day and interaction with your little one rather than “this is learning time”. This philosophy and approach is a natural lead-in to Charlotte Mason style homeschooling.
The layout of these lessons is different for the older levels. Once your little one reaches three – the typical preschool age – the layout has subject headings for each day (abc’s, math, holiday, or monthly topic are just some examples). The activities are still short and fun. The academic skills are rigorous as their website says on the main page
Please note that we believe each child is his own unique person and will learn all he needs to know in his own time. Our program is very academically and cognitively rigorous. For that reason we want you to feel comfortable to scale back or push ahead, as needed, to suit the needs, desires and abilities of your child.
I have been surprised at what my son could do that I thought would be above him. I know, we shouldn’t be surprised at what our little ones can do (especially when they tag along with older siblings school time) but I was. Little ones really are sponges, soaking things up that are presented to them. I need to remember to offer them a lake to soak from and not just a puddle.
While the lessons may seem to be laid out as a schedule for each day, you can pick and choose activities to suit your child’s interests or other needs (work with the weather, tie in with siblings studies, etc.). The layout of the two older ages has two components to be combined. Where the younger level was divided by developmental age, these levels have a monthly guide based upon the calendar rather than the child’s age. If your child is 3 1/2 or just turned 3, you’ll want to look to February for your activities. Holidays and seasons are incorporated into these plans. The second component is themes. The themes range from bugs and birds to dinosaurs, from my body to transportation. The idea is to choose two themes (each with 5-7 days of activities (reading books, drawing, hands-on crafts, etc.) and the current month (13 days of activities). This gives you a full month of activities to draw from.
Mix and match each day for your own needs. The activities are shorter for the youngest levels (15-20 minutes max listening to a story, helping to sort laundry, etc.) to a bit longer for the older levels (30-40 minutes was typical for us). Some days I would choose some activities from the monthly guide and some from the theme while other days was only from one or the other. The guide gives a list for what books and craft items are needed for each month or theme. This makes it easy to have things ready in a box or basket and work 15 minutes here and there while the other children were working on something else.
We do so much of our school work/learning all together, I couldn’t keep the siblings away all the time. When it was just my littlest son and I, he loved the one-on-one time and special attention. When the siblings did sneak in, they joined in with acting out the story, etc. Even my oldest daughter would pick something out of the basket to do with her brother when they both weren’t busy (sometimes even if they should have been).
Flowering Baby is available (as pdf files) on CD (International or download customers see the note on the order page). The early levels (Birth to One, One to Two, and Two to Three) are $30 each. The upper levels (Three to Four and Four to Five) are $35 each. You can get all five levels for $132. You can save 10% by using code Blog10.
