TOS Review Crew: Flowering Baby, LLC

We haven't been using any formal type of curriculum yet with our little Everett, but we have decided that we will start using one this coming fall, so when I was chosen to review Flowering Baby, LLC for the TOS Homeschool Review Crew, I thought this will be a great opportunity to see how Everett takes to "doing" school every day.

FloweringBaby is an easy to use curriculum that was designed for ages Birth to 5 years to develop a solid foundation of learning for your child.This curriculum includes twenty, or more, activities for various skills each month that you will work on with your youngin' for about 20-40 minutes each day.

 

There are 5 different levels for this curriculum:

Vol. 1:Birth to One - This curriculum spans from birth to one year of age. Daily activities are listed by age for you to perform with your baby. $30.00

Vol. 2:One to Two - This curriculum is for your baby age one year to two year's old. $30.00

Vol. 3:Two to Three - This curriculum is for your child age two to three years old. $30.00

Vol. 4:Three to Four - This curriculum covers the age three to four. $38.00

Vol. 5: Four to Five - This year's curriculum will prepare your child for kindergarten and beyond. $38.00

You can also purchase the entire 5 Volume Curriculum for $132.00 (a $34.00 savings)

Right you can get 10% off with coupon code “Blog10” at the Flowering Baby store.

 

I chose to use Vol. 3 Two to Three for Everett. It is organized by the childs month age (ie. 24 to 36 months) and since Everett was in the middle of his 33rd month of age, we started at the beginning of the 33rd Month lessons.

 

I really liked the simple, efficient layout of the plans for each month and that there is a list of books and supplies that are needed for each month. Most of the supplies for the activities are items that you could easily find around the house and, of course, if you don't all ready have the books at home you can definitely find them at the library.....this is a HUGE bonus for those of us trying to keep our homeschooling expenses as low as possible. You can check out a sample for a full month here (just scroll down to the bottom of the page).

 

 For our first month of Flowering Baby we were immersed into a variety of activities that focused on language & math concepts, lots of physical exercise, a story of the day, music, and a sprinkling of arts & crafts. Most of the activity suggestions were things that we all ready do with Everett on a daily basis (counting, sorting, and singing the ABC song)....so my very first impression of the curriculum was that it may be suitable for anyone that may be just starting out with their first child...however, as we progressed through the days/weeks I began to notice that I was able to use these activities to expand on the activities that we have been doing with Everett, let's face it....sometimes we all need a little extra help to come up with fun, entertaining, & educational ideas for our little busy-bodies.
 

We did some improvising to make the program work for us, which was fairly easy to do with this program, which is a bonus for me because I like to be able to put our own personal touch on any curriculum that we use.

Several times we had to improvise for some of the physical exercise activities due to the weather or for personal reasons....like the day that "climbing" is an activity...it has been really cold the past month and a half so outside time just wasn't feasible & we seriously try to discourage Everett from climbing in the house....so we went to Chick-fil-a for lunch that day and let Everett climb there...

On one of the days, the activity was to let Everett crawl through tunnels made out of boxes...which was easy for us to do since we still had plenty of boxes left over from our move to the new house. The tunnels eventually turned in to another activity that my teenage daughter and niece came up with...they built a TRAIN for the boys....

I have to say that our favorite activity throughout the month was by-far the "Composer of the Month". It is suggested to play the music of the selected composer in the background for at least 15 minutes each day....which we did. But then I decided to make it a little more interesting....I found a YouTube video of a specific piece of music from the composer (Winter by Vivaldi) that was being performed by an artist/orchestra.

Everett watched the entire video....over 9 minutes! He would point to the woman playing the violin & clap and giggle....he LOVED it!!!

  

 

I really liked how flexible the program was and how easy our improvs fit in with it.

I would highly recommend this program to someone that has just begun the journey of homeschooling their littles, as well as, someone that doesn't have the time to go digging for ideas for their little one due to multiple older children at home, and someone just looking for some fresh ideas for their preschoolers.

 

I hope that you enjoyed this review!

God Bless,

Jenny