These Playing Preschool Book Suggestions are perfect for your family if you are working through Busy Toddler’s fabulous curriculum with your little one. Check out these awesome book lists!
Busy Toddler’s Playing Preschool is a valuable homeschool curriculum
There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it: Busy Toddler’s Playing Preschool curriculum rocks!
If you have a preschooler at home, chances are you know Busy Toddler (a/k/a/ Susie Allison) from her brilliant Instagram account, you follow her blog, or you are using Playing Preschool at home with your kids. All for good reason, of course.
Susie, with a Masters in Early Childhood Education and a down-to-earth, dynamic personality, feels like your cherished best friend on Instagram. And Playing Preschool is her fast, affordable, and incredibly effective preschool program that families can work through right in their own homes.
Even better? Playing Preschool isn’t just a powerful program. It’s fun, too.
This play-based learning system features 190 days of preschool at home, with each weekly unit grounded in a child-friendly theme through which kids explore reading, math, science, and more. Playing Preschool is designed for kids between the ages of two and a half and five, and due to its “evergreen” nature, you can begin the program at any point in the year.
I love the Playing Preschool book lists!
As a mom of two boys, a children’s librarian, and a lawyer, the emphasis I put on reading at home is immeasurable. It thus goes without saying that some of my favorite components of Playing Preschool are the great book lists included with each unit.
Susie incorporates a fabulous, diverse array of picture books into Playing Preschool. Not only does this help parents, teachers, and caregivers introduce quality literature to young children, but it also teaches kids they are global citizens from an early age.
There’s just one problem. Due to the immense popularity of Playing Preschool, many of the recommended books get checked out from the library immediately, and they sell out just as quickly on Amazon.
The Playing Preschool book suggestions included below are designed to come to your rescue and solve this problem!
Since Playing Preschool is largely built off book suggestions (rather than specific books for each lesson), the book lists featured below fit into the program perfectly. These lists have been designed with Playing Preschool families and classrooms in mind to supplement and elaborate upon the book lists already included in the curriculum.
We hope you find these Playing Preschool book suggestions as valuable as we have when working through Busy Toddler’s phenomenal program!
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Frequently asked questions
If you have a child between the ages of 2.5 and 5 in your home, you can start Playing Preschool at any time! Due to its evergreen nature and open-ended approach, you can adjust the activities to meet your child’s unique needs in any lesson, at any time. The beauty of this play-based program is that it can be adapted for kids of various ages!
Yes! These lists have been approved by Susie herself.
The importance of reading to your kids, even when they are too young to understand your words, cannot be stressed enough. Researchers have found that “children whose parents read them five books a day enter kindergarten having heard about 1.4 million more words than kids who were never read to.” Not only is reading with your child an important part of bonding and connection, but it also helps to build vocabulary and communication skills, enhance your child’s listening, attention, and memorization skills, and teach important concepts like letters, numbers, colors, and shapes.
Playing Preschool Book Suggestions
Apples, apples, everywhere! Apple books for preschoolers lend themselves to many great lessons, including literacy and math activities, art projects, and even farming and growing activities. Check out these great books!
Whether they focus on trains, fruits, or animals, these preschool color books will enthrall young readers, teaching them every different shade and hue under the sun. Fun tip: Get color books that correspond with your child’s interests and watch how easily they’ll learn!
With bouncy rhythms and sing-song tunes, nursery rhyme books are the perfect read-alouds for young kids! Not only are they incredibly engaging, but they also are important for building early literacy skills. These are our favorites!
When kids can make real-world connections to the books they are reading, magic happens. Children’s books about clothing are ripe for connection-making, and they also teach kids about people and cultures around the world.
Looking for an awesome and engaging way to teach your kids about people worldwide? Break out these children’s books about food to explore a variety of cultures and learn about the traditional foods families eat both around the globe and right here at home.
Five senses books for preschoolers teach children about the ways in which the senses of sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing help us explore the world. These fabulous stories will help increase your preschooler’s understanding of their everyday experiences.
Children’s books about bears are delightful to read with kids who sleep with a cherished teddy each night. These books bring their beloved stuffies to life, and they teach children important life skills through safe and charming characters, too.
There is no corresponding book list for this unit.
When children read community helper books, they come to understand that they are a part of a larger community. This fosters a sense of belonging, conveys lessons about teamwork, and teaches them essential lessons about safety, too.
There’s no debating that trucks, cars, planes, and boats make the best toys. Just like toys, children’s transportation books bring kids much joy! From simple stories to more complex reads for your bigger kids, these books will have your kids begging for more.
Did you know that farm books for preschool teach young readers so many fabulous skills and concepts? From animals to lifecycles to seasons to food groups, grab these books and get ready to read!
It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is snoring! There’s no debate that kids are mesmerized by the weather outside. Check out these weather books for preschool for sunny, rainy, and snowy days.
Egg books for kids are wonderful read-alouds. They symbolize new beginnings, contain exciting mysteries, and fascinate children. Grab these egg-cellent books, and have fun watching your children delight in the magic of these darling stories.
There’s nothing children love more than planting a seed and watching it grow. These fabulous children’s books about plants introduce kids to the world of science, the plant life cycle, and the importance of patience and care when it comes to tending a garden.
Bulldozers, backhoes, and loaders, oh my! Children’s construction books are perfect for little ones infatuated with construction sites. These awesome stories will encourage your kids to create their own unique towers and set their imaginations soaring!
These adorable preschool books about pets will get your kids giggling, cooing, and hoping for pets of their own. And if they already have an adorable companion? They may become even more responsible pet owners.
Learning to compare and contrast objects is an important skill, and opposite books for kids help children understand the relationship between two things. These fantastic stories give kids essential language to communicate about the world around them.
Fairy tale books have wide-ranging benefits for children. Traditional fairy tales teach our children about the world, emotions, and even how to safely navigate problems and challenges. Check out these fairy tales and fractured fairy tales, too!
How does water turn to ice and then to snow? What is condensation, anyway? Why is water necessary to sustain humans, animals, and our environment? These preschool books about water will fascinate your kids and teach them valuable lessons, too.
RELATED: Have bigger kids at home? We’ve got fabulous lists of kindergarten read-alouds and kindergarten books for new readers on Happily Ever Elephants, so be sure to check them out!
This is amazing! Are you going to do Year 2??? *fingers crossed*
Tabitha, I will definitely do some! I already actually have some lists that correspond to Year 2, so make sure to check out our alphabetized list to see if you can find what you need!