Gentle and Classical Preschool Review | How Did it Go? | What we LOVED and what I DIDN'T USE

This past school year, we went through the 26 weeks of the Gentle + Classical Preschool. We have now begun the next level of this curriculum, and are using Gentle + Classical Primer, but I wanted to take a step back and reflect on this past school year with the preschool level. I'll share what parts of the curriculum we used, what we didn't use, and what progress and learning I noticed.
In the video, I mention that I have a referral code for a discount, sorry, that is no longer accurate. I do have an affiliate link, which you can find below:
shopgentleclassical.com/collections/preschool-2-4-years/products/preschool-bundle?aff=24
WELCOME //
I'm Rachel, a mom of two and the oldest in a family of 8 kids. I'm a second-generation homeschooler who is passionate about education. I'm originally from Michigan, but am living overseas. My two young boys and teaching homeschool lessons to my youngest sisters keep me busy, but I make time for writing and for making KZbin videos, too! On this channel, you can expect videos featuring books and homeschool curriculum, homeschool tips for hard days, our journey raising bilingual kids, and vlogs about the intentional adventure that our homeschool lifestyle allows! Subscribe to join our family here:
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THE CURRICULUM I WRITE//
Our family creates printable homeschool curriculum. Find those resources right here: www.wheredyoulearnthat.com
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Raising Bilingual Kids (Without OPOL!) kzbin.info/www/bejne/qpPNYpaOeZlph7c
Strategies for Homeschooling Gifted Learners kzbin.info/www/bejne/f5DIkIatfM2Ib6s
My DIY Preschool Learning Binder kzbin.info/www/bejne/aZCbpailhNBrfJI
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DISCLOSURE //
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[@passportquinn.c5435]

This is a great review! I don't have littles anymore, but as an experienced homeschooler, I get a lot of new moms asking me for recommendations. It's nice to know about new programs that weren't available when my children were preK. LOVE the morning binder element!

[@SevenInAll]

Yes, there are SO many options these days...sometimes too many options, haha! But new homeschool parents are spoiled for choice. I didn't expect how much my son would like the binder--I think the erasable pages were really nice for him, because he could re-do the same page many times over the weeks.

[@sandyelizabeth6925]

Just wanted to add thank you for all the content you make! We are in the same boat as far as wanting oir daughter to be fully bilingual in spanish and english, wanting her to be able to have intelligent and meaningful conversations, read more complex material in either language AND we are going to homeschool becasue we basically live part time USA part time Guatemala so all your content is pure gold to me! Thanks again!

[@SevenInAll]

Thank you so much!

[@MyHomeYourHomeOurHome]

Oh, fun that there is a ballet of Peter and the Wolf! Now we've gotta check that out. ;) We are loving the musical part of the curriculum. Thanks so much for introducing us to G+C! ❤️

[@SevenInAll]

We enjoyed it so much, glad you guys can enjoy the program, too--and my little ones loved the suspense of the ballet.

[@berrypatch5583]

Thank you for sharing this! This makes it much more easily to understand how it all works together.

[@SevenInAll]

Glad it was helpful!

[@faithfullyinfertile]

Rachel! Your videos are always so perfectly timed! I am looking in to this for my little boys! I can't wait to watch this.

[@SevenInAll]

I'm so glad! This was a fun one--it felt like the "arts" portion of our homeschool this past year--which was great, because the resources I write tend to be more "practical". It complemented the rest of what we did very well.

[@faithfullyinfertile]

@@SevenInAll I loved what I saw! I am very minimalistic especially in the prek years, so I’m on the fence about buying this since it would definitely be an “extra” and not our core curriculum. I still think it might be beneficial. I am planning a “morning basket” time with the main purpose being reading Bible stories and reading picture books. I feel like this would easily integrate in to this time and provide a bit of structure to our reading time. I love structure :) I had already decided a couple months ago that I’m buying the prek binder b/c I saw your oldest using that in a video and thought it was such an excellent idea for letter/number practice. The pdf of this is very reasonably priced as well…..

[@jenbacani778]

Thank you so much for this! I was able to find the right curriculum for my son. God Bless!

[@SevenInAll]

Oh, I'm so glad!

[@countrywisheshomeschool]

This curriculum looks awesome! So fun and helpful to see how you used it!

[@SevenInAll]

We had a lot of fun with it!

[@sarahmora5207]

This is a fun curriculum that you found! Thanks for sharing. 💕

[@SevenInAll]

We enjoyed it!

[@TheBalancedMom]

Thanks so much for this review!!! I'm going to check it out cause it seems lovely!!

[@SevenInAll]

We loved using it, and I will use it again with my younger son!

[@lifewithginab]

Looks and sounds like a great curriculum Rachel! Thanks for sharing!

[@SevenInAll]

Thanks for watching, Gina!

[@StaceyYoder]

Great video it looks like a great curriculum. I love the memory statements. And all the story books.

[@SevenInAll]

We truly had a lot of fun with it!

[@tirzahc7268]

Thanks for the peek at the updated version! I got the older digital one for my son last school year, and then reused it for a little while this year after throwing out my original plans when he started disliking school. But he really was past the window (he’s 5 now), so we transitioned again to focusing on phonics, handwriting, and kindergarten MWC. Both my kids loved the memory board and the songs, and the book lists were amazing. We never used the binders, though, no color printer and we already had a couple of wipe clean workbooks that they used…sometimes. It’s always fun to see how other people use the same curriculum.

[@SevenInAll]

I used the older version for a while before the update--and this update was definitely an upgrade! We had a lot of fun with it--I didn't know how much my son would really take to the memory cards or else, like I said, I would have printed the others out. Homeschool is often a story of adjusting and figuring out what each kid thrives with as we go! :)

[@educandodelcorazonhomeschool]

Thanks for this overview. I was looking at it and it looked a little overwhelming with the whole bundle. We are using this with my 3 year old this year, so it’s nice to see what you used and didn’t.

[@SevenInAll]

With any curriculum, it definitely helps to pick and choose which parts are the most effective and most necessary for your family!

[@RockSimmer-gal4God]

We do a curriculum different for another kid when we learn how to use it as well!!! I love it when my kids take ownership of their school work. I would put more in a binder for my 4 year old if we use this. I’m not sure what we are doing yet. We don’t do art with our youngest but she does art study with her big sister. We do physical play!!! We have sand outside so we can do those activities there.

[@SevenInAll]

It's definitely fun to have sand close by to play with!

[@Tresmenguitos]

Just wondering because I'm pretty new to this 😅 how do you do the music study with your kiddo ? How did you incorporate the story and the instruments? One by one or full story then the instruments ?

[@SevenInAll]

We did it in a very low-key way because my little one was 3--we just listened to the story, and watched the ballet. I didn't do any instrument identification work with him yet because I knew it would be covered later in Primer--for us it was just learning to enjoy the story and the sound. We played a recording of Peter and the Wolf in the car. We just listened to the full story or as long of a chunk of it as we had time for regularly throughout the year, rather than breaking it up.

[@angsinger6724]

I want to do this in combination with your purely preschool. How did you mesh the two? I was thinking of just changing the letter in G&C to the letter in purely preschool and then get the books from yours also? Just trying to get ideas of what the week could look like with the combination. This is going to be my first year homeschooling:) thanks for your content you’re an inspiration!

[@SevenInAll]

Purely Preschool doesn't typically have only one letter to focus on--most of the alphabet activities are "exposure" and play with the alphabet types of activities. (i.e. in "All About Me", for the entire unit, all the alphabet activities are surrounding the letters in the child's name). For us this past year, I didn't try to line up or coordinate the themes from Purely Preschool and G+C...we just did both. This is what the day usually looked like: I would read all of our books during our morning storytime (so, books from the Purely Preschool AND the books from G+C). Then, sometime in the morning we would do an activity or two from the Purely Preschool schedule, and also in the morning we would do the math activity from the G+C schedule. In the afternoon, we would do the G+C preschool binder, and and play a game with all the learning cards for the week (2 from Purely Preschool, and the rest from G+C). We would just slide in the handicrafts and art and music from G+C wherever they fit during our week and I would have a playlist with all the songs for the week that I could play during playtime or when I was doing housework--most preschool activities really don't take long at all (which is perfect for short attention spans)--so even though we did "school" activities over breakfast, later in the morning, and again in the afternoon, none of the sessions lasted very long (storytime is always the longest, because we add in extra books and my boy looooooves stories.)

[@angsinger6724]

@@SevenInAll THANK YOU!!! I did a lot of research and these 2 preschool curriculums were my favorites! After reading your reply my decision is solidified and I am going to purchase both curriculums later this week! Truly thank you for taking the time to respond in so much detail, it helps me to wrap my head around everything and gives a great idea for what a day can look like! God bless ❤️

[@SevenInAll]

@@angsinger6724 Thank you for taking the time to ask! I'm excited for your preschool year!

[@Tresmenguitos]

Been looking for post like this :) where did you put the morning binders? Is that a clear book? Or put it in a binder then clear sleeves?

[@SevenInAll]

It's a binder with clear sleeves that are built-in.

[@leticiabailey2107]

I don’t see a discount code, did I miss it somehow? Thanks! By the way I love your content!

[@SevenInAll]

Hi, Gentle + Classical changed things since I filmed this video last year so I no longer have a discount code--sorry! I do have an affiliate link for their website but they don't have any store-wide discounts right now: shopgentleclassical.com?aff=24

[@lialee8954]

Hi Rachel, may I know what is red morning binder and orange morning binder? I bought the bundle. Thinking to start soon but I dont understand that part of the schedule.

[@SevenInAll]

When it talks about "red" and "orange" with the morning binder (and other others), it's referencing one of the pages in the "Preschool Morning Binder" that is a part of the curriculum There is an activity page for identifying each color, and the schedule tells you to do a particular morning binder page each day. I put my morning binder in clear plastic sleeves because the pages are meant to be re-used.

[@lialee8954]

@@SevenInAll thank you so much for your explanation.. I think I got it now.. hope we can get through the whole curriculum 🤞

[@nataliezevallos4202]

Where did you get the binder for the pages?

[@SevenInAll]

This isn't the exact one because I bought mine at a local book/stationery store, but it's something like this, a binder with clear plastic sleeves permanently attached inside it, and I got a 60-sleeve binder to be big enough to hold all of the Morning Binder (aff link): amzn.to/3ULxm6S

[@ssd9154]

Sorry, I think I missed how you combine Kate snows preschool math at home with gentle and classical. Do you substitute in the former for the math component or does G and C include it in? I watched this on my phone so couldn't zoom in to see text easily.

[@SevenInAll]

Preschool Math at Home is included in the weekly schedule. :)

[@ssd9154]

@@SevenInAll great, thanks! I already have it. I found your review helpful, esp not having the specific books (though about a thousand others 😅) and seeing how they can be incorporated.

[@RaisingMyMunoz]

How would you use preschool and primer together? 🥴 i have a preschooler and kindergartener

[@SevenInAll]

Hmmm...depending on the ages and natural levels of interest/ability, you could probably combine the elements that are most important to you and most suited to your little ones. Neither program takes up a ton of time, in my experience, especially when you're not adding a whole bunch to it--I'm currently using G+C Preschool for the 2nd time (now that my 2nd son is 3), and on a daily basis it usually looks like: reading the storybook, reading a Bible story, going over our cards, doing a little work in the Preschool binder, and playing a little math game. These are short activities and don't take up a lot of time, but just fill in little moments in our mornings. About once a week we do the handicraft, and I make that an afternoon activity since our afternoons are not very full. I'm not using Primer at the same time as Preschool (I used Primer for Pre-K 4 with my son who is now in Kindergarten), but I am doing a fair amount of schoolwork with my older son, so I think working in age-appropriate elements of Primer for your kindergartener wouldn't be too overwhelming. Primer includes only 1 main story per week (for some weeks, you spend several weeks on the same story), so you could pick a different day of the week to read and re-tell the Primer story, and 1 bible story per week. We also had 1 music or art activity per week with Primer....I know it sounds like a lot of pieces, but most are not very time-intensive so I don't think it would be too hard to find days/time to include them all. I hope that wasn't confusing and helped spark some ideas!

[@nataliezevallos4202]

My daughter is primarily Spanish speaking and over the last few weeks I’ve started to teach her numbers and colors in English. She will be 4 in august when we start preschool at home. I saw you don’t recommend this for 4 year olds.. would you still recommend that given this scenario?

[@SevenInAll]

I think this could be a great tool to begin introducing more English numbers, letters, and building up confidence in speaking English for you daughter's situation. It's not so much that I don't recommend this for 4 year olds, more that for my first son, he was 3.5 when we started and that was perfect for him--around the age of 4 he made some big leaps and was suddenly writing letters and short words and adding numbers...I think if I had waited till 4 to start for him, I would have regretted waiting just because he made all those developmental leaps at that time (not all kids make those developmental leaps at the same time). With the added factor of using a 2nd language...I think this would still provide the gentle challenge we want to give our kids at that age.

[@laurapinkham3488]

How did you do your other curriculum with this? Were you only doing Purely Preschool at this time? This was so helpful!!!

[@SevenInAll]

So, I used this according to its schedule--and this fits into basically three small 'portions' of our day: the reading during our morning storytime, the Math activity, and the cards to go over and play with later in the day. Purely Preschool--I used the Spanish edition, Puramente Preescolar,-- and then I just added our Spanish picture book to our morning storytime, and then we did 1, maybe 2, activities from the Purely Preschool lesson plan each day, usually in the morning, either sitting down at the table if I picked a worksheet type of activity, or else somewhere else if I picked a game. G+C Preschool and Purely Preschool were the whole "core" of our preschool year, and I think they complemented each other well. G+C is more on the 'arts' side of education (character, Bible, catechism, etc), and Purely Preschool is more on the practical, life skills, working with your hands side. I did also have some small workbooks for just tracing, stickers, cut-and-paste (nothing for writing letters or more 'serious' preschool workbooks until he was ready for those).

[@SevenInAll]

I don't know why KZbin crossed out part of my comment--hopefully it shows up okay for you!

[@laurapinkham3488]

Thanks so much!!!!

[@sandyelizabeth6925]

Hi there, I am just starting to delve into the homeschool world 🤯 my daughter is 4, mostly spanish speaking but I am starting to incorporate more english into her life now, so looking for preschool curriculum, and all these different curriculum stuff is so confusing to me. I just watched your video detailing about the purely preschool, and now I see that you've been using this one and plan on using at again. Can you make a video on using different curriculums together ? I am so confused and seems like picking and choosing from 2 curriculums would be confusing and stressful for me. 🤔🧐🥺😔. Or do you use thebpurely preschool only for spanish parts?

[@SevenInAll]

For me, I used both Puramente Preescolar and Gentle + Classical Preschool at the same time--and I didn't really "pick and choose", I just did all of both curriculums because they are fairly different (Gentle + Classical has more art, music, catechism, etc, while Purely Preschool is more focused toward practical life skills.) Gentle + Classical comes with a weekly schedule that I pretty much followed, and Purely Preschool has a weekly checklist--both are light, gentle curriculums so it was easy to use them together, and I plan to re-use both with my second son. I did the Spanish edition of Purely Preschool so that was the Spanish part of his school routine. But! You mentioned that your daughter is 4. Depending on what she already knows of the alphabet and how much she enjoys school--you may want to look at Alphabet Adventures. Here's a video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/pWnMqqmcgJujjZY Purely Preschool is a very gentle, beginner preschool, made more with 3 year olds in mind (although every kid is different!). Now that my older son is 4, we've moved on to Gentle + Classical Primer for his English schoolwork and Alphabet Adventures (in Spanish) for his Spanish schoolwork --and again, I do very little pre-planning and I don't try to coordinate every thing (you will hear a lot of people trying to "match" up the themes and topics they do...I don't do that...I'm okay with 'mismatched' activities. :) I just work through both curriculums and we have a lot of fun with it. (although not all 4 year olds may be ready for that level--I just wanted to share my experience with this one!)

[@sandyelizabeth6925]

@@SevenInAll wow thank you for taking the time to respond! Ok thank you I will take all of this into acct when planning what to do w my daughter. Thanks again

[@jennythomas3985]

How do you teach your kids to sew?

[@SevenInAll]

At the current age of my kids, I would say I don't so much teach them as I just do it WITH them--I cut out the pieces, thread the needle, get it started, and then they will sit on my lap and I'll show them where to poke the needle, how to pull it through, check and make sure the thread is pulled all the way, and then do it again. My boys both really enjoy it--I think they enjoy the inherent "danger" of the sharp needle, haha! When both of them want to do it, then I will still just do one project, and they will have to take turns poking the needle in and pulling it through. I have a sewing machine too, and when I use it, one usually wants to sit on my lap--sewing is a favorite hobby for me, and though I don't do it so often these days, I still want my little ones to experience how fun it is. :)

[@lillulu1848]

Would you recommend this curriculum over Gather Rounds Letters & Numbers?

[@SevenInAll]

The two are totally different and cover very different subjects, so it's a little hard to compare. Gather 'Round's Letters + Numbers is primarily a curriculum to cover an introduction to alphabet and number skills for preschoolers--themed with animal science lessons in the TG and Bible stories. You can add in animal-themed books for literature that ties in. The workbook is very fun and engaging for Letters + Numbers. Gentle + Classical leans much more toward the "arts" side of preschool--yes, there is an alphabet letter of the week, there is the Morning Binder, and Preschool Math at Home is scheduled (which, I found, to be absolutely fantastic and I have a separate video with a flip-through of that book)...but it's heavier on literature, catechism, poetry (nursery rhymes), song, "all about me", handicrafts... Between the two, especially considering the cost of the digital files, I'd pick this one, and this is what I plan to use again with my 2nd son when he's old enough.

[@lillulu1848]

@@SevenInAll thank you so much for clearing it up. I had just watched your video on GR so that’s why I was asking. Gather Round looks beautiful, but it’s so expensive. 😣