Coffee and Curriculum: Meadowlark Preschool

Preschool is often one of those times when people start thinking about homeschooling, but choosing a curriculum can be overwhelming. There are a lot of preschool options out there, and many of them are delightful. I’ve thumbed through a ton of them and used parts and pieces of many over the years for classes I’ve taught or with my own kids. Meadowlark is somewhat unique. As many preschool options as there are out in the world, there are few secular options with this beautiful watercolor style that are also open-and-go!

This is a brand new curriculum. It just came out this year, and I bought my copy not long after it dropped. When it arrived, it was beautifully packaged. I bought the full preschool kit, which contains three storybooks, the Playful Prewriting book, a resource pack, and the main preschool workbook/textbook.

Each piece is well made and quite beautiful. The paper it is printed on is sturdy, and the pictures are beautiful. It has a really useful introduction explaining how to use it and clear directions all throughout. This curriculum is entirely scripted. It has 90 lessons in total, and one of the unique things about it is that it contains stickers in the back of the lesson book. I haven’t seen anything quite so well thought out in a preschool curriculum that still manages to be thorough.

The Preschool Lesson Book

This book is beautiful. It is both teacher instruction and interactive activity pages all in one booklet. You don’t need a separate book, and it is not going to take up much room on your school shelf. There is an extensive supply list, but many of the things you probably already have at home. Anything else is inexpensive to source. The whole lesson book feels like they took the very best of an Instagram-worthy preschool curriculum and made it really easy to do at home. You could do 2–3 lessons a week and have it stretch over a full year, or squeeze it all into a summer. If you are looking for a solid way to do preschool at home, this is a great option.

The Preschool Play Pack

The Preschool Play Pack is essential to the curriculum. It contains all the game pieces and fun parts that really make it special. It’s printed in full color, front and back, and it’s really easy to prep. One tip for anyone who is going to be using it: take the pieces out and laminate them. The paper is beautiful, but it is thin. There are game pieces, letter tiles, craft elements, and a sound mat included in this pack, and each piece is labeled with the lesson it is meant to be used with. Convenience is laced throughout this curriculum.

Little Lark Stories

There are three Little Lark Stories books that go along with the curriculum. Each story goes with a specific set of lessons. There are 30 in all and they are meant to be read more than once. They have some sweet stories with good moral value, without any religious overtones. They are cute, and they do add something to the curriculum, and it is rare to find character-building stories that are not surrounded by biblical undertones. If you are on a budget, you can safely skip them, but they are worth the money.

Playful Prewriting

There are 100 lessons in the Playful Prewriting book, and I respect that she says up front that the best practice happens outside this book. Many children aren’t ready for formal handwriting as early as they might be ready to learn to count or recognize letters and letter sounds. This book has a lot of suggestions for enhancing what would otherwise be simple prewriting doodles. It includes suggestions for what to say, and if you are taking this book outside, it has ideas for that as well.

Altogether, the four main pieces of this curriculum work well together. You could do it with just the Play Pack and the Lesson Book, but it works best as a full set. The lessons themselves don’t take more than 10–20 minutes, even if you do all the components, but you can pick and choose what to do. If you add the prewriting, that will stretch it to 30–40 minutes. That is an easy and really great kind of day for any child aged 3–5 years old.

My four year old really loves that she has her own school book.

Now on to the scoring!

• Ease of use:

It is incredibly easy to use, but I will say the supply list threw me off a little. It is greatly enhanced by using the suggested supplies, but that is definitely something you will need to prepare for in advance. 9/10

• Do I have to print it?

No, it comes already printed. You can either buy the PDF copy and print it yourself or purchase the fully printed set. 10/10

• Cost:

The cost is fair for what you get, and it is comparable to many other preschool curriculums. It’s far cheaper than something like Abeka and a little more expensive than The Good and the Beautiful. For the full preschool set, it is around $100. For the digital PDF workbook, it is around $50. 9/10

• Who published it?

It’s published by Meadowlark Learning. This company was founded by a woman named Maggie Enger. There is an entire team who helped put it together, but Maggie herself was a writer for The Good and the Beautiful. This initially made me have some questions, but I wanted to see it for myself, so I ordered it and gave it a read-through. It’s solid. Maggie’s work for TGAB is very beautiful, and that carried over to Meadowlark. You can read all about their journey, philosophy, and how they came up with the name on their website.

• Did we use it/actually like it?

Yes, so far we have enjoyed it. My free-spirited and imaginative girls have loved having their own school to do, and I like that it is pretty easy to pull together quickly and doesn’t have too many parts and pieces. 8/10

• Did we finish it?

It’s so new that we won’t count this one yet.

Meadowlark Preschool gets an A- from us, and we would definitely think it’s worth trying out if you are new to homeschooling and just want a gentle introduction, if you are looking for a good secular resource, or if you just have a curious kid who wants to do school alongside their siblings.

Have you seen the ads and wondered if it would work for you? Got a question about it? Drop a comment and we will try to answer it for you!