What they learn
The milestones, without a secular diet
Letters and letter sounds, reading, spelling, numbers, colours, shapes, body parts, first words, music and rhythm. All the ground a child covers between two and twelve, and a faith thread through every part of it.
The ground covered
Nine things, and where Jesus is in each one
The faith is not a verse read out at the end. It is the reason the letter is that letter and the reason the counting is counting that.
Letters and letter sounds
The alphabet by name and then by sound, which is the part that actually unlocks reading. A says its sound before it says its name.
The faith thread
The letter is hung on something worth remembering. A is for Amen, and the word gets said a hundred times before anybody explains it.
Learning to read
Sounds pushed together into short words, then the same word met again on the page until it is recognised on sight rather than sounded out.
The faith thread
The first sentences they read are true ones. God is good. Jesus loves me. Short enough to decode, worth the effort of decoding.
Spelling
Saying the letters of a word out loud in order, then writing them. Three and four letter words first, the ones they already say all day.
The faith thread
The spelling words come from the songs, so the words being spelled are the ones they have already sung about Jesus twenty times.
Numbers and counting
One to ten and back down again, counting real things rather than reciting, and learning that the last number said is how many there are.
The faith thread
Counting what God made. Counting blessings out loud at bedtime, which is a habit before it is a lesson.
Colours
Naming colours, matching them, then finding them out in the world instead of only on a screen.
The faith thread
A made world worth looking at. The colours are pointed at as somebody deliberate, not as an accident.
Shapes
Circle, square, triangle, rectangle. Seeing them, tracing them, then spotting them in a room, which is where shape turns into early geometry.
The faith thread
The shape hunt happens in a garden with a verse at the end of it, so the looking and the thanking are the same activity.
Body parts
Head, shoulders, knees, elbows, fingers, toes. Naming them and pointing at them, which is vocabulary and coordination in the same movement.
The faith thread
Made carefully, on purpose. A child who can name their own hands is old enough to hear that they were given them.
First words
The everyday vocabulary a two year old is grabbing for. Please, more, mine, sorry, thank you, and the words for things around the house.
The faith thread
Sorry and thank you are taught as things you say to people and to God, which is most of what kindness is at that age.
Music and rhythm
Keeping a beat, clapping in time, high notes and low ones, and Do Re Mi. Rhythm is how the letters and the numbers get remembered in the first place.
The faith thread
Singing as something you do towards God, not only something you consume. Praise is the first use they learn for a voice.
Why it is all in one place
You should not have to pick one or the other
Search for nursery rhymes and most of what comes up is the same handful of very big channels. They are good at what they do. They are also entirely secular, and once one finishes another starts on its own.
The Christian children’s songs that do come up are usually singing and nothing else, which is lovely, and then the letters and the counting have to come from somewhere anyway.
So a parent ends up running two libraries. One for the faith and one for the learning. This is an attempt at one library that does both, for a house that would rather not choose.
How it is paced
Written slower on purpose, so the end of the day is not a fight.
Nothing frantic
No hard cuts every second, no flashing, no wall of noise underneath the singing.
Nothing plays on by itself
A song ends and it stops. What comes next is your decision rather than a recommendation engine’s.
Calm enough for bedtime
The lullabies are made for the last ten minutes of the day and they behave like it.
The printables are where it lands
Sing it in the morning, print the page in the afternoon. The first activity pack is free with an account, no card anywhere in it.