10 Ways to Make Your Catholic Preschool Curriculum More Reusable and Hand-On

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In this post we are going to dive into all kinds of ways to make your Catholic preschool or kindergarten curriculum more reusable and hands on! We will do this by incorporating a variety of low-prep dry erase tools, manipulatives, and sensory materials into your lesson plans. Utilize items such as our Etch & Erase shapes, and play-dough to engage students in tactile learning experiences that can be used across multiple lessons. By including these reusable materials and activities, you can create enhance your curriculum to not only engage young learners, but you can have a stock of adaptive and reusable tools to use throughout the school year.

Sheet Protectors and Dry Erase Markers

One of the most popular ways to reuse consumable worksheets and activities is to use sheet protectors! This can be in the form of a binder sheet protector or a dry erase pouch like in the photograph. That way the child can complete the activity over and over again, or it can be passed on to the next child.

I personally love having all the worksheets they’re going to use in a binder with sheet protectors so that I can open it up and everything we need for the week is already laid out for me!

Answer Buzzers or Bells

A really fun and hand-on way to bring worksheets to life is to practice the content with answer buzzers! Take some flashcards that focus on something the child is currently learning, put the buzzer by each option, and give them prompts and have them ding the bell or buzzer to show the correct answer! The photographed activity I practicing uppercase and lowercase letters and their phonic sounds with my preschooler. I would alternate prompts like “which one is uppercase G?” and “What letter makes the sound “buh” as in Benedict?” Because it’s a customizable I was able to focus more on the letters that I know that my preschooler needs more practice with. Here are some super cute answer buzzers!

Using Snacks or Game Tokens

One thing you can say about my family is that we are Snacking Schoolers! We always have breakfast or some sort of snack at the table. Because my preschooler often gets preoccupied when using a marker or pencil (aka wants to draw on everything but the paper, tries to break the tip off, wants to be silly with it, etc.) we experiment with other methods of completing worksheet activities and one of the most success ways I’ve found for my preschooler to actually listen and complete the task at hand is to let him use snacks or tokens to mark the answers instead of a pencil or marker. Instead of drawing a line to connect all the As in this activity, he used his cereal instead. It made the activity a little more hands-on, and because no pencil was used this worksheet will be used again in the future!

Etch & Erase Shapes

Etch & Erase shapes have TRANSFORMED the way that I homeschool with my preschooler. Etch & Erase shapes are flat designs that you print, laminate, cut, and use dry erase markers on to create customizable learning activities. Because they are laminated you can use them over and over again! We use them every single school day for:

• Uppercase and Lowercase matching

• Math equations

• Number recognition

• Shape recognition

• Counting

• CVC Words

You can find our Etch & Erase shapes here and also for those of you who have purchased Little Lessons you will find your Etch & Erase shapes in your “Printables” folder in your download. If you want to learn more about Little Lessons you can do so over here!

Play-Dough & Sand

Using play-dough or sand to mark answers or fill in letter shapes can be a really fun way of turning a basic worksheet into a play-doh mat! Just be sure to use a sheet protector or laminate it first because play-dough will stick to plan paper! With it being protected it will also give you a chance to reuse that worksheet again.

Another way to incorporate sand and play-doh is through sensory bins! You can find some Catholic sensory bin ideas (as well as other play-based activities) over here.

Chuckle and Roar from Target makes some of my favorite sand and play-dough!

Velcro for Moveable Pieces

When it comes to cut and paste or matching worksheets consider printing out 2 copies and putting the “base” page in a sheet protector. After that, take the 2nd copy, laminate and cut it out, and then use velcro dots to turn the worksheet into a hands on matching activity that can be used again in the future.

The example given in the picture is a cut-and-paste activity from our Catholic Preschool Curriculum. In this case since you’re setting up the activity and you’re preschool won’t be doing the cutting-and-pasting themselves, then have them practice on scrap paper with scissors and glue to avoid reprinting the activity.

Digital Versions of Activities

Using document mark-up programs like Samsung Notes (my fav) or Good Notes or art programs like Adobe Fresco (my fav) or Procreate on a tablet is a super simple way to have your preschooler complete activities without ever having to print them off! They can use their finger or stylus to complete worksheets and coloring pages as many time as they would like! If you don’t have easy access to a printer or you find your child focuses better on activities when they are digital (aka my child) this option may be really helpful for you! I find digital activities to be really helpful for my preschooler! He is easily distracted by physical objects when doing activities (moving the paper around, playing with the pencil and not looking at the activity, etc.) that when he uses digital activities he focuses much deeper on the actual content and is able to show off his skills.

Use Printable Only Files

If your Catholic Preschool Curriculum is a digital download (like Little Lessons is!) then its possible that it contains printable-only files for some or all of their consumables so that you can just print those pages again instead of the whole lesson. Did you know that Little Lessons has now been updated to include printable only files? You can find them in the “Printables” folder in your download. This applies to those who have purchased it in the past and those who will do so in the future!

Printable only files that are now included:

• Prayer & Catechism cards

• Cardstock printables (art projects, flashcards, saints prayer cards, play-dough mats, etc.)

• All 52 coloring pages

• Consumable worksheets (worksheets that can’t be completed in a sheet protector like scissor practice, cut and paste activities, etc)

Coming soon:

• Reusable worksheets (worksheets that can be completed in a dry erase pouch or sheet protector)

Dry Erase Board Games Wheels

A fun and interactive way to practice the child’s skills is to incorporate dry erase board game wheels! Put letters, shapes, numbers around the wheel and have the child spin it and tell you which one they landed on. You could also put vowels on it and use it for CVC words. Have your preschooler point the arrow at the correct vowel for the given word.

I got mine from the Target dollar section but this one on amazon is super cute!

Blocks & Puzzle Pieces

Letter blocks, Legos, magantiles, you name it! All of these can be a great way to make your worksheets reuseable and more hands-on! Instead of putting markings on the page have them use puzzle pieces or blocks. Think about the snack and token section of the blog post for ideas on execution of using them.

I hope these ideas will help enrich your school day with your preschoolers! Thank you for reading!