Early Childhood
The BJU Press early learning program lays a strong foundation for future academic success by developing essential skills and fostering a love of learning. Students engage in intentional learning through free play, hands-on activities, and both teacher-guided and discovery-based experiences. Lessons promote prereading skills through phonemic awareness, phonics, and letter recognition. Visuals, learning centers, songs, and games encourage curiosity, while group experiences support social-emotional development and early learning readiness. In K4 and K5, biblical themes are woven throughout instruction to help students develop a biblical understanding of the world around them.
Vision
To develop foundational knowledge and skills through guided activities and independent exploration that encourage a joy of learning, while teaching students to relate biblically to authorities and peers.
Goals
- To teach foundational phonics to prepare students for reading with understanding
- To guide students in applying foundational Bible, math, science, and social studies skills
- To provide opportunities to communicate well through listening, speaking, and composing
- To encourage students to relate biblically to peers, authorities, and others in their communities
- To offer hands-on learning, discovery-based learning, and intentional play
- To equip students to apply the knowledge of God to how they think, learn, and play
Program Approach for Early Childhood
As students learn and play together, they practice following teachers’ directions and interacting with others. They have opportunities to explore their world while building readiness in math, science, and social studies. Teachers are equipped with strategies and activities that make learning feel like play.
This program also emphasizes a biblical worldview, helping students understand and interpret the world through a biblical lens. Through interactive lessons and engaging materials, students grow academically while developing a deeper understanding of biblical truth.
Teaching Foundational Phonics
This program fosters a love of reading by equipping students with the skills needed for confident and meaningful reading. As students develop phonemic awareness, they learn to recognize familiar words and decode unfamiliar ones, building fluency and comprehension.
Phonics instruction begins with strong foundational skills. Songs, games, and multisensory activities support early learning, while visual aids and themed learning segments help students connect letters and sounds. As students progress, they are introduced to word families and high-frequency words, allowing them to quickly build vocabulary and begin reading simple texts with understanding.
Applying Foundational Skills
Students begin developing essential academic skills across multiple disciplines. In Bible courses, they grow in their understanding and application of biblical truth, forming the foundation of a biblical worldview.
In mathematics, students learn to recognize numbers and shapes while developing skills in counting, sorting, recognizing patterns, and classification. A hands-on, manipulative-based approach helps students understand mathematical concepts and build problem-solving and reasoning skills.
By K5, students begin to see how math connects to everyday life through STEM activities, introductory coding concepts, and practical applications such as money. These experiences help students recognize order and purpose in the world around them.
Science and social studies instruction encourages students to observe, explore, and understand their environment and communities. Activities, crafts, and guided exercises also support the development of fine and gross motor skills.
Communicating Through Listening, Speaking & Composing
Students are encouraged to develop strong communication skills through listening, speaking, and early writing experiences. Regular opportunities to listen to stories, songs, and discussions help build vocabulary and comprehension.
Discussion and group activities allow students to express ideas, share experiences, and develop confidence in communication. Teacher-guided composition activities introduce students to organizing their thoughts and communicating clearly.
Relating Biblically to Others
Early childhood classrooms provide valuable opportunities for students to learn how to interact with others in a God-honoring way. Through Bible lessons, stories, and guided activities, students learn the importance of respect, kindness, and service.
Social studies themes help students understand communities and the roles people play within them. Group activities and learning centers give students opportunities to practice cooperation, teamwork, and positive social behaviors.
Opportunities for Active Learning
The program provides a variety of hands-on learning experiences that allow students to actively engage with their environment. Activities such as building words with letter cards, exploring shapes and numbers, creating crafts, and participating in movement-based exercises support both cognitive and physical development.
These experiences encourage curiosity, creativity, and a deeper understanding of the world through intentional play.
Applying the Knowledge of God
Students are encouraged to apply what they learn about God to their daily lives. Teachers guide students in developing respect for others, responsibility, and a strong work ethic.
Biblical truths are woven throughout the program, helping students understand that God is the Creator and that the Bible is His Word. As students grow, they learn to see connections within Scripture, including the overarching narrative of Creation, Fall, and Redemption.
Through stories, discussions, and hands-on activities, students gain a clearer understanding of biblical truth and how it applies to their lives. In this way, learning becomes an opportunity to honor God and serve others.
The Science of Reading and BJU Press (PDF)
Scope & Sequence
Circle Time: In the Big Red Barn
Large-group activity; Language and vocabulary skills
Prereading: A-B-C Time
Print awareness; Letter recognition; Auditory discrimination
Prereading: Colors Are Fun!
Color recognition
Prereading: Rhyme Time
Language expression; Auditory discrimination; Dramatizations
Listening and Literature: Once Upon a Time
Tales in the Barnyard stories; Read-aloud suggestions; Listening skills and visual memory
Premath: 1, 2, 3, Go!
Counting and number recognition; Sorting and sequencing
Premath: Look Up, Look Down
Opposites and positional words
Premath: Show Me a Shape
Shape recognition; Large motor-skill development; Following directions; Creative movement
Environment: Let’s Discover!
Science and observation skills; Hands-on learning
Arts: Let’s Create!
Creative expression; Hand-eye coordination
Music: Sing with Me
Singing and listening; Moving and playing
Motor: A Hop, Skip, and a Jump
Social interaction
Social: Happy Habits
Manners, habits, and social training
Cooking: Yummy in My Tummy
Cooking and following directions; Sensory and language experiences
Prereading
Language acquisition and development; Recognition of alphabet letters; Phonemic awareness of alphabet sounds /a/ to /z/; Letter-sound recognition of medial short-vowel sounds; initial and final consonants; Optional beginning reading strand for eager learners
Listening and Literature
Traditional literature; realistic and fanciful prose and poetry; nursery rhymes; Vocabulary development and enrichment; Auditory memory; sound by direction, pitch, tempo, and volume; rhyming words; Listening questions to develop comprehension; Dictation of group writing experiences; sentence completions; story sequencing
Handwriting
Correct posture, pencil hold, and paper placement; Prewriting skills; finger tracing and pencil tracking of left-to-right, vertical, horizontal, diagonal, zig-zag, and curved lines; Uppercase and lowercase PreCursive alphabet; numbers 0–12
Mathematics
Number recognition 0–20; counting to 100; shape recognition; pattern sequencing; color sequencing; Calendar, clock, coins, measurement, dot patterns, number sets, number line, ordinals, fractions; Position words
Social Studies
Concepts of God’s plan for the child and his family; Patriotism, patriotic symbols, holidays; Community helpers, transportation
Science
Environment: seasonal changes of plants and animals; animal families and animal homes; Hands-on: experiments, cooking, weather, space, and magnets
Art
Art suggestions and craft activities correlated with unit themes
Motor
Fine and gross motor development activities; games, action rhymes, and action songs
Music
Songs, rhymes, and musical games; Additional music strand to complement lessons through movement, rhythm instruments, retelling of stories, games, and songs
Language Arts
Prereading
Print awareness: left-to-right eye progression; visual discrimination; visual memory; Reasoning; classifying; sequencing size and shape relationships; Rhyming; awareness of author; picture reading; Listening comprehension; Comparing; Following directions; perceiving concepts, such as up/down, hard/soft; Alphabet recognition: phonemic awareness
Phonics and Word Perception
Units 1–3: Letter-sound association—consonants and short vowels; words with closed syllable phonograms (examples: _it, _at); plural words with s and es; compound words; possessive words; Units 4–6: Letter-sound association—consonant blends and digraphs, long vowels; r-influenced vowels; special vowel combinations; vowel patterns for long vowels (examples: _oke, _o, _oat)
Early Reading Skills
Comprehension; Predicting outcomes; answering questions after silent reading; sequencing events; developing vocabulary; Perceiving relationships; distinguishing reality from fantasy; Matching words and pictures; matching sentences and pictures; reading short stories; Oral communication and oral reading; Discussion; action rhymes; pantomime; retelling stories; reading phonics stories orally
Composition
Dictating sentence ideas for individual composition; completing sentence starters
Handwriting
Letter formation; principles of slant; alignment; spacing; pencil hold; posture
Related Arts
Art
Drawing; painting; making crafts to match the unit themes of the lessons (examples: puppets, papier-mâché pig)
Motor Skills
Encouraging fine-motor skills through prewriting activities, fingerplays, cooking and Learning Center activities, and student activity worksheets; Developing gross-motor skills during simple games and group activities
Music
Traditional and piggyback songs; music games
Heritage Studies
Geography: US landmarks; history: Native Americans, colonial life; culture: families, community helpers, Hispanic culture, Bible times, farming, American celebrations
Science
Appreciating God’s creation; Learning about birds, bugs, magnets, seasons, water, human bodies, weather, rocks, oceans, sun, moon, plants, and animals; Experiencing hands-on activities
Reading
Word Recognition
Application of phonics concepts presented in K5 phonics lessons; Readers 1–16—short vowels, single consonants; Readers 17–34—short vowels, consonant blends and digraphs, long vowels, r-influenced vowels, special vowels; Word families; high-frequency words; compound words; words with suffixes
Comprehension
Picture reading; Questioning to develop higher-order thinking skills; Predict text; make inferences; draw conclusions; predict outcomes; Compare; sequence events; follow directions
Vocabulary
Meaning from context
Literature
Read a variety of genres: family stories, informational articles, fanciful animal stories, poetry, Bible accounts, and realistic fiction; Distinguish reality from fantasy
Silent Reading
Reading for specific information; reading for author’s message
Oral Reading
Communicate message of the author; communicate in a natural manner; Portray a character; Respond to punctuation: period, exclamation point, question mark, quotation marks