Writing Curriculum

I've been writing the PreK curriculum at church for a little over a year now.  It's almost totally complete.  I changed lesson plan formats in the middle of it all so I need to go back and reformat the first half of the journey.  Then my plan is to go through each lesson, step-by-step, and collect all materials, books, etc. and have them stored away and organized somewhere so that everything is where it can be found when the time comes. (Yeah, I know, too high of expectations for a church, but I'm gonna try.)

Why did I write the curriculum?  Because I was never satisfied with the published stuff.  They all had bits and pieces that were good, but the bulk of it was rather lame, developmentally off base, or just not conducive to a Sunday school room environment.  So I was constantly rewriting the lesson plans I'd already paid for.  Very frustrating.

I'm so very anxious to have it all done and bound and easy to use, ready for the next year.  I basically wrote about 52 lessons, give or take and we will continue to loop the same themes each year... cuz really the 5 year olds aren't gonna say, "Hey! We did this lesson when I was 3!"  They don't remember and repetition is so good at that age - that's way Blue and Dora and all those annoying successful kid's shows ask the same question multiple times.

I also compiled a series of lessons for moms mostly, entitled Parenting Through the Proverbs.  I won't say wrote for this one, because a majority of the material I've pulled from some other source.  I am currently leading this study for a group of about 12 moms and the reviews have been favorable so far.  We only have 2 lessons to go before we take a break for the semester (gotta be done before those holidays or I'll lose the participants to the Christmas rush).

I really enjoy the study and the discipline that lesson writing requires.  I just don't really have the time at this point in my life to do it really well.  Maybe a future "hobby" - who knows... there are a lot of times currently that I tend to schluff off what I'm supposed to be doing because I don't feel like doing it.  But I think that's because truly "free" time in my life is so very limited that when I have it the last thing I want to do is think hard. :)

Anyway.  That's one thing that I've been up to lately.