A Message From Karen
In 2005, I was like many of you. I had small children who were eager to learn, but I didn’t have the training or the materials. At the time, my teaching background had been limited to first grade. I was accepted into the Reading Coach program, and my eyes were opened to the world of Early Childhood Education.
So, I plunged into the text books and relied heavily upon my support team of amazing childhood education experts. Slowly but surely, I started to absorb the knowledge and started working with my own three and four-year-old. Concurrently, I was struggling to find a preschool that was nurturing and would meet the needs of the whole child, while exposing them to early literacy and math concepts. I became committed to helping them embrace a love for learning.
In 2007, I took a huge leap of faith. God had put this mission on my heart in 2005, and I felt like He was telling me to either walk through this door or close it. I chose to walk through. I resigned from my position as a Reading Coach for the school district where I worked. Also, I was pregnant with our fourth child and was not in the financial situation to give it a go. But I did. We converted our small den into a classroom and opened the doors to The Reading Corner in the Fall of 2007 with two students: one being my own daughter.
I became known as the short-haired blonde lady who teaches reading out of her house. By the end of that first year, I had about 20 students, so I took another leap of faith. I signed a lease on a small commercial site and earned my Director’s Credentials to operate a preschool. About that time, I learned that we were pregnant with our fifth child.
During the 10 years since we opened, we have grown to over 20 teachers and 300+ students. My husband is the CEO of our company, and my children have reaped the blessings of learning from some of the most amazing teachers who teach a developmentally appropriate curriculum.
From the beginning, I started writing my own curriculum because I couldn’t locate the existing curriculum rigorous enough for my students’ needs. In 2012, as students started exiting our kindergarten; I began receiving requests from parents who wanted to purchase my curriculum for home school, for summer review, or for supplemental materials children weren’t receiving in their schools. From the 2nd edition of my curriculum, I published materials into workbooks
ranging from Early Preschool to 2nd grade. It was time to go back to the drawing board, and I started the three-year process of writing my 3rd and final edition of The Reading Corner curriculum.
Fast-forward to 2021, what I thought was my final curriculum evolved again. Despite the success stories and raving testimonies, my perfectionism couldn’t rest and the 4th edition of The Reading Corner curriculum was born. This edition maintains the core essentials that made our curriculum successful from the beginning. But through the years of still being in the classroom, I found even more creative ways to teach foundational skills in effective and age appropriate ways and bring learning to life.
This year-long curriculum is designed for children ages 3-5 for use in either a preschool setting or in a homeschool environment. The curriculum is 24 weeks of fun, hands-on activities. Although the activities are presented in a “worksheet” format, that is not how the curriculum is intended to be utilized. The activities are designed to be a tool to introduce new concepts. It is then the parents’ and children’s opportunities to take those concepts into real-life experiences. We have found that the best way to instruct is to teach WITH your child, not TO your child. The curriculum has been thoroughly designed to introduce children to developmentally appropriate activities that encompass the objectives found in Teaching Strategies Gold. Every week has been designed to bring these concepts to life through game-based activities. The curriculum is also a spiraling curriculum, meaning every concept is continuously reviewed and repeated.
The other primary component of our curriculum is our philosophy towards teaching concepts. While some programs advocate that teaching literacy and math concepts should be taught in steps, we believe that children really embed the concepts into their learning if concepts are taught bundled together. For example, we do not wait to make words until children have learned all their letters. We do not wait to encourage children to write (albeit scribbling) until they can hold a pencil correctly or write letters.
We have found in our research of studying children within the walls of our humble little school that when children are exposed to all the fundamental math and literacy skills early, consistently, and congruently rather than when they are developmentally ready to successfully read - they have a toolbox of skills and strategies that make reading fun. They don’t need to wait until they can successfully read and write.