Fawn Scholar

The Twelve-Week Plan · ages 3 to 5

Two things a week.
Ten minutes each.

Built from the two areas your card named — not a curriculum, not a box, and not the same plan everybody else gets. Twenty-four activities, all from things already in the house.

Start the Readiness Check
  • Ten minutes at a time
  • Nothing to buy
  • Every activity sourced

What it is

The plan is the answer to your card.

The Readiness Check names two of the five areas. The plan is twelve weeks of those two, and nothing else — which is why it is short. A plan that covered all five would be a curriculum, and a curriculum is the thing a parent of a three-year-old does not need.

Everything uses what is already in the house: a balloon, a spoon, socks to match, a book you own. Where something has to be bought it is named with a price, and most of the buying advice is a list of what to skip.

Price to be announced

The activity library is finished — seventy-one activities across all five areas, and every pair the check can name has twelve weeks behind it. What is left is a price, and a person reading each of the twenty-six plans end to end before any of them is sold. Take the check now and you will be told the day yours is ready.

Start the Readiness Check

What is in it

Twelve weeks, twenty-four activities

  • Weeks 1–12Two activities a weekOne from each of your two areas, alternating which leads. Ten minutes each, and then you stop — drawing gets worse after about ten minutes whatever the grip, so the length is deliberate. Two, not five: it is a week you can actually finish.
  • Every cardThe milestone it sits under, quotedNot a paraphrase. The CDC’s own wording, so you can check it against anything else you are told.
  • Every cardThe usual mistakeThe thing that makes the activity stop working. Usually it is doing it for them.
  • Every cardWhat you might seeIncluding the versions that look like failure and are not. A balloon caught with the chin counts.
  • At the backWhere every claim came fromNamed, dated, and openable. Where a source only supports part of a claim, the card says which part.

One of the twenty-four

This is a whole activity, not a sample of one.

Every activity in the plan is set out like this: what it is for, what to do, the mistake almost everyone makes, what you might actually see, and where the claim came from.

Outside or a cleared room · 10 min · $0

Balloon, cushion, ball

Catching, in that order

“Catches a large ball most of the time”

A balloon falls slowly enough to be caught by a child who cannot yet catch. Start there and the ball comes later.

i

Set up

A balloon. Then a small cushion. Then a large soft ball. Two big steps apart.

ii

Present

Toss the balloon underarm, high and slow, straight to their chest. Say “ready” before each one.

iii

Finish

After about ten tosses, or the first sigh.

The usual mistake

Throwing a ball at a child who has not caught a balloon. A face hit ends catching for a month.

What you might see

  • Arms clamping shut after the balloon has already passed.
  • The first catch, against the chest, with the chin.
  • A throw back that goes anywhere.

How often

A few minutes, most days, for a few weeks.

Move on when

They catch the large ball most times from two big steps.

What you need

A balloon, a cushion, a big soft ball.

The CDC lists catching a large ball most of the time by four.

What it is not

No worksheets. On purpose.

The professional bodies are not ambiguous about this age. NAEYC calls play “the central teaching practice”; the AAP says the focus on academic readiness is what displaces it; and a mature pencil grip is a four-to-six-year milestone, so tracing sheets for a three-year-old are asking for something the hand cannot do yet.

So the plan is games, small jobs, rhymes and number talk. If you want tracing sheets they are free everywhere and you do not need me for them.

Also not

  • A curriculum, a course, or a certificate.
  • An app, a login, or a subscription.
  • A box of things to buy.
  • An assessment of whether your child is on track.