Looking for an identity and wellbeing curriculum for your homeschool or school? Let the Play Academy make it easy for you with our specialist curriculum pathways of ready-made thematic units.
Looking for a literacy curriculum for your homeschool or school? Let the Play Academy make it easy for you with our specialist curriculum pathways of ready-made thematic units.
Learn about the benefits of hands-on learning for children and include more hands-on activities in your curriculum using the ready-made lesson plans from the Play Academy.
Give your children the benefits of mixed-age teaching using our range of grab-and-go, cross-curricular, multi-age thematic units.
Teach better by using Thematic Units that engage children in cross-curricular lessons that build deep knowledge and skills. We’ve got over 50 ready-made thematic units you can use with your children today.
You get a treasure trove of over 50+ ready-made thematic teaching units, all with full instructions and bonus printables. This saves you so much planning time and makes it easy for you to teach engaging lessons. You also get ease and peace of mind because you’ll have over 300+ ready-made lesson plans with everything in one place, all planned for you. You’ll get your joy of teaching back!
The Play Academy is designed for schools, teachers, parents and childcare professionals with children aged 5-10. Hundreds of teachers and parents choose us and stay with us for years!
The teaching units cover a wide range of topics, giving you lots of choice. Themes include Math and Science; Literacy and Language; Nature, Gardening and Forest School; Art and Crafts; Play, Sensory and Imagination; Identity and Wellbeing; and Festivals and Holidays. You will have lots of options to suit you and your children to keep them engaged, interested, learning and developing.
Current units include: 100 Days of School, All About Me, Apples, Art Camp, Autumn Equinox, Bees, Birds & Eggs, Black History Month, Candy Canes, Candy Science, Caterpillars and Butterflies, Cats, Chinese New Year, Circles, Colour Theory, Colours, Daffodils, Dinosaurs, Diwali, Dragons, Earth Day, Easter, Fairies, Famous Artists, Famous Art Baubles, Forest School Part One, Forest School Part Two, Fractions, Gingerbread, Halloween, Hanukkah, Ice and Snow, International Women’s Day, Juneteenth, Leaves and Twigs, Nativity, New Year, Play Dough, Process Art Baubles, Puppets, Printmaking, Rainbows, Ramadan, Shapes, Seaside, Small Worlds, Space, Spring Equinox, Summer Solstice, Sunflowers Part One, Sunflowers Part Two, Thanksgiving, Time, Valentines, Weather, Winter Solstice, and World Book Day.
It’s so easy to follow. You can leave the overwhelm behind and enjoy having everything organised for you on our clear, calm, ad-free website. Each teaching unit covers 5 days, giving you one activity each day that all your children can do together. Many of the units can be put together for longer thematic programs. Full colour photographs, materials lists and detailed instructions on how to teach each lesson make it easy for you to lead. The Play Academy website and all the units have a clean layout, with no ads. Timely units are highlighted every month and we’ll let you know the perfect unit to teach each week – plus you can ask us for guidance at any time. There are curriculum pathways and an annual timetable available, which you can follow if you like – or pick and mix units to suit your own needs, as you prefer.
Yes, let’s use our Dinosaur Unit as an example. Rather than teach though un-natural separate subjects, the Play Academy is based around topics that integrate skills, so children learn thematically and build links in their knowledge and skills, just like in the real world.
Math, literacy, language, science, world culture, art, nature study, fine motor skills, imagination, and play are all integrated within the units and work together to give your children the best possible education.
In our Dinosaur Unit you will see that your children will learn through doing, talking, playing, and making. They will be able to:
:: learn about dinosaurs, with a fun video to watch, and discussion questions to guide a conversation. This will boost their listening and language skills, encourage thinking skills, help them learn to evaluate what they already know about a subject, and to share what they already know to develop collaborative learning and working – all vital skills.
:: write about and draw their favourite dinosaur using the My Favorite Dinosaur journal page printable (which, like all our printables, has versions in US and UK English). Each child can write in as much detail as suits their level. They will develop their pencil / fine motor skills, spelling, composition, drawing, and ability to give an opinion.
:: make a dinosaur model, using a simple guide they can customise to make their dino as cute or scary as they like. This develops their fine motor skills, ability to follow simple instructions, decision making, and creativity.
:: create a dinosaur small world for their model to live in. This encourages imagination, storytelling, narration and collaborative play. It also gives them a play-based way to put their learning and knowledge of dinosaurs into action. Listening in to their conversations as they play is an excellent way for you to observe them and assess what they have learned.
:: play dinosaur literacy games. You’ll get a set of dino alphabet cards included in the unit and suggestions for literacy games you can use them with, to suit your child’s age/stage. This lets you vary one activity to best suit a range of ages and stages. You might also have older children lead the literacy games for younger children, which is beneficial for the development of both of them.
:: enjoy dinosaur sensory play. Take your pick from the suggestions, whether your children love ice play, play dough or want to try an archeological dig! This is a fun way to round off the week and give your children the benefit of a supportive sensory environment. Depending on which of the activity options you pick, you can incorporate math and science as you measure and prepare the sensory materials and explore their properties as they play.
You can see more of the Dinosaur Unit in our video tour below.
Choose the annual membership and you’ll get two months membership for free, plus free copies of NurtureStore’s best-selling ebooks, and extended curriculum resources. Everyone gets bonus printables with each teaching unit, plus you can talk to Cathy about any questions or guidance you might need, at any time.
No, none at all. The Play Academy is a calm, peaceful corner of the internet, simply focussed on making it easy for you to teach and your children to learn.
The teaching units are written by Cathy James, the founder of NurtureStore. Cathy has a Bachelor of Arts degree and over twenty-five years experience working in education. She’s taught a wide range of ages, from babies to adults, in a variety of settings including in schools, homeschool, community workshops, the workplace, and as an Ofsted-rated “Outstanding’ childcare professional. She’s the author of many books including The Garden Classroom (Roost Books) and has written for leading parenting and education websites including regular articles for Baby Centre.
Of course. We’re proud of our reputation as a world-wide curriculum leader and that our Play Academy members stay with us for years. This is what our members say about us:
“The resources are easily applied, but provide in-depth learning. They are great for getting immersed in the learning objective.”
“There is so much out there but I always trust NurtureStore so you are my go to whenever I’m looking for resources on a particular topic.”
“There are so many brilliant ideas, always really nicely presented and with lots of tips for follow-on activities too.”
“The membership is incredible value and I’ve already got so much from it.”
“I love how much hands-on kinesthetic learning there is. That really works for my kids. They love the sensory play, imagination exploration and hands-on ways to make math, reading, and writing fun! Thank you!”
As little as $8.33 a month. Choose the annual membership for the best value option and you’ll get two months membership for free.
We’re ready to welcome you and help you choose your first teaching unit. Join us here.
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You can easily cancel online at anytime. The minimum subscription period is one month, or one year for the annual plan.
Yes. It’s easy to restart your payment online.
For as long as you have an active payment in place you will have access to the materials. If you cancel your payment, you will lose access at the end of your billing period.
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