A Free Curriculum for 3 Year Olds — without the worksheets.

Before you start

What should a 3 year old learn at home?

If you’re looking for a preschool curriculum for 3 year olds, the first real question is usually a quieter one: what is my child actually supposed to be learning right now? Age three is the year the toddler years quietly turn into the preschool years. Play gets a little more purposeful, attention stretches a little longer, and your child starts soaking up early skills that lay the groundwork for kindergarten. The good news — none of it needs worksheets or a classroom. It happens through play, in about twenty minutes a day, with you.

Here’s what a strong 3 year old curriculum focuses on, and what this free plan builds month by month:

Early literacy & language

At three, language explodes. Your child is learning new words daily, starting to tell little stories, and beginning to hear that words are made of sounds — the early spark of phonological awareness that reading is built on later. You build it by reading aloud together, naming things during play, singing rhyming songs, and simply having back-and-forth conversations. No flashcards required.

Early math & problem solving

Preschool math for a 3 year old isn’t about numbers on a page. It’s counting real objects with one-to-one correspondence, recognizing numbers 1 through 5, sorting toys by color or size, spotting simple patterns, and comparing which cup holds more. These hands-on moments are exactly how early math sense takes root before any formal arithmetic.

Fine motor & pre-writing

Before a child can write, their hands need strength and control. Threading beads, snipping with safety scissors, squishing playdough, and scribbling with chunky crayons all build the small muscles and grip that pre-writing depends on. A 3 year old who scribbles freely now is doing real work toward holding a pencil later.

Shapes, colors & sorting

Recognizing basic shapes and primary colors, then sorting and grouping by those traits, is foundational pre-K thinking. It’s also delightfully easy to fold into a regular day — sorting laundry by color, finding circles on a walk, matching lids to containers. Your child is building categorization skills without ever calling it a lesson.

Social-emotional & independence

Maybe the most important one. Three-year-olds are learning to manage big feelings, follow a simple routine, take turns, and do small things on their own. A predictable daily rhythm — the kind this curriculum gives you — is what helps a child feel secure enough to take all of that on. Kindergarten readiness is as much about confidence and self-regulation as it is about letters and numbers.

You don’t have to teach all five of these at once, and you definitely don’t have to figure out the order yourself. That’s the whole point of a plan: this free preschool curriculum for 3 year olds weaves every one of these skills into a gentle month-by-month rhythm, so you can just open the current month and play. Here’s the full calendar.