Joy School Membership

Joy School was developed by Linda & Richard Eyre, parenting experts and #1 New York Times best selling authors of Teaching Your Children Values. When the Eyres’ children were young, they were disappointed in the preschool options they could find. Preschools seemed to be either too strictly academic or too must of a “playgroup” with no real structured learning opportunities. Plus preschools were so expensive!  So they researched and wrote a book called Teaching Your Children Joy about what they believed were the most important things for pre-school-aged children to be learning – and started teaching their own preschool children using the philosophy and methods in the book.

The book was met with great acclaim by parents who wanted to focus on these very “Joys” with their children. In response to this groundswell of interest, Richard and Linda worked together with Richard’s mother, Ruth Eyre, to found the very first Joy School in Logan Utah. Ruth and a team of dedicated teachers helped to develop full lesson plans to support the principles taught in Teaching Your Children Joy. Then these lesson plans were marketed as an exciting new affordable preschool option for parents who wanted to be involved in their children’s preschool experience.

Nearly 40 years later, over 200,000 children around the world have participated in Joy School co-ops and the lesson plans have been completely revised and updated to offer the current generation the amazing Joy School experience that so many of their parents once enjoyed.

The year starts with the most “tangible” joys, then, as children mature through the year, the Joys become a little deeper.

• The Joy of the Body (exploring all the cool things our bodies can do, taking good care of our bodies, learning about our five senses, etc.)
• The Joy of the Earth (appreciating and respecting the earth)
• The Joy of Honesty and Communication (understanding the importance of telling the truth, the importance of expressing feelings appropriately, and the joy of being a good friend, using manners, and listening)
• The Joy of Sharing and Service (realizing the joy of helping others be happy)
• The Joy of Goals (learning the joy of taking care of our things and working hard to accomplish simple, tangible goals)
• The Joy of Confidence (learning about making good decisions and trying new things)
• The Joy of Wonder (cherishing and enhancing children’s natural curiosity and excitement about exploring and learning)
• The Joy of Creativity (cherishing and enhancing children’s natural imagination and creativity)
• The Joy of Family (appreciating and building good relationships)
• The Joy of Uniqueness (celebrating each child’s unique abilities and attributes)

With Joy School, your trusted friends are the other teachers; you take your turn teaching and then have a little free time while the others take their turns. With a typical group involving 4-6 children, ages 3-5, you’d take your turn teaching every 4-6 weeks.

When it’s your turn to teach, you’d spend about an hour reading over and preparing the two lessons for your week. The lesson plans are set up to help EVERY parent be a successful Joy School teacher! They offer clear instructions for each activity, links to the songs and illustrations involved in each lesson, and even talking points that help you know exactly how to explain things to the children in a tried-and-true way.

1. Suggest Joy School to the moms you know who have 3- and 4-year old children and who you think might like the idea of Joy School. It works great to email them the link to this page so that they can learn more about Joy School.

2. Once you’ve established who’ll be in your group (starting with 2-3 moms is fine!), each mother registers on-line using the registration at the bottom of this page. This gives every family access to all the Joy School materials they will need.

3. Everyone in the group reads the Start-Up Manual. That manual has all of the information about setting up your group as well as tips and training for teaching Joy School successfully. Then you hold an initial meeting with the moms involved in your group to determine your schedule for the year and divide up duties for making/gathering the simple materials you will need as explained in the Introductory Manual (weather chart, calendar, Joy School House, paper, crayons, etc. – these items along with other supplies for the children will be placed in the box that travels from house to house).

4. Moving forward, you’ll hold monthly mothers’ meetings to go over the introduction for each month’s Joy and firm up your schedule for the month. The Parents’ Introduction included with each include Joy  has talking points for these meetings.

5. Prepare and present your lessons when it’s your turn to teach (with the help of our detailed lesson plans, lesson prep only takes about a half an hour for each lesson, or an hour for the two lesson plans for that week – and preparation gets easier and easier as you gain experience!)

6. Enjoy abundant Joy-ful experiences with your children and develop wonderful relationships with the moms in your group (many “Joy School Moms” maintain friendships all their lives!).

If you’re looking at this page, chances are you’re a smart, deliberate mother. With the help of Pinterest and so many other great resources online, you could certainly come up with your own curriculum for a do-it-yourself co-op preschool. But that would take serious time. And it would involve quite a bit of trial and error.

By purchasing the Joy School curriculum, you are saving yourself tons of time and getting a tried-and-true curriculum that you and your children will really enjoy. With a one-time membership fee of $150 for lifetime access to all the materials, you’re essentially paying around $12/month for your first year of participation, then nothing in subsequent years as you never have to pay again. Surely you would spend a lot more than $12/month worth of time if you were to come up with your own curriculum. And the peace of mind when you know you’ve got a curriculum that really works is priceless.

One of the Joy School Development Team members, Aja Eyre, explains the worth of Joy School this way:

“Over the last 14 years, at least one of my five children has been in that magical preschool age, so I’ve run the gamut of preschools and preschool programs. Because of varying stages in our lives, we’ve had children participate in homeschool preschool, preschool groups, sent kids to public preschools, private preschools, and church preschools. But Joy School is something more and something special.

For example, a few years ago, we moved to a new town partway through the year. The families I knew there already had a preschool group set up and were using a free internet-based preschool curriculum. Even though I had used Joy School before, I agreed to use their curriculum, actually quite interested to see what it was like. I was bored completely. For my first turn at teaching at my house, I was assigned teaching about “Spring”. Not only did I have to spend about two hours preparing, finding materials, songs off of Youtube, and printing out little coloring pages, when the kids came to my house that morning, they quickly grew bored too. The material was just not fulfilling, not rich, and not purposeful. I talked to the other moms, who had similar experiences but didn’t want to pay for a program. We talked about it and the next year, we all did Joy School. The amount it saved in time for preparation paid for itself, but when you add the quality and memorable songs, the purposeful activities and crafts, and the real impact it makes on the children, the value is compounded.

What other preschool program has lessons and songs that even your teenagers will remember and sing back to you? What other program actually aims (and succeeds) to increase the joy and happiness of preschoolers and their families? What other program will you actually enjoy teaching year after year? Thirty years of committed and fervent Joy Schoolers will back me up in saying that there is no other program as intelligent, elegant, organized, spontaneous, enjoyable, and JOYful as Joy School.”

In the USA, most Federally-funded public schools have adopted or are in the process of adopting the learning guidelines known as the Common Core. While there is controversy surrounding the methods, we agree that the overall premise is sound, which is that schools should endeavor to provide children with the tools to be good learners, to become clear and efficient communicators, and to develop strong calculating and reasoning skills.

Joy School teaches many of the most important things detailed in the Common Core standards. For example, Joy School has always used a variety of methods to teach basics of literacy, such as the rhyming words and syntax taught through music and poetry, making logical inferences, and understanding complex texts and abstract ideas. The discussions, activities, and stories teach important early elementary education literacy and language skills, such as learning to verbally respond to texts, using expanded vocabulary to engage in conversation, actively using question words and responding to them, understanding the nuances of word usage and demonstrating them through conversation, and using context clues to discover word meanings. Joy School also covers in-depth principles of speaking and listening in a way that most preschools, kindergartens, and beyond cannot even touch, partially thanks to the intimacy of a small co-op group.

As far as math and science, the Joy School curriculum also provides a fantastic foundational approach to mathematical and scientific reasoning. For example, there are a number of spacial awareness play activities, color recognition and usage activities, shape-based activities, measurement explorations through cooking, natural world exploration, and, of course, there is an entire unit dedicated to asking questions (Joy of Curiosity) which leads well into the foundations of scientific reasoning.

Joy School also helps children work on their fine and gross motor skills, learn cooperation, practice social problem solving, and participate in structured group interaction, which were the benchmarks of kindergarten before Common Core took precedence.

In addition to the wonderful preparation for school that the Joy School curriculum offers, if you’d like your child to develop a good familiarity with letters and numbers to help boost their confidence when they start school, we do offer a supplementary program called “Kindergarten Readiness” that can be taught in tandem with Joy School. Click here to learn more about Kindergaren Readiness.

“I went to Joy School when I was little and I still remember a lot! I especially loved the unit on Spontaneous Delight and remember when the teacher let the air popper pop popcorn all over the room while we danced around in glee. It was so good for me to see that there’s a time and a place for doing fun, silly things. And I’ll never forget the time we went to sing to some elderly disabled people during the unit on Sharing and Service. Our teacher prepared us well and we were so excited to see the smiles on the faces of those sweet ‘grandmas and grandpas’! ”

— Sarah C.

“I was a pretty shy little kid and was so scared to start Joy School. But the small group setting and curriculum of Joy School was perfect for me. My favorite unit was on the Joy of Being Myself (formerly called the Joy of Individual Confidence and Uniqueness). I still have the “All About Me” book that I made in that unit and I love showing it to my kids.”

— Joan P.

“I’ve never worked with a group of preschoolers before so when my friend invited me to be part of a Joy School group, I didn’t think it was for me. Luckily, she was persistent! I found that with the help of the Start-Up manual, the support of the other moms in my group (one very kindly taught with me the first couple of times I taught), and the very detailed lesson plans, I got the hang of teaching Joy School pretty quickly. I have a lot more confidence now about my abilities with groups of children and actually look forward to when it’s my turn to teach.”

— Julianne F.

“The other day I overheard my son singing a Joy School song – ‘When a thing is hard to do, I don’t sit and cry, I just make a happy face and try, try, try…’ I went in there and saw him working away on getting his boots on. He usually gets so easily frustrated when he can’t do something right away. This unit on trying is certainly helping him!”

— Emily H.

From a Kindergarten Teacher:
“When I get my new students each fall, I can always tell right away which ones are Joy School graduates. They come to school confident, good at making friends, and ready to learn. I have some students who come already reading or way ahead on math which is fine, but not necessary. The social skills that the Joy School kids have really help them do well in my class. And they all know their letters and numbers and all that as well.”

— Ms. Hurst, Lakeside Elementary

YES! Many moms are running their own Joy School-based for-profit preschools using the helpful instructions and materials provided by the Joy School Company. To learn more about how it works to use the Joy School Curriculum in a preschool or day-care setting, please visit the Joy School Company website.