Little Hands to Heaven

Little Hands to Heaven is Heart of Dakota Publishing's 33-week preschool guide for ages 2-5, written by Carrie Austin, which pairs each letter of the alphabet with a Bible story, a fingerplay, a craft, and a short math or motor activity. It is one of the few explicitly Christian preschool programs built around a scripted, open-and-go daily plan rather than a loose activity binder.

Last updated: 2026-04-24 · Every Homeschool Editorial Team

At a glance

Method	Charlotte Mason-influenced / unit studies / scripted daily plan
Worldview	Christian-evangelical (broadly Protestant; Bible-chronology spine)
Grades	Ages 2-5 (preschool)
Formats	Print teacher's guide or digital download
Cost tier	Budget
Parent intensity	4
ESA-common	Varies
Accredited	No
Established	2005 (Heart of Dakota's founding year; LHTH was released in that era)
Website	heartofdakota.com

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	3	Preschool-appropriate: letter-sound foundations, early math, pre-reading; not a literacy program
Ease of teaching	5	Open-and-go one-page daily plans using household materials; among the lightest prep in its category
Content quality	4	Bible chronology is genuinely traced through 33 stories; craft and music selections are coherent
Flexibility	3	Designed for ages 2-5 with some differentiation; structured enough that major modification changes the program
Value for money	5	Single guide under $50 covers a full year of preschool for one or more children
Worldview scope	2	Explicitly Christian with the Bible as the narrative spine; secular use requires substantial substitution
Visual/design	3	Clean, functional layout; not a lushly illustrated guide but well-organized
Support resources	3	Heart of Dakota community forum, publisher blog, customer service; no scheduled live support

Who the publisher is

Little Hands to Heaven is published by Heart of Dakota Publishing, a small family-run homeschool publisher founded in 2002 in South Dakota by Steve and Carrie Austin. Carrie Austin authored most of Heart of Dakota's flagship titles — Drawn Into the Heart of Reading (a literature-response curriculum), Preparing Hearts for His Glory (an elementary history and Bible program), and the full family-style guide sequence that Heart of Dakota built its reputation on. Little Hands to Heaven is the preschool-level entry in that sequence, released in the company's early catalog per Rainbow Resource's publisher listing and carried continuously since.

Heart of Dakota's market positioning is distinctive within Christian homeschool publishing. The company is family-owned, does not advertise aggressively, and has built its user base through word of mouth and homeschool convention presence. Its guides are explicitly Christian — biblical content is integrated throughout rather than bracketed into a separate Bible slot — and the publisher is broadly Protestant evangelical in theological stance. Heart of Dakota's signature pedagogical move, visible across all its guides including Little Hands to Heaven, is the one-page daily plan: everything a parent needs for the day fits on a single page, arranged in boxes that can be completed in any order.

The publisher's scale is modest. Heart of Dakota operates without the convention-floor presence of Abeka or Sonlight, sells primarily through its own website and Rainbow Resource, and maintains a user base that is Baptist-and-independent-evangelical in the main. The Heart of Dakota online community, hosted on the publisher's forum, is an unusually active user community for a publisher of this size and is part of how the curriculum sustains itself between print runs.

The core pedagogy

Little Hands to Heaven is structured as a 33-week preschool program in which each week introduces one letter of the alphabet, paired with a sequential Bible story drawn from a two-options book list (A Child's First Bible for ages 2-3 or A New Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes for ages 3-5, each containing more than 125 stories per the publisher's description). A through Z maps across the school year; the Bible chronology runs from Creation through Paul's missionary journeys. The sequencing choice — letter-by-letter but Bible-chronological — is deliberate: the child's introduction to the alphabet and their first continuous exposure to biblical narrative unfold together rather than competing for attention.

Each daily lesson is roughly 30 minutes and uses a one-page grid format. The grid contains a Bible section (story read-aloud and discussion), a letter section (letter introduction, sound, and one tactile activity such as tracing, painting, or hunt-the-letter), a fingerplay (coordinated hand motions set to short rhymes), a math or motor activity (counting to five, matching shapes, crossing midline with a ribbon, climbing stairs with counting), and a music or art activity tied to the week's theme. More than 50 songs drawn from Focus on the Family's Singing Bible anchor the musical content across the year.

Signature mechanics: (1) One-page daily plan — the defining Heart of Dakota feature, reproduced here at the preschool level; (2) Letter-and-Bible-story pairing — the alphabet provides the weekly container, the Bible provides the sequential narrative; (3) Two age tracks — differentiated read-aloud selections and activity expectations for younger (2-3) and older (3-5) children within the same weekly plan; (4) Household materials — activities are built around common supplies (paper, glue, basic craft items, household objects) rather than specialty kits; (5) Short daily sessions — 30 minutes total, in any single block or broken across the day, with explicit permission from the publisher to split the work.

A day in the life

A three-year-old working through Little Hands to Heaven begins a typical morning at 9:00 with the day's Bible story — the parent reads a two-page story from A New Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes (5 minutes), then leads a short discussion of what happened and a brief prayer (5 minutes). The week's letter is L, and the Bible chronology is on the story of Lot leaving Sodom. The parent pulls out the letter L flashcard and practices the sound; the child paints the letter L with a finger dipped in water on a piece of construction paper (10 minutes). A fingerplay — "Little Lot, long legs, look and leave" or similar — runs through with hand motions (3 minutes). A counting activity — count ten pebbles into a cup and pour them out — follows (5 minutes). A short craft glues cotton-ball "pillars of salt" onto a drawing of Lot's wife, closing the session (10 minutes). Total: 35 minutes, flexible.

A two-year-old running the same program moves faster through the content and spends more time on the physical activities. A four- or five-year-old lingers longer on the letter practice and often moves from tracing letters with a finger in water to actual pencil-on-paper letter formation midway through the year. The publisher explicitly plans for families to spend one or two years in Little Hands to Heaven, repeating the sequence for a younger sibling or cycling through twice for a single child before moving to Heart of Dakota's kindergarten guide.

What they do exceptionally well

True open-and-go at the preschool level. Many preschool guides advertise "open and go" but require significant prep the night before. Little Hands to Heaven delivers on the claim: a parent can open the teacher's guide at 8:55 AM and start teaching at 9:00 with materials already in most kitchens. This is rare at this age band and this price point.

The Bible chronology is real. A child completing Little Hands to Heaven has heard more than 100 Bible stories in canonical order, from Creation through the early church. This is more systematic biblical exposure than many dedicated preschool Bible curricula provide, and it is embedded in the normal flow of the preschool year rather than added on.

Accessibility for multi-child families. The program is explicitly designed for use alongside older children; a parent who is also teaching an elementary student can run Little Hands to Heaven during the older child's independent work time, with the 30-minute footprint and household-materials design making it genuinely fit into a busy morning. Families with three or more children use the program in rotation.

What they do poorly

Not a literacy program. Little Hands to Heaven teaches letter recognition, letter sounds, and early letter formation, but it does not teach a child to read. A four-year-old finishing the 33-week cycle knows the alphabet and is ready for phonics instruction, but Heart of Dakota explicitly expects families to move into a dedicated phonics program (their own "Little Hearts for His Glory" kindergarten guide or a separate program) for actual reading instruction. Families expecting a reading curriculum will be disappointed.

Worldview saturation where secular families would prefer flexibility. Because the Bible story is the weekly spine and the letter-story pairing is structural, a family wanting to use the program without the biblical content would be cutting out the majority of each day's lesson. The letter activities, math, and fingerplays do stand alone, but they are thin without the Bible content and do not add up to a full preschool. This is not a design flaw — the publisher is explicit about the Christian integration — but it means the program is genuinely not cross-worldview usable.

Aesthetic restraint. Little Hands to Heaven's teacher guide is well-organized but visually plain. Families who want a preschool curriculum with the lush illustrations and photography of The Peaceful Preschool or the high-production-value box-ships of Mother Goose Time will find Heart of Dakota's presentation noticeably simpler. The simplicity is part of the budget-friendly pricing but it is a real trade.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick Little Hands to Heaven if: you are a Christian family comfortable with biblical content as the narrative spine of preschool; you want a true open-and-go daily plan with minimal prep; you have a 2-to-5-year-old and want a program that can serve multiple children across multiple years; you value a 30-minute daily footprint that fits alongside older siblings' lessons; you prefer household materials to specialty kits.

• Skip Little Hands to Heaven if: you want a reading-readiness program that actually teaches reading; you are secular, Jewish, Latter-day Saint, or otherwise outside the Protestant Christian tradition and want a program whose religious content is easy to separate; you want a hands-on kit with all materials shipped in a box rather than sourced from your kitchen; your preschooler is already reading and needs more academic challenge; you want a lushly designed visual curriculum.

Cost honest assessment

The Little Hands to Heaven teacher's guide is sold directly on the Heart of Dakota website as a print or digital download, with print editions historically in the $40-$50 range and digital downloads slightly less, per the publisher's pricing as of April 2026. The recommended Bible storybooks add roughly $15-$25 depending on which option a family selects, and the Focus on the Family Singing Bible CDs or digital audio add another $15-$30. A family starting fresh with the core guide, a Bible storybook, and music runs roughly $75-$110 total for a full year of preschool.

Compared to The Peaceful Preschool at $99 for its 26-week guide, Little Hands to Heaven is roughly comparable on the core program but extends further (33 weeks vs. 26) and integrates music and Bible content that The Peaceful Press does not. Compared to Mother Goose Time / Experience Preschool subscription boxes at roughly $60-$90 per month per child, Little Hands to Heaven is dramatically cheaper because the parent sources materials from the household rather than receiving a shipped box.

A realistic all-in family budget for one year of Little Hands to Heaven with one preschooler, including Bible storybook, music, and craft supplies (paper, glue, paint, etc.), runs $100-$175 annually.

ESA eligibility notes

Heart of Dakota is present as an approved publisher on several state ESA marketplaces that accept Christian curriculum. Arizona's ClassWallet, Florida's MyScholarShop, and Utah Fits All have historically listed Heart of Dakota materials among approved purchases, though program-by-program availability shifts and families should verify before ordering. Because Little Hands to Heaven integrates biblical content throughout rather than segregating it into a separate Bible slot, the program is not available for ESA reimbursement in states that restrict religious materials from education-savings account use. Families in states with broad curriculum coverage typically have no trouble; families in states with stricter rules should check with their specific administrator.

Alternatives

• The Peaceful Preschool — a family would choose The Peaceful Preschool over Little Hands to Heaven for a literature-based alphabet walk that is broadly Christian rather than evangelically specific, with picture books doing more of the teaching work.
• Before Five in a Row — a family would choose Before Five in a Row over Little Hands to Heaven for a gentler, less-scripted approach built around repeated readings of classic children's picture books without the alphabet scaffold.
• Sonlight Preschool — a family would choose Sonlight over Little Hands to Heaven for a book-basket approach with substantially more read-aloud literature and less daily craft structure, at a higher price point.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed the Little Hands to Heaven product page at heartofdakota.com, the Heart of Dakota preschool curriculum overview, the publisher's blog post on one-year versus two-year use, and cross-referenced against Rainbow Resource's product listing and Christianbook.com's product page. Pricing and program details verified April 2026.