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We wrapped up kindergarten! Actually by the time this is posted, we’ve started some of our first grade curriculum already. My oldest just turned 6, middle is 3, and youngest is about to turn one. I recently wrote a blog post on tips for homeschooling with a toddler and newborn if you’re in a similar stage of life!
My oldest daughter has always thrived with structure and routine, so we’ve been doing “school” for a few years now. Even though this isn’t our first go-round, I still feel like a newbie, but I’m also finding that we’re getting into a good groove of learning what works vs. what doesn’t. I’ll link all my previous blog posts at the bottom of this post in case you want to read through those too.
BIBLE TIME:
We first start out listening to a hymn together, and then move onto our memory verse. I usually find a song from Seeds Kids Worship that goes with whatever our verse for that week is so it’s easier to memorize. We worked our way through The Promises of God from A to Z from The Daily Grace Co. and then Arrows & Applesauce’s Bible verse cards from the Busy Bible Binder. This busy binder contains other activities for things like the ten commandments, beatitudes, fruits of the spirit, etc. that I did when my oldest was younger and will now work through with my other daughter this year! I have another blog post with tons of biblical resources for littles if you want to check that out.
SCHOOL WORK
LANGUAGE ARTS: The Good And The Beautiful Level K. I loved this curriculum with the pretty illustrations and fun activities, but it’s a little too fluffy for my daughter. She flew through each lesson so quickly, I honestly think I should have skipped to the first grade level since she’s already reading well.
I wish I could say we read a specific book or followed a certain curriculum for teaching her how to read, but she just picked it up so easily and naturally! We started with BOB books, then worked our way through The Good And The Beautiful’s kindergarten book set: Pet Pals. I also used these wooden reading blocks to help create words.
WRITING: Draw-Write-Now first 2 books: On The Farm and Christopher Columbus, Autumn Harvest, Weather. Once we completed these, I figured I could just come up with my own prompts and have her do independent journal time every day. Sometimes they would relate to the season, holidays or events we had coming up. We used these primary composition notebooks with the blank space up top so she could draw a picture and write one sentence in response to the prompt. I felt like this allowed her a lot more creativity!
MATH: Horizons Math Kinder 1 & 2. When we initially started these, I thought they jumped around a lot, but I actually realized that’s what my daughter thrives on. It’s more of a spiral approach instead of mastery (I had to google those when we first started) so we work on introducing a new topics while still covering the ones she had previously learned. It’s very straightforward, and usually she can complete the lesson herself and show it to me when finished to correct.
SCIENCE: The Good And The Beautiful Little Hearts and Hands, Fields & Flowers offers lessons, stories and simple activities that both of my girls really enjoyed participating in. It was fun to connect it to nature right outside our home, watching butterflies, worms, and flowers grow. And learning about all sorts of different trees and plants.
SOCIAL STUDIES: This has been DIY for now, which I have enjoyed so much! We did a home address map activity, started learning patriotic songs like the National Anthem and God Bless the USA. I also incorporate holidays into our lessons, like Thanksgiving and Christmas, Presidents Day, Easter, Memorial Day, etc. and we learn about the history and true meaning behind them. I also utilize lots of picture books from the library!
One more great resource I wanted to mention are the Schoolhouse Rock songs. I find them on YouTube, but I try to remember to play them whenever we’re introducing a new topic in math, language, history, etc. – there are a TON!
READ ALOUDS:
I also wanted to share a little review on the books we read through this year.
- Gigi God’s Little Princess series (6 books): these are super cute, although the little girl (Gigi) has an attitude sometimes. It usually gets addressed by her parents in the book, but just something to watch out for if your child is super impressionable!
- The Complete Book of Flower Fairies: this wasn’t actually a story – just short poems that we would read through every day. They focused on different kinds of flowers, and the illustrations are beautiful!
- Zoey & Sassafras series (10 books). My daughter LOVED these. Zoey has to figure out how to use science experiments to help magical creatures.
- Princess in Black series (11 books). These were fun to read, although my kids know we don’t keep secrets in our house, so that was worth a conversation. And my then 2-year old did not like that there were monsters.
- A Little Princess. This book is way overhyped in the homeschooling world, in my opinion. I see it recommended everywhere as a read-aloud for young children, but there was rude behavior and snide comments like “stupid, fat, ugly, brat” that I had to skip over many more times than I would have liked. If your child is older, I could see them enjoying this — just not for young elementary age!
Previous homeschool review blog posts:
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