Our kindergarten homeschool year has come to an end and I’m sharing what actually happened versus my original homeschool kindergarten planning!
I hope this post helps you in your own homeschool kindergarten planning!
My oldest child, our 5 year old daughter, started her first official year of homeschool this past fall. And I started my first official year as homeschool mama!
I wrote a blog post last year about our school plans, what curriculum I was planning to use, etc… You can read all about that by clicking HERE!
This post will be explaining what my plans were, versus what really went down.
And it’s not a bad thing that everything didn’t go exactly to plan! I knew they wouldn’t. That’s one of the beautiful things about homeschooling your child is the flexibility to adapt however you need to!
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Now, onto the homeschool kindergarten planning tales!
So, the first thing that I threw out the window was…
Well, not literally, but I did box it up and sell it on eBay to someone else that could enjoy it!
The bulk of the curriculum I had planned to use was a program called A Year of Playing Skillfully. It is a hands on and play based guide for children 3-7 years old. You can read about it and see it in this blog post.
I quickly realized (I’m pretty sure it was about 3 days in), that this just wasn’t for us.
Reason #1
It felt like very intense preparation for the parent… Lots of supplies, lots of projects and wonderful stuff that looked amazing… But I had a one year old baby that was into absolutely everything in the house and I just couldn’t swing all the moving parts to this curriculum. I felt totally overwhelmed.
Reason #2
I found that my 5 year old daughter just was a bit beyond most of the ideas and she was needing more structured learning at that point.
I think it would have been great for her at about 3 years old and I’m wondering if my little almost 2 year old boy would actually do well with it next year or the year after! I may give it a try then, who knows! But there again, it’s wonderful to have the freedom to say “This isn’t working, let’s try something else!”
Plus, most homeschool supplies have a decent resale value, so a lot of the time you can get your money back and use it to try something else!
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The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts program
This was my next largest component to the school year and my daughter loved this and sailed right through the first book and actually went on to complete the next level as well this year!
As I explained in my post at the beginning of the year, The Good and the Beautiful language art books include reading, writing, literature, spelling, grammar, vocabulary, geography and art!
*They are also usually about one grade level ahead and are very good at teaching a lot of content in a very condensed way.
Ace completed the Pre-K level in the fall, and then also the K Primer level. I have the K level all ready to go in the fall. If she completes that during the year, we will move right onto the next level.
The K-Primer book started to teach her to read and she has been reading small early reader books. We will continue to work on her reading skills over the summer… She reading to me and I to her!
So, The Good and the Beautiful was a success!
Next up is Bible and Math.
We focused on memorizing some short scriptures that I wrote on index cards from this book, and she was able to do a really good job at this! We also read from several bible story books, and Uncle Arthur’s Story Time, which teaches children biblical truths and values through stories of children like themselves, and choices they make and lessons they learned from them.
My goal of using Happy Hymnody‘s wonderful, free, monthly hymn resources to sing and learn together lasted only about 3 months. I just dropped the ball on it, nothing else. I am going to try again though! I love the old hymns and they are so precious to be able to pull from memory and sing anytime you like. I know many, but usually just the chorus and maybe one verse. I would love to learn some great hymns together as a family, so we will aim for that again this year!
Math is something that we incorporated into normal daily life, mostly as I had planned, and she picked up on the main concepts I wanted to hit pretty effortlessly. We counted everything, practiced writing numbers and adding groups of things together and subtracting from them. She loves to build patterns and designs with tiles and geometric shapes. As predicted, I didn’t use a curriculum until the end of the the school year. I purchased The Good and the Beautiful K Math set this spring. We are doing that a few times a week through the summer and so far the lessons are very simple for her. But I would rather take our time and give her a firm grasp of the basics before rushing on. I predict we will start the level 1 math later on in the school year.
Science and Nature was next on the list and I failed at my plans.
I totally failed at all my grandiose nature journaling and Exploring Nature with Children plans. We did a few months and then… I don’t know what happened but all I can remember is that one year old baby I mention previously! Haha!
It was a FAY-LUR. Failure.
But that’s ok. We played outside a ton, she examined bugs and held worms and beetles and ladybugs… She stomped in creeks and we read lots of books about nature and animals… We started seeds inside for our garden, she played in water and sand and got covered in mud…
Another goal for next year. More science-y stuff!
Art
Watercolor painting was the biggest hit. We actually used The Joy of Watercolor book quite a bit and painted together.
We also read a lot of books about art and artists, a favorite being Linnea in Monet’s Garden. This is a book I grew up with myself and I just adore the story! I blame my obsession with all things impressionism, waterlilies and France on this book.
I WILL ONE DAY GO TO GIVERNY.
Oops, sorry, off topic. (Teehee. I just have to repeat that to myself once in awhile!)
Music
Music was a big part of our days. We listen to a broad range of styles and love to sing and dance together. My 5 year old daughter can recognize Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture and say “Mama, that’s Tchaikovsky!”, AND she can pick out Dolly Parton’s voice like nobody’s business. So yeah… That hits all the areas I’m worried about. Check. I’m pretty proud of that! HAHA!
I find most of my classical music on YouTube and some from the library. We listen to Pandora some and we also just have a large variety of cds at home to choose from.
Handicraft is something that is a Charlotte Mason must have and oops! Did I fail at that too?!
Yes.
I wanted to weave with Ace this year on our little loom but kinda largely failed at that as well.
But! She did lots of bead stringing, play dough and clay sculpting, watercolor painting, cutting and collaging, making decorations for her dollhouse, and well, all those things that 5 year olds come up with to do on their own. When she spends time with my mom, she gets to make crafts and use Nana’s card making supplies sometimes and she always talks about how good Nana is at card making! (Thanks for filling in some of the gaps, mommy!)
And finally… BOOKS! I most certainly did not fail at this!
We went to our local library every 1-2 weeks and filled our wagon full of books and music and audio books!
Hundreds of books read this year, and many audio stories listened to.
I like to refer to The Good and the Beautiful book list occasionally and get ideas for books that are wholesome and worthwhile.
We love to listen to audio books in the car on cd as we travel around. We have been going through the Little House series the last few months and the whole family can enjoy it!
Go Shopping from this Homeschool Kindergarten Planning Post:
Lots of Helpful Links in Last Year’s Blog Post
The Good and the Beautiful curriculum
The Joy of Watercolor by Emma Block
ABC Bible Verses – Hiding God’s Word in Little Hearts
Pin this for later!
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You May Also Like:
Homeschool Kindergarten Plans 2018-2019
4 Reasons Kids Should Do It Themselves
4 Ways To Wear Your Kids Out In The House
Head over to my Fall 2018 post to see all the links and resources that I mentioned and some I didn’t.
Happy summer friends! Best wishes as you do your own homeschool kindergarten planning.
Dig the Good Life!
Love,
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