Kindergarten 2018-2019

*Affiliate links for the curriculum are used throughout! 

We were excited to begin our homeschool journey this past fall. W and I had already made our way through Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. She loves to paint and color. We were both excited about starting something more formal. I want to briefly share what my curriculum plan has been for this school year, and then I will make additional posts detailing how I liked each specific resource we have used!
I include R in as much as possible throughout the day, but I mostly just let her play since she is only three years old. We are just beginning the Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons book. She already loves sitting down with books and narrating them based on illustrations (just like W did at that age.) We all go to the library as a family once a week. I am confident she will be a strong reader like W! I decided to invest in the Playing Skillfully curriculum for her in the spring semester and have been astounded at the results. I LOVE seeing her smiling and excited about things. <3 I will be writing a post about that curriculum too! Parents of preschoolers will want to check that out.

I decided to include the following subjects for W in the fall:

Bible: For Bible class, I am using a book called Top 50 Instant Bible Lessons for Elementary. We have been using this for the entire school year. It is designed for one lesson per week (like for a Sunday School.) We have enjoyed it, although it is certainly geared toward a class of many children. There are at least 3-4 activities per lesson, and many of them have printouts that you can make copies of. We sing songs and pray every day in addition to doing lessons from this book.

Social Studies: We focused on manners and behavior in the fall of 2018, using a book called The Original 21 Rules of this House, which my own mother used when my siblings and I were young. My children have responded well to this book. We didn't focus on memorizing the rules, although we have been able to refer to them as behavioral issues arise. They liked coloring the pages each day. We will probably go through this book once a year for the foreseeable future.

Reading: W had already completed Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, so I have not focused on reading instruction this year since. I have her read books of her choosing aloud every day. We often read books from the Usborne Very First Reading set. W loves these books and chooses to read them often.

Writing: For the fall, I combined writing with spelling most days. Midway through the semester I got a complete Draw Write Now set, which combines art and writing. I am VERY excited about this book series. But it ended up being way too much writing for W, so we have scaled back quite a bit on it. I love the concept, and I am looking forward to when she is capable and willing to write more.

Spelling: I decided to introduce spelling early on because I felt W was ready. I tried to choose words that related to what we were going to study that week. For example: "God" and "love" from the Bible class, "eyes" and "see" from science, and "one," "two," etc. from math. She did well writing and reading the words, but I didn't notice any retention on actual spelling. She was not quite ready for this yet, so I cut it from the spring lineup.

Math: I began the semester by using some simple worksheets and print-out games from Teachers Pay Teachers. We did a lot of counting. I'm ashamed to admit that when we began kindergarten in the fall, I was not fully on board with using manipulatives, engaging fine and gross motor skills, and allowing her to play to discover some of the math concepts. I have learned a LOT since the fall. I began her on the Math-U-See Primer later in the semester, which she was ready for and did very well with. I LOVE this curriculum. Be on the lookout for a post about it!
Science: I had a difficult time finding any curriculum I liked for science. I have tried to never underestimate my children, and it seemed like all of the science books I found for kindergarten were way too basic (almost insultingly so). As a result, I decided to throw together my own resources. We began the semester studying the states of matter, and then we spent the rest of the semester on the five senses. We used the DK Science Workbook, although I was not as thrilled with it. It didn't include many of the things I was looking for and seemed very basic. W truly enjoyed using it though -- she loves sticker books. I can hope she absorbed some of the content.

Art: I had no formal curriculum for art in the fall of 2018. I let W paint as much as possible. It was totally amazing to watch her painting style evolve over the semester. She went from essentially random strokes to fruity-pebble like paintings. Then she began to draw rainbows near the end of the semester. She started drawing some people as well. It has been difficult to get her to branch out in style or medium. She tends to paint or draw the same things over and over and prefers painting over all other forms of art. I did try to do some of the Draw Write Now with her, which has step-by-step instructions for the drawings, but she became easily frustrated with both the writing and the drawing.

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For the spring semester (based on some of our successes and failures) I made some adjustments and included the following subjects:

Bible: We have continued on with the Top 50 Bible Lessons book. I have been doing 2-3 of these per week. I have also added in some lessons that are not included in the book. For example, so many of the songs we sing talk about how Jesus loves the little children. This book doesn't have a specific lesson on that. I also have been trying to match the story of Easter with the actual Easter holiday. We have been more dedicated this semester about singing worship songs every single day for 15-20 minutes. I also hung up a prayer board for the kids with post-it notes for prayer requests. 

Music: I was incredibly excited to find the Preschool Prodigies program in the spring of 2019. After searching high and low for any kind of children's music program in our area, I was unable to find ANY--including any choirs! This was surprising and upsetting, so I made the decision to invest in the Preschool Prodigies program. I have not regretted it for one second. The kids have been learning about notes, rhythm, and solfege. They look forward to the videos every day, and they know much more about music than I did at their age. I am ridiculously excited for them. The program has lessons for percussion and wind currently (bells and recorder) and they will be adding a ukulele section soon. Be sure to check out my blog posts on this awesome program! It is expensive but absolutely worth it.

Math: We are mixing and matching math this semester. W will be finished with the Math-U-See Primer at the end of the semester with no difficulty, at which point she should be comfortable adding and subtracting most things, including tens and hundreds. She worked through the Pete the Cat Math book quickly becuase she LOVED it like crazy. I can't recommend that one enough -- wish it was ten times bigger! I added in some Kumon workbooks. I have loved the Kumon workbooks because they have a certificate at the end. W loves collecting those certificates! The Kumon Simple Addition and Simple Subtraction books are really VERY simple. Just adding and sutracting 1s and 2s from larger numbers, but I think it's helpful for her to do a page or two a day to stay sharp. They aren't super fun or exciting, but doing one page per day is important for us. I also have her doing a few pages of the School Zone Big Book of Math. The math in this book is more of a challenge for her, but I love the colors and illustrations. She enjoys the variety. Most days, she tells me that the math is very easy for her. She loves to use different-colored markers to make it fun. She has a good attitude about math if I can keep mixing it up. Doing only Math-U-See would not have been effective for her this semester even though we love it. 


Reading: We have continued with casual reading this semester. I am not doing any sort of phonics program since W is so ahead on reading. I let her read what she wants. She reads with or without me sitting next to her. She can read almost anything -- I am constantly amazed at her ability. We have started reading bilingual books together. She will read the English part, and I will read the Spanish part. I don't feel the need to buy any kind of reading curriculum for her at this point. We will occasionally do some fun exercises to reinforce phonics concepts, but for the most part, this is a very casual subject for us.

Writing: Writing has been a little bit of a challenge for us. W was getting in enough writing in the spring with her spelling lists, but since I cut that I needed something to replace it with. I found a couple of books she has mostly enjoyed. I like the Success With Writing Scholastic book. It introduces punctuation and parts of speech and has students writing very short sentences. I have her do one or maybe two pages from this book every few days. I also like using the Kumon Writing book. It starts out with tracing and then moves on to some simple spelling words and sentence editing. I have had to work hard not to burn W out on writing. She strongly prefers reading. But we try to "sneak in" a little writing each day. 

Science: I was thrilled to find an awesome anatomy unit book called My Body from Teacher Created resources. The kids lay down on butcher paper/newsprint paper and have their body traced. Then the book has reproducable organs with short descriptions. The kids color, cut, and paste them onto the body in the appropriate place. It makes anatomy and physiology so real for them. We have done 1-2 organs per week. The kids really love it and have learned a LOT. We plan to finish up with organs and move on to a few weeks of gardening/plants to finish out the semester. I haven't located any one particular resource to use for that yet. One book that is an inspiration to us is Planting a Rainbow. 
*Check out my Teachers Pay Teachers store for some review sheets for A&P if interested: Litmosphere Resources

Health: Our Social Studies this semester focuses on history and civics more than manners, so I decided to add in a health and physical education class. We are using PreK-K Health, Nutrition and P.E. It has lots of great lessons on a variety of subjects -- dental hygiene, exercise, fire safety, etc. I have done my best to coordinate it with our science. The activities and worksheets are simple but are good supplements. We use lots of YouTube videos to fill out our health class. 

Spanish: As long as I can remember I have wanted to be bilingual. The majority of the population where we live speaks Spanish, so my family is actually at a disadvantage by not speaking Spanish. I purchased a book called The Complete Book of Starter Spanish, which is AMAZING and has tons of worksheets covering colors, shapes, common phrases, etc. W absolutely loves doing these worksheets. She has learned a lot of vocabulary. We also check out bilingual books from the library and try to read one each day. I have had them watch bilingual shows such as Handy Manny. I just ordered the Muzzy DVDs, so we will see how the kids like those. I have tried to use complete Spanish sentences as much as possible with them (although I would NOT consider myself bilingual.) We are learning together and searching for more resources to promote bilingualism.  

Social Studies: I chose a book from the "180 Days of..." series for Social Studies this semester. Like with Science, I truly struggled to find any sort of history curriculum for kindergarten that wasn't stupidly basic. I settled on 180 Days of Social Studies for First Grade (because of her reading level). It includes history, civics, economics, and geography. I love that it includes a variety. It has been a really fun book for us. Interestingly enough, the history section is the weakest of all of them. It's very choppy and not put in any sort of chronological order, which I personally find irritating. But the other lessons about maps, economics, and being a good citizen are awesome. I am very glad to have stumbled upon this book.  

Preschool: I can't make a post about our curriculum without mentioning the awesome preschool curriculum we invested in. The Homegrown Preschooler curriculum has been an amazing resource for us. I purchased A Year of Playing Skillfully and A Summer of Playing Skillfully together and put them into one binder for a complete year. It includes tons of awesome sensory ideas, science experiments, creative art projects, activities for emotional and social and development, literacy resources, and more. After doing just a few of the suggested activities, I saw HUGE results in both R and W. I love seeing smiles on their faces. Even doing simple things like painting outside helps introduce a note of novelty into their lives. This curriculum is a large investment but totally worth it.

Check out the Prodigies Program Here! 

Check out my Teachers Pay Teachers Store: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Litmosphere-Resources