Guiding and Guarding Their Hearts: Kindergarten curriculum choices and other activities going on this year

Kindergarten has started here in the Parker household! I have had a lot of questions about what curriculum we are using. So I thought I would do a special post to share our daily routine,curriculum choices and other activities we have going on this year.

I really wanted to find an all inclusive curriculum this year. Something that required a little less preparation on my part. While teaching my children to read, write and love God is probably the most important priority in my life right now, I do not want the preparation to completely take over my life!

Last year we used this K4 curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler. We really liked it but there was so much preparation involved! I had to print, laminate and cut most everything out before we could use it. (I didn't have to laminate but since we are going to use it again for little sis I did.) So I really wanted to find something this year that required less preparation. In other words, less lamination and more learning.

I looked at many all inclusive curriculums. Sonlight, Abeca, My Father's World, etc. They were all great! But all WAY too expensive! You see, my husband and I made the decision five years ago for me to quit my "paid" teaching job so I could stay home and take care of our kids. It.... might have been a little one-sided. I do recall an incident where I came home from school one day 8 months pregnant, crying, and sniveling something about not being able to leave my 6 month old baby with a complete stranger who had a DOG in her house that might eat my baby.....well you get the drift. Got to love those pregnancy hormones. Back to my point. One paycheck means I CANNOT spend hundreds of dollars on a curriculum.

So, I ended up piecing together a curriculum on my own. And I am glad that I did. While the idea of an all inclusive curriculum is awesome, it probably wouldn't have worked out anyway. Our little school girl is just like any other child. Stronger in some areas and weaker in others. She has always been a "wordy" little person. She knew her entire alphabet by the time she was 1. Identifying letters and everything! But whenever I try and sit down and do a science experiment with her she all the sudden gets ADD. I'm like, "Look! When you do the magnets this way see what happens?" and she's like, "Look, momma! I can make a princess tower (with the magnets)!" Not much interest in science. Breaks my scientific heart. But that's okay! She is my little creative, wordy, and imaginative child and I would hate to try and "box" her in with something that is premade for her age.

So.... here is a peak into our school day. Each item discussed only cost me about $10 or less (with the exception of the Sentence School book), or was free from the internet or my retiring teacher mom. By the way, we are still using the workbox system that I mentioned in this post. So I will do this by what's in our boxes.

We actually start each school day with a routine. I find this focuses my free-spirited child and gets her ready to learn. Our "before the boxes" routine includes...

Saying the pledge of allegiance

Going over our rules for being a Godly person (I made a poster for this and we look at it and briefly discuss it. The rules are listen and obey, be kind and be a helper. We briefly talk about who we listen and obey....God, parents, grandparents, etc. Who to be kind to.....Jesus tells us to love our neighbor, who is our neighbor... our sister, cousins, friends etc. And, who do we help....anyone who needs it!)

Doing the Calendar wall...Here we do several activities that I got from the Confessions of a Homeschooler website. You can find all of them here. Some of them include: the date, days of the week, weather graphing, important information and the seasons.

Box #1: Bible Time

We always start our school day off with Bible time. During this time, we pray, sing songs, go over our memory verses, learn a virtue and have a Bible lesson. Currently, we are using this free Bible curriculum from Apologetics Press. And I found these virtue cards at the end of last year on sale!

Box#2: Sentence School

I spent the most on this but I think it is well worth it! I am going to use it for two children and it covers so many concepts. Sentence school is a really neat curriculum from Handwriting Without Tears. You can find it here. It teaches children vocabulary, conceptual thinking, grammar, spelling, and writing skills. I like it because of the step-by-step lesson planning! Very little preparation involved on my part.

Box #3: Phonics and Phonemic Awareness

We are using a used curriculum that my mother passed down to me. She is a soon-to-be retired reading teacher. She has used many different curriculums to teach reading and claims that this one is the best she has ever used. I really like it because it is also very easy to use with very little preparation! Each lesson is on a big card. There are actually two sections of cards. One for phonics and one for phonemic awareness. And all the cards are in one big box. (It does have other books and materials that came with it that we use from time to time.) We do two cards at a time (one phonics and the other phonemic awareness) until she has mastered the skills and then we move on to the next ones. Since this is a used curriculum and it is sort of ancient, circa 1995, I couldn't find it available anywhere on the Internet...sorry. All I can tell you is the name: Open Court Collections for Young Scholars Phonic and Phonemic Awareness Kit. Also, it is a 1st grade level kit. Remember the bit about her being my "wordy" child. Yep, so far, she is breezing right on through this kit!

Box #4: Handwriting Without Tears (Printing)

There is a lot of really neat and tempting tools you can buy on the HWT website! I decided to just settle on buying the Kindergarten workbook for printing. It has very easy to understand steps on how to write each letter. We are very happy with it so far. You can find it here.

Box #5: Science

I looked at a lot of books about teaching science. I picked out this book from Amazon called Simple Science. It has over 250 science activities for kids. It should last us a while! I love the approach it takes. It doesn't just give you the activity. It leads you through it. Questions to ask, applications to make and even suggested books to go along with each activity. (We have found most of the books from the library!)

Box #6: Math

I found this workbook from Amazon that I liked. I decided on this one because it included simple measuring and graphing pages. Being a science teacher, this was important to me. I can't tell you how many teenage kids I have taught that can't even read a ruler. Or make or read a simple graph.

I also found a couple of really neat websites that would help out with these new Common Core Math guidelines. This website has online games and this website has a bunch of hands-on activities. So we are doing workbook pages, online games and hands-on activities in this box to cover math.

Yes, I know....I don't have to follow Common Core but I do refer to it and I will tell you why. Lord willing, I will be able to teach my children until they are 18 and ready to strike out on there own. But, if anything ever happens to me, I want them to be able to integrate into the local school system as smoothly as possible. And I know, from experience, these things often change. So for now....I will be referring to Common Core (and other state standards) often to make sure we are "up to par" on reading, math, science, etc. Just being prepared people.

Box #7: Spanish

We are not following any serious plan here. We play around with some Dora and Diego flashcards. And get online to play some Dora games on NickJr.com. That's it. I'm in no hurry for my kids to be fluent in a foreign language at the age of 5.

Box #8: Music

We are also not following any curriculum here. We have a music box that has lots of little instruments in it. We play with that sometimes. Other times, we dance to music, do rhymes, etc.

Box #9: Art

I have a couple of art project books for kids that we are using here. They are books that I already had or that my mom passed down to me.

Box #10: Reading Books

And to end our school time, we like to snuggle up and read books. I am looking into doing book studies with this box. I talked to my "reading teacher" mom recently and she told me that they don't just read books in her class. They really get into it and pick it apart. I have been doing some research with this and will hopefully remember to update you soon on that.

I love this workbox system because it keeps us organized! I find that I need all the help I can get these days in staying organized. We don't always do all 10 boxes. For example, Sentence School is only three days a week. And on Tuesdays we have ballet in the afternoon so we only do the essential boxes for the sake of time...Bible, reading, writing, etc.

Our school is by no means restricted to these boxes. We have lots of fun "out of the box" learning opportunities. We are continuing story time at the library, ballet and of course our usual Bible classes with our local congregation.

We also decided to join the local homeschool co-op this year. Once a week we meet up and have a school day there. I teach Physical Science and Chemistry to the big kids and my girls get to go to some fun classes. It is a busy but fun day and we love it! We also get to participate in field trips, sports (eventually), and family fun days.

And, another new thing we started this year is Little Keepers Club. This has been really fun so far. The way I explain it to people is basically this....it's like Girl Scouts except we do not sell cookies and it's more focused on teaching the girls skills that will help them become "keepers" of their own home someday. You can find out all the details from their website. Here is a really cute picture of my little keeper and her group.