Kindergarten homeschool curriculum choices

All right here goes.  I’ve done a lot of thinking, and I like everything we’ve chosen for our kindergarten homeschool curriculum.  I’m pretty confident these are all choices we’re going to stick with for several years.

Hi! Future Ticia 2023 here, I’m updating this post with what happened, and if we stuck with that curriculum (spoiler, we stuck with very few of these kindergarten homeschool curriculum choices, some didn’t last the year).

(I will be adding in affiliate links in here)

Organizing Kindergarten

I’m going to tell you right now, I didn’t have a schedule. As a matter of fact, I did not have a schedule for most of their homeschool careers, instead we had routines. This event followed this event, which followed this one, and if one took longer or was shorter, it did not mess up a schedule. We did eventually evolve into a 20-minute schedule, but if you want a more formal kindergarten schedule head over to daily homeschool schedule for kindergarten.

Reading curriculum choices

As I’ve mentioned before we’re using Reading A to Z and I still like it, but have come to the conclusion my kids need more than a bare-bones approach that I’ve been using.  They’re very much audio-kinesthetic learners, and while this would work for someone who’s good at just sitting and learning, this isn’t working for them.  My subscription is good through May, so I’m going to keep downloading and saving to my computer for future homeschool curriculum use, but I’m going to add in a more structured lesson set with games and music, Sing Spell, Read, and Write.  I found a great deal through the Homeschool Buyer’s Coop and bought it at half off.  Otherwise, I wouldn’t have even considered it and we’d probably be struggling for a while longer while I looked for something different.  This will be our reading curriculum for the next two years.  I spent enough I sure as heck better stick to it.

Future Ticia 2023 says, Sing, Spell, Read, and Write was a horrible fit. Within a few lessons, the “stories” for the kids to read were 50 pages long, and it was terrible. Not to mention that part of the teacher’s manual was on a VHS player. I did not have a VHS player, I had to find one to borrow so I could watch it.

I switched to All About Reading, I LOVE that curriculum, depending on how much your student already knows their phonetic sounds you can either start them on All About Pre-Reading, which had come out after my kids already knew their sounds, so we ended up starting with All About Reading Level 1 in first grade.

For writing, I’m going to finish up some workbooks we have, and then use the Jan Brett tracer pages to reinforce more.  If you haven’t checked out her site, it’s AWESOME!  She has so many activities to go with her books and for school use.  Be prepared to use a lot of ink when you go there.

Future Ticia 2023 here, we eventually ended up using Handwriting Without Tears for working on handwriting and picked up the Teacher’s Manual, which I would just as soon leave off knowing what I do now. We got the wooden pieces, which I can only find the teacher magnetic version on Amazon unless you want to buy the full Mat Man kit (which is probably worth it if your kids are staggered, so you’ll be using this for years). I guess the other option is the new roll-a-dough tool. If you can find the wooden pieces, they are great for building letters and kids who need to move.

Math

I’ve mentioned before I’m using Math U See, and we continue to love it.  Right now I’ve put on hold continuing lessons until they’re better at writing numbers.  They could keep going, but I got tired of them telling me the answer, my writing it, and then they’re tracing it.

To practice this, I’m thinking I’ll just print off the Jan Brett tracer pages rather than buying a workbook.  I’ve got plenty of workbooks already, and I just need to make them sit and write, write, write.  Which they won’t like, but there are some parts of learning that aren’t fun.  Just like there are some parts of life that aren’t fun.

Science

We’ve already started going through this, but we’re using Apologia Science Flying Creatures.  I first saw it reviewed over at Homeschool Creations and fell in love with the idea behind it.  It covers one topic per year and covers it thoroughly, unlike most elementary textbooks.  When I was teaching elementary school, most of the teachers (and this is me included) didn’t really use the textbook for more than a guideline of what to teach, and we found picture books to teach the same topic.  This lets me have a science textbook that is actually useful.

My plan to document how they’re learning is to create a notebook of what they’ve learned.  I picked up some lapbook templates from Currclick using a gift certificate I won from Chasing Cheerios (Bird Notebooking pages, Insect mini-books, and ready-to-assemble lap-books) (Currclick is now out of business, and honestly I would not bother with it for kindergarten now).  I’m also going to continue with the Science Journal Jeff started with them last week.  I’m thinking they’ll draw what we read about each day and as they’re writing, write a sentence.

And as always we’ll continue to post about this in my weekly linky Science Sunday.

History

We’re using the Mystery of History primarily.  I LOVE it, seriously.  Have you seen what we’ve done so far for Ancient History?  I had picked up The Story of the World, but didn’t like the way it was written, it just rubbed me the wrong way.  It’s not bad, just not for me.  But, I do like the activity supplements to go with it.  So, my plan is to use some of those when it works with our lesson for the day.

Future Ticia 2023, we stuck with this. We went through it more or less twice. The kids still talk about what we did, and The Artist (formerly Princess) says making a chicken mummy is one of her core memories.

Geography

For geography, we’re going to continue through the United States.  We’re slowly making our way through the 50 states, we’ve covered 8 so far (I think, but I want to go back to Colorado I have no documentation of what we did really).  As part of my gift certificate I picked up some of Teacher Book Bag’s United States stuff, which is apparently mostly in their $1 and 50 cent section).  I thought to use some of that as a game for the kids to play.

History and Geography I’ll link over to Debbie’s Geography/History linkie at Children Grow, Children Explore, Children Learn.

Future Ticia stuck with the United States Geography, but this didn’t stick as well with my kids as our history and science lessons, so we ended up repeating many states we had studied earlier. We ended up using United States Geography notebooking pages (a remake of one I bought from someone no longer on the internet).

Art

I’m slacking here.  I’m just going to use the artwork we create in our different projects in other areas (think of all the artwork we’ll cover in history alone!).  That and the stuff we do in stART (over at A Mommy’s Adventures, a blog which no longer exists), which I admit is mostly crafts if you want to get technical.

Future Ticia 2023: This is what we stuck with, and slowly formalizing it into Artist Studies.

PE

My kids run around enough right now that I’m not too worried about them.  Me, that’s another matter.  I’m trying to figure out how to get back into going to the gym and manage the school schedule I want to keep up.

Well, that’s our plan for the year.  I will hook this up to Mama to 3 Blessings when she gets the curriculum post up.