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What do you use for your Kindergartener?


m0mmaBuck
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I pulled DS from PS in the 2nd grade so starting from the beginning is new territory for me. My DD loves school. She even asks to "do school" on the weekend. At this point we do a lot of reading. She knows her numbers and letters, letter sounds, and can read some simple words. She loves math and can do simple addition/subtraction (+/- 1 or 2), greater than/less then, and so on. She loves dot-to-dots, mazes, color by number, counting, matching..... She likes history, science, Latin..... Whatever DS does, she wants to do to.

 

So.... looking ahead to next year, I am thinking she may want some actually curriculum for some subjects (math in particular but also maybe language). She likes workbooks but also likes hands on activities (loves SOTW and all it's projects, arts and crafts, games). I don't necessarily want a full-blown intensive curriculum for all subjects but I think she is going to want more structure/"real school" as we head into kindergarten-age.

 

What do you like and why?

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we didnt do any curriculum for K with DS5.

But if I knew about Handwriting without tears i would do that :)

 

we did Kumon 2+ books (all of them at the same time) - 1 page a day from all 8 books. Its kind of like arts and crafts - coloring, cutting, folding, pasting....

 

I cut my own shapes to teach him shapes.

 

I cut my own manipulative objects to show wide and narrow, long and short and other things like that.

 

We did a lot of buttons sorting - by color, by attribute, by shape and such...

 

We did a lot of letter writing on paper (and numbers). When we wrote letter we talked about its sounds.

 

We started reading books when i realized he knew all the sounds....

 

That was easy.... with no curriculum

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With my oldest, I used Miquon, the first Developmental Math book, Building Thinking Skills Primary (the one with the attribute blocks, cubes, and all that), OPGTR, and Handwriting Without Tears. We read a lot of picture books, including books about various countries and scientific topics. Occasionally we got one of those "Cooking the X Way" books about a country from the library and tried a recipe.

 

Ds is doing K this year. We have been using Right Start, Miquon, Handwriting Without Tears, and OPGTR. We also decided to go ahead and do SOTW 1 with him. And, of course, we've read a lot of books. :)

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We used My Father's World K for my first two (well, we started to anyway, then dropped it... good program, lousy implementation on my part), but this time I think we're going a different route. I'm using TOG now and I just can't see me doing 2 unit studies for the kids. So, when my next starts K, we're going to do The Phonics Road for him, MUS Primer, and then just sort of start to include him in on everything else if he wants to. For his reading and such, I'll read to him from the TOG LG book list. We'll use A Reason for Handwriting K, too.

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Right now, my 5yo is just using the Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading, and Singapore Math's Kindergarten Early Bird standards edition. One of the side effects of his medical issues is that his memory is VERY poor. So we're just plugging along with the memory stuff in OPGTR and trying to stretch his memory skills a bit.

 

I also own the Rod and Staff workbooks (except for the Bible storybook). They're perfect for kindergarten seatwork, I think.

 

I'm thinking that next year I might go with Sonlight's P4/5 core. My oldest daughter used Sonlight's Core K many years ago, and I loved all the reading for K. My middle two used K12's Kindergarten, which I absolutely ADORE (especially the history and literature), but I don't think my little guy will be able to handle that just yet.

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My K'er is doing the beginning parts of Phonics Road, McRuffy K math and listening in to read alouds with the other kiddo's. He does science/history/pe/art at co-op. I don't do formal content subjects with my youngers...they just tag along with whatever the older ones are doing and plenty of read aloud time.

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we did Kumon 2+ books (all of them at the same time) - 1 page a day from all 8 books. Its kind of like arts and crafts - coloring, cutting, folding, pasting....

 

We've already been through most of the Kumon books under a 1st grade level. She had a lot of fun with them.

 

I also own the Rod and Staff workbooks (except for the Bible storybook). They're perfect for kindergarten seatwork, I think.

 

 

We will be finishing up this series this spring. She really liked these as well.

 

 

I may look into 1st grade level for some of the Kumon books. Maybe Rod and Staff and Singapore as well.... She just loves to have workbooks to work in while DS does his seatwork.

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Started out not using specific curriculum. Mostly read alouds and some writing/math activities. We also played with OPGTR.

 

As their skills have improved, we (ds6 and dd4) are moving into move structure. We are using Phonics Road (SLOWLY! lol ), doing YR2 with TOG (adapted), Math U See plus my ds11 is doing a math activities with them, Elemental Science Intro to Science, art class with dd9. They also join in with olders on field trips, projects, etc.

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We are doing Phonics Pathways, Right Start A and HWT. And lots of reading (both DD reading and me reading aloud) playing, exploring etc. Short lessons and lots of time outside. Very happy with how our year has gone so far!

 

I picked our reading lists from AO, Sonlight, and Veritas Press and favorites people mentioned here!

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I use what is listed in my signature. We are particularly fond of Singapore (with Challenging Word Problems) and Horizons Math. We just completed Sonlight Science K last week and enjoyed that. Noeo begins on Tuesday!! We are also going to move onto BJU Bible Truths K5 next month.

Edited by MissKNG
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I have just made final decisions and ordered. yay!!!

This is what we will be doing for K:

 

OPGTR/ETC

HWT K

Rightstart Math A

Elemental Science- Intro to science

Artistic Pursuits K-3

Song School Latin - very, very slowly

Lots and lots of books/with lapbooks from homeschool share

For History I am just using What your K'er need to know and adding some books.

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RS A

Narration

HWT Grade 1

Prehistory

Religion (we are secular, studying religions from around the world)

Composer Study

Artist Study

Nature Study

Bird Study

FLL

 

She already reads very well so no phonics. I just have her read out loud from a chapter book and if she needs help with a word now and then.

 

Good luck!

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We do Five In A Row for Kindy. It covers literature, science art, geography.....and a lot more. I add handwriting, phonics and math to it.

Take Care,

Kim

:iagree: After going through K once with my eldest, my plan for my next one is FIAR and SWR. I don't even think that math is very important for K, except for learning how to count.

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Here is what we have planned (classical with heavy CM):

 

McRuffy Color Math (supplemented with Miquon)

MCP Plaid Phonics (supplemented with Little Stories for Little Folks)

CHC Handwriting K

Beautiful Feet Early American History

Real Science Odyssey Astronomy (supplemented with living books)

Sube Spanish

Artistic Pursuits K-3 Book 1

Who Am I (Kolbe Academy Religion)

Nature Study (mostly planting a garden and taking hikes)

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We have used OPGTR (added progressivephonics.com this year), HWOT Pre-K and K, Singapore Earlybird Kindergarten Math (old version and now standards version). They listen in on history (MOH) and "help" with science experiments (from elemental science) with the older kiddos. Lots of free play!

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File Folder Games are a great activity for this age. You can go online for some ideas as well as some freebies. Anything that can be counted and sorted is great (buttons, colored paper clips, pop beads, etc.) They can be used for patterning, beginning math concepts (how many ways can you make 10?), etc.

 

If your dd wants something "more" then you might check into getting her a simple lapbook going. There are plenty of sites with freebies & ideas for those online. Just do a google search.

 

Lots of reading/books is always a good thing.

 

HTH!

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  • 3 months later...

:bigear:

we will be focusing mostly on the three R's , but I am always curious to see what others are doing to see if there are other things I can incorporate.

So far we're going to use MUS alpha, HWOT, and alphaphonics, plus Children's garden of the Theotokos. Of course we will include tons of good read aloud and I'm considering starting a family nature notebook where we all decide what goes in it and I do most of the writing and drawing until DS is confident enough to take over.

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It's in my siggy. It's pretty much the same thing I used with my oldest. I focus on the 3Rs and add SL P4/5 for Bible, read alouds and science. I go at their own pace in reading and math. My oldest sped through math at that age but my new K'er is much more advanced in reading. All of our curriculum choices allow flexibility which is important to me.

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Here's what my K'er is finishing up:

 

Faith:

New Catholic Children’s Bible

Catholic Prayer Book for Children

Saints stories (various)

Memorisation

English:

Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading

Copywork and memorisation

Math:

Miquon Orange and Red

Art:

Drawing, painting, etc.

Appreciation

Music:

Violin

Appreciation and Biographies

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I'm just finishing up the second round of kindergarten. I've used:

Handwriting without Tears

Reading Reflex w/lots of early readers

Singapore Math w/lots of manipulatives

 

Beyond that we just spent lots and lots of time reading aloud. I let my kindergartners choose all their own read-alouds based on their interests, rather than following a curriculum. With my older dd, we read lots of stories and chapter books. With my ds, who is just finishing up K, we read lots of nonfiction about dinosaurs, mammoths, volcanoes, and ancient Rome.

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I haven't read all of the others yet. We have done K a little different for my girls. For the older one who was already reading and doing math:

 

She did R&S math grade 1. I used copywork and a random Walmart workbook for handwriting. We had a little Bible reader with activities I picked up used somewhere. We covered everything else doing little unit studies of typical K subjects. She read real books, starting with Bob books and ending with Magic Treehouse books by the end of K. The last month of K I purchased R&S grade 1 reading and phonics for her first grade work, and we ended up skipping unit 1, and she did unit 2 at the end of K. Then she did units 3-5 over 1st grade interspersed with other reading and WTM style L.A. work.

 

For the next girl: She was working on the R&S preschool/K ABC workbooks. We used Bob books as her readers. I looked at the ABC books for older dd, but they were really below what she was already doing. They were just right for this one. She finished them at the end of the first semester, and then moved slowly into R&S reading and phonics, completing unit 1 of each that semester. I didn't need to do the little K unit studies with her as we were now doing SOTW, and she got a lot of extra from that and all of the other subjects like music, art, and science with her sis. Plus the R&S workbooks really had a lot of sweet, little kid info in them. And the 1st grade reading covers Bible.

 

Both of my girls were in different places for K, but I found a way to use materials that I like with both of them, but still each at their own pace.

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I have a 5 year old boy who is using K materials this year. We will continue to do K this coming school year but with some different publishers.

 

This school year we are doing :

 

The Reading Lesson

Explode the Code (those 3 books before ETC 1)

Singapore EarlyBird Math A & B (finished this a week ago)

A Reason For Handwriting K

Leapfrogs DVDs

Starfall.com

 

Next school year, we will be doing :

 

McRuffy K Math (just started a week ago)

McRuffy K Phonics and Reading along with The Reading Lesson

McRuffy K Handwriting

ETC 1

Continue with Starfall.com.

Will do a little science (Nancy Larson's science) with older sister.

 

I am very excited with our selections for the new school year and have kept some that I thought would be good for us to continue.

 

HTH

 

Julia

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My daughter is 5.5 now and will officially be a kindergartener next year. Our plan is to finish up OPGTR and begin All About Spelling. We'll also continue Handwriting Without Tears, RightStart Math, and Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding.

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