Kindergarten aka K scheduling / schedule question

[mhg]

(I put all the words in that thread title so that it'll show up in a search on this matter as my own attempt to find a thread on this has proven feckless; I'm sure they're out there somewhere.)

_____________________

 

This is our first year homeschooling. My son is 5 so we've just begun K.

 

We focus on phonics, math and handwriting and we do some side orders of geography, science, miqoun, mazes, whatnot.

 

I naively began school thinking, "OK.....in public school, the kids likely get MAYBE 2 hours of hard instructional time...the rest of the time is 'Let's get in line for snack time', roll call, recess, naptime, and other non-educational time.'

 

In light of this "reasoning" (based on having never observed a K classroom....just my guessing). My goal was to get in 2 hours of instructional time (not including our read-aloud times). I thought we could start at 8:00 and be done by 10:00. This proved to be some major wishful thinking as my son's attention span just didn't cooperate. We're down to several 20 minute sessions.

 

Curious as to others' thoughts on

1. Which subjects you do

2. Actual time spent instruction/school per subject

3. Scheduling

4. In short, whatever you can say on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks!

[Alice]

You are going to get a lot of posts from people telling you to relax and take it easy in K. At least, that's what happened to me everytime I had a question about Kindergarten. I personally always found that a little frustrating as I felt like we were relaxed and I just wanted an answer to whatever the question was.

 

That said... I think you can relax for K. :)

 

For K I did phonics, math and handwriting. We did each one in short sessions, maybe 10-20 minutes each. About 5-10 minutes of handwriting, about 15-20 minutes of phonics and about 15-30 minutes of math (the longer time was if we were playing games).

 

Our typical day started with reading at breakfast. Then we'd do the 3 R's before lunch. Usually we'd do some kind of break in between any seat work. Either a snack break or an outside play time or a Lego break or something. Then during and after lunch I'd read some more. We used Five in a Row for K so I'd do whatever FIAR activity we were going to do sometime in the afternoon.

 

I didn't really schedule beyond scheduling the FIAR books so I could get them and other go-alongs from the library. In terms of the 3 R's we just did the next thing, going slower when my son needed and faster when he was able.

 

One main thing I'm learning better each year is to give up the idea of "being done" at a certain time. We do try and get most of the traditional school type of stuff done in the morning, but I find that I do better if I just have an attitude of school being part of our life. We "do" school all day, some is more at the table with a pencil and paper and some is more outside watching bugs but it's all learning. We have better days when I stop worrying about getting things done on a particular schedule or timetable. I've realized one reason we homeschool is because I want my kids to have an attitude that learning is fun. I want them to get out of the mindset that learning is something we do at a particular time and place and more that it's something we do all the time for life. It's something that goes against my own nature as I'm a pretty schedule driven checklist kind of girl. It's something I struggle with still but that I'm getting better at.

 

And yes, I wish I had listened more to the people who told us to relax more. :)

[newlifemom]

(I put all the words in that thread title so that it'll show up in a search on this matter as my own attempt to find a thread on this has proven feckless; I'm sure they're out there somewhere.)

_____________________

 

This is our first year homeschooling. My son is 5 so we've just begun K.

 

We focus on phonics, math and handwriting and we do some side orders of geography, science, miqoun, mazes, whatnot.

 

I naively began school thinking, "OK.....in public school, the kids likely get MAYBE 2 hours of hard instructional time...the rest of the time is 'Let's get in line for snack time', roll call, recess, naptime, and other non-educational time.'

 

In light of this "reasoning" (based on having never observed a K classroom....just my guessing). My goal was to get in 2 hours of instructional time (not including our read-aloud times). I thought we could start at 8:00 and be done by 10:00. This proved to be some major wishful thinking as my son's attention span just didn't cooperate. We're down to several 20 minute sessions.

 

Curious as to others' thoughts on

1. Which subjects you do

2. Actual time spent instruction/school per subject

3. Scheduling

4. In short, whatever you can say on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks!

 

May I start by saying, I love your word choice, feckless! :D I will now go back and actually read this thread. :auto:

[newlifemom]

Ok as for actual advice [fwiw, as I only have one son]:

 

Yeah, you can be done with all 'seat' work in less than two hours. However, it may well be that it is a broken up two hours.

 

I would keep actual sitting down to tasks to less than 20 mins and build from there.

 

I won't tell you to relax, but . . . :tongue_smilie:

 

I did wayyyyyy too much with my first, and even with the next two, which I did together. This year, dd is doing math, in stages and phonics. Oh and I bought R&S penmanship so she will do a page a day. Other than that, only what she leads and I am relaxing.

[NanceXToo]

I'm one of those relax and take it easy in K people lol. I expect that we will spend about an hour (maybe sometimes a little more) doing K, and if we need to break it down into sessions of 15 or 20 minutes, that's fine! I want to have an engaged kid who is into what we are doing rather than trying to push a restless or disinterest kid along for extended periods of time. We're really just going to go with the flow and see how it goes. No particular time period, just whenever it seems convenient.

[meggie]

My guess is that he has more problem doing the two hours straight than he does with the amount of work you have going for him. Last year was our first practice year of kindergarten. I found that it helps to have a break in between subjects. Do a subject, do some chores, do a subject, have a snack, do a subject, play outside, etc.

 

This year is our second practice year of kindergarten. We'll be doing handwriting, spelling, grammar, math, reading, geography and science.

 

Handwriting takes 5-10 minutes, depending on how many pages and how much coloring he wants to do. This will be our first year of spelling, so I don't know how long that will take. We're using FLL for grammar, so about 5 minutes. We're pretty much done with OPGTR, so we'll be reading to each other for who knows how long. I also got some audio books that he can listen to during his quiet time. Math takes about 15-20 minutes depending on how much he doodles. Geography won't be added until later, but it's going to be pretty simple, maybe half hour twice a week. Same for science.

 

I scheduled everything into the free version of homeschool tracker. The plan is to print off a weekly checklist and just mark it off when we get done.

[FairProspects]

We break after every subject, even if it is just for a few minutes. Just the idea of a snack, a quick bounce on the trampoline, or the chance to put together a lego creation sustains ds through the lesson. I don't think homeschooling would work for us without breaks.

 

That said, at age 7, I can now combine 2 activities if they are short (such as WWE copywork & a page of cursive letter practice), between breaks and I never could have done this with ds at age 5 so it does get better.

[Caterpiller]

I haven't started yet. :D:D:D So you should take my opinion with a grain of salt. :lol:

 

We are going to start on the 5th of September. My child GENERALLY has a great attention span. I hope to knock out her school work in the morning. In saying that though, my idea of kindergarten may be different then yours.

 

I am splitting it up into 2 years.

 

I have a board that will have the calander, weather, counting and skip counting, and her sign language alphabet on it. It will also have a monthly memory verse. Eventually some of the board work will also be done in sign language as a way to add our vocabulary in. I will go straight from board work to our bible story. She will have a bible story every day and a coloring page to go with it. (My child is OBSESSED with crayons) I will have her tell me her Bible story back in her own words. Straight from coloring we will work on sign language since its an "active" lesson. Then we will take a break and have a snack. After that we will do phonics. Followed by some copy work. Right now copy work is the alphabet and her name. She can write her name in print, but I have decided to start cursive with her. Thats the end of most days :D

 

I don't expect this to take more then 2 hours. I think a little work every day in each subject (even if its 5 minutes.) Is better then developing a early disdain for school.

 

IF she wants to do more and it is tuesday-thursday we can do more math using buttons. But I won't push that until her 2nd year of kindergarten. If it is monday or friday and we still have plenty of time and she is still eager, I have crafts and science projects we can do as well, and LOTS of color pages, connect the dots, color by number, mazes, and "finding like objects". LOL :)

[skueppers]

I posted our Kindergarten schedule on another recent thread:

 

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=301585

 

I don't think it's unusual for a 5-year-old to need a lot of breaks!

[theYoungerMrsWarde]

My ds refuses to take breaks between subjects, so I'm no help there :tongue_smilie:

 

Doing just reading, math, and handwriting is taking 1 1/2-2 hours, with the time flying, so again, not much help there.

 

We are sticking to those three subjects for the first "official" month. Each month after that to December I will add a new subject. For September I am adding "The Nature Connection: An Outdoor Workbook for Kids, Families, and Classrooms" for science to do on the weekends. For October I will add FFL1 if ds has finished his K level reading. That way I ease us both into it, without overwhelming us.

 

I hope there was something helpful in there. If not, at least I can give you a :grouphug:

[*Lulu*]

I am in the easy does it camp with mine. Truly if you did nothing other than read like crazy, interact purposely whenever you got a teaching moment, and played some edu-tainment games you would have given your child a great K experience.

 

I pushed too hard with my first, and it caused some backlash. With my next I wanted to back off more, but because older brother was "doing school" she wanted to do the same. So I have compromised; my K students do school like the big kids, but I intersperse the core curriculum with the fluffy fun.

 

For example:

 

Math

Mosaic sticker activity

Writing w/o tears

Sensory tub

All About spelling

Lacing cards

Listening center

File folder game

 

The above is an example of how our seat work time might go. We do our read alouds first thing each morning after breakfast, then take a break for chores. After that we do our group work, (science, history, etc), then take a break to do something active. When that break is over everyone grabs a snack and heads to do their individual seat work. (see above list) If everyone is focused, we are done by lunch so we are talking four hours. (The older ones may take longer, but the pre K/K are usually done by lunch.)

 

Give yourself a couple of months to find a groove that works for you and your son. It WILL come. :grouphug:

[lea1]

We just started our K year this past Monday and this is my first time at homeschooling. I have two sons who are almost 6. One will be 6 at the end of September and the other on November 11.

 

We start our day around 9:00, after the boys have had time to play and I have had some time to clean up the kitchen after breakfast and throw in a load of laundry. Today we actually started on time at 9:00 and went straight through, although the boys did get a snack at one point and they ate it while we worked. It took us about an hour and a half today to do the following:

 

Our first subject is Bible study / devotion and we all sit together on the living room couch. We practice a scripture memory verse and they are also memorizing a character card (the ones that were recently discussed so much on this forum). So we go over those real quick and then we read from our little devotion book (Leading Little Ones to God).

 

Next we move to the kitchen island counter and the boys update their calendar with the current date (so, 17 for today) and they update their 100's chart with the next number (today was 3) showing how many days we have had school so far. Then they start writing their letters. We are using Handwriting Without Tears and they do one page, front and back (so two letters), each day. And then they normally want to color the small picture on the bottom of the page.

 

Next we move to the kitchen table to do some quick phonics work (this is when they got their snacks). We are using The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading and we are somewhere around lesson 80 I believe. When we started it, the boys did not like the book so I work ahead and I put the words and sentences/paragraphs on index cards, which they really like. I also add notes for myself if I need them. This allows us to do our lesson pretty much anywhere, it is quick and easy and they like 'winning' the card when the sound out the word correctly and counting how many they have at the end. We had taken some time off from this so we have spent our first couple of days doing a bit of review before moving on to new material today.

 

We go through our phonics lesson so quickly that these first couple of days I am also covering a lesson from All About Spelling (Level 1). We are just at the beginning three steps so that has gone very quickly too. Once we ramp up on AAS and OPGTR, we may start doing each every other day, rather than doing them both in one day. We'll play that by ear and see how much they can tolerate.

 

Next and last, we do math. We are using Singapore Math 1A. The first unit was very easy so we went through it pretty fast. The second unit will be new and more challenging for the boys so I anticipate that we will slow down quite a bit and may take more time than is outlined in the book. Since we are trying first grade math in Kindergarten, if we need to go a bit slower, I'm ok with that. The boys love math but today I could tell that I had spent too much time on phonics and spelling so I did not cover as much in math.

 

I am playing it by ear and seeing how they do. I try to keep it interactive and quickly moving on to the next thing. So far, they think it is fun and interesting. We will be doing K 4 days a week and our 5th day will be our day for co-op (p.e./zumbatomic and choir), hitting the library, and covering some geography, science and history, as interest leads.

 

Some days we will have to modify our schedule to accommodate other activities. Tuesdays we have violin lessons during the morning so yesterday we did Bible and Writing before, went to violin lessons, came home and had lunch and then we did phonics, spelling and math after lunch.

 

I still have to work in time for them to read to me. I need to find the right readers though. We usually do read alouds before bedtime but I would like to find a little time to read at least one or two chapters earlier in the day. I already feel like there is not enough time in the day and we are really not doing that much yet. But I know we will eventually settle into a solid routine and things will settle down into a comfort zone again (I hope).

 

Sorry this is so long. Hope it helps.

[mhg]

All of your responses have proven very helpful.

Thanks so much!

[KungFuPanda]

I learned the hard way that what takes a 5 year old 15 minutes to learn will take that same child only about 5 minutes to learn when they're a few years older. I did a pretty rigid, formal K with my daughter. She handled it well and wasn't damaged for it, but I think we could have done nothing formal that year and she'd be in the exact same place academically that she is today.

 

Everyone told me to relax, but I was too eager to get started with 'real' homeschooling. I sprinted out of the gate and didn't realize I needed to pace myself for a marathon. For K, 30-60 minutes of lessons (broken into short segments) is plenty. If you do math, some sort of LA, and maybe one other thing a day, you'll be fine. I can see creating more structure if you don't have the will power to keep the screens off during the day, but if your child is playing and exploring, then time engaged in active play is infinitely more valuable than formal spelling lessons at this age.