I REALLY need Kindergarten help

[plain jane]

My oldest son is starting K and he's my first child to be so super excited about it that he wants to go to school. :001_huh:

 

I think part of the problem is that we visited the local school and took a look through the K room. :001_rolleyes: Too cute! Even I was nostalgic and wanted to send him. LOL

 

So, here's where I need some help. I *really* need to make his K year fun, hands-on, engaging and still maintain my sanity while teaching my older kids.

 

I want to be able to do neat Kindergarten things with him. Like finger painting but with some sort of end project in mind, not just giving him the paints like I did with the older kids :lol:.

 

I've been looking at some blogs here and there for ideas but I get overwhelmed. Someone had a nice blog where they made an "All About Me" booklet- it was so sweet & I'd love to do something like that but because I'm so busy planning older grades, I really need a curriculum or some sort of planner to get all these great ideas from and have it tell me when to do them. :lol: I don't even know where people get all these great ideas. :confused: Sigh.

 

Here's my curriculum plans: (he's 5)

 

RS A + games

HWT K level

Saxon Phonics, alternating in AAS1 when I can

history with the older kids (using TOG books)

 

I'm undecided about science. I have a few of the younger Janice Van Cleave books that I could use but I'm also tempted to buy the Elemental Science Intro to Science book. I can't fold him into the older kids' science because I know it won't be interesting enough to him & he'll just get in the way of their learning (I mean this as nicely as possible).

 

I'm hoping to get some help here. I'm thinking of buying an easel for him to paint on (we've never had one) and maybe a sand table (but I'm worried about the mess in the house).

 

If you have a blog showing what you've done with a K'er or even better, a BOOK THAT WILL TELL ME WHAT TO DO :lol: please share it here.

 

I've always been a no-fun mom and I really need to turn that around for this little guy.

Edited September 8, 2011 by plain jane

[newlifemom]

Honestly? I let the older kids dictate my K's artwork. She was cutting and pasting to her heart's content this afternoon. So excited too! She made name tags for the whole family. :D

 

If you really want something with an end product then you could have your olders help you do a project from SOTW activity guide. I really love having older children. :tongue_smilie:

[Night Elf]

Classrooms are definitely fun. Can you devote a corner of a room somewhere for "school"? When my children were that age, I had a 4-tiered shelf in the dining room. I kept all of the fun school supplies on those shelves. I kept the curriculum books on the highest shelf. But the open shelves made it easy to see every item that was on the shelf. I also put many of the things in clear boxes, which definitely helped. I also put colorful posters around, the kind you would see in a classroom.

 

Oh, and my dd was about 3 at that time so for her, I made a large poster that had a picture of every item on the shelf. Underneath each picture I wrote the word (to help with reading). It helped her see everything we had in one glance. :)

 

Another thing we did was have fun file boxes for each of them. We had the plastic ones with built-in storage on the top lid, lilke this. We decorated them with stickers. That was 9 years ago and we still have them today, although now they are just part of their closet organization. It allowed them to have a place for their personal supplies such as personalized pencils, fun erasers, crayons, and some fun workbooks. (Connect-the-dots with large numbers, Hidden pictures, Word Ladders, Explode the Code, etc.)

 

I am so jealous! I absolutely loved homeschooling my kids in those early grades. It was fun!

[Mrs Mungo]

Have you looked at the Enchanted Learning website? There are *loads* of great ideas and projects there!!

[NanceXToo]

You could always look up "preschool crafts" or "Kindergarten crafts" and find cute projects to add in. I agree with whoever mentioned Enchanted Learning. Homemade books are always a favorite over here...we've done "All About Me" books, "All About My Family" books, "My Backyard Nature" books, "Texture" books, etc. You can trace the child's body on a big roll of paper, then let them color and help you label it. You can do "My Favorite Things" or "What I Want To Be" picture or word collages from magazines, make posters together, start a "nature tank" (or table) and collect things on nature walks, etc. Those are all things we've enjoyed.

 

I'm using Oak Meadow for K which is full of hands on activities and cute ideas, but it's not as academic as a lot of people would like for K, so it might not work for you. (Although I did decide to add on Funnix beginning reading lessons to our curriculum, too). But it still incorporates lots of fun ideas that could be added on, which you could probably find by just looking up Waldorf activities for young kids (not that it's true Waldorf, more Waldorf-inspired in the earliest years).

 

K for us involves a Waldorf-inspired, seasonal approach to science, which is done through story and nature, an integrated approach to language and "social studies," which again is mainly through stories, fairy tales, drawings, etc, as is math. And they do uppercase letters of the alphabet in hands on ways such as drawing it in the dirt with a stick, walking its shape on the ground, forming it out of clay, looking for the shapes in nature, and so on and so forth, as well as drawing it as a picture that depicts a given letter. Their "First Book of Crafts" has great ideas in it. They've got "music and movement" with Wee Sing songs and fingerplays, they do little activities for following directions and spacial orientation and such. I really enjoy it.

 

I add to that lots of outings and field trips and homeschool day programs, which we do as a family and with our homeschool group. Extra-curricular activities (currently just soccer and a sporadic homeschool wilderness club for him), fun and/or educational board games, computer games, TV shows, conversations and conversational games, read alouds, manipulatives, etc.

 

What's he interested in? Follow his interests as much as you can, too!

[plain jane]

Have you looked at the Enchanted Learning website? There are *loads* of great ideas and projects there!!

 

:lol: Yes. It is paper project overload on that site. :lol: Good idea though. I keep forgetting I have a membership there. He's not super crafty though so I do need other ideas as well- lacing cards, magnet games. I need ideas. :001_huh: