Anyone else a little nervous about adding a kindergartener next year?

[ByGrace3]

I admit, I am a little nervous. We sent ds to a VPK program at our church this year 3 days a week, and i admit the days he was home I too often sent him off to play by himself. I know dd's workload will not be decreasing from last year, though I imagine much will be about the same timewise... But for some reason adding the responsibility of ds is kind of freaking me out a little! :tongue_smilie:

 

Plans for him include:

OPGTR/Abeka combo (20 minutes/ day or so)

Right Start A moving onto MM 1A (20 min/ day or so)

ETC 1-2 10 minutes/day

HWOT 10 minutes/ day

 

With dd:

BSGFAA 30 minutes

ES ESA 30 minutes 2x week (he is not required to do this, but mostly chose to this year)

SL core C (he will participate only in the geography and read alouds and other as he is interested)

 

It's really only about 50-60 minutes a day in addition to what I am doing with dd, so really not a big deal, but somehow when I schedule it out with dd's day, someone is schooling at all times from 8:30 to 2. It seems like a long day even though I know individually what they are doing is on target, combined it makes for a seemingly long day even though they each won't be working that long. Part of me wonders if it would be better to just knock out ds's stuff first thing in the morning since he is a morning person and dd is not, but well, I am not a morning person either! :tongue_smilie: and i think he will need it spread out...

 

Anyone else wondering how they will fit it all in with a new Ker?

[Carrie12345]

I'm just mostly hoping I don't throttle my kindergartner!

 

He's officially only doing Math Reasoning, HWOT, and AAS, so it should be a snap, time-wise. But he is incredibly unhappy about becoming a "real" student, and is very vocal about it!

 

I think he's going to find he actually enjoys it, but I'm pretty sure he'll do everything in his power to avoid admitting it! :tongue_smilie:

[ByGrace3]

I'm just mostly hoping I don't throttle my kindergartner!

 

He's officially only doing Math Reasoning, HWOT, and AAS, so it should be a snap, time-wise. But he is incredibly unhappy about becoming a "real" student, and is very vocal about it!

 

I think he's going to find he actually enjoys it, but I'm pretty sure he'll do everything in his power to avoid admitting it! :tongue_smilie:

 

:lol: my ds is actually excited about "homeschooling" but I am just not so sure he will be as thrilled when the work begins! :lol: He is a super sensitive kid and I have a tendency to not be as patient as I should :blushing: so I will need to be super aware and careful with that. Maybe that is why I am so nervous about this!?! :tongue_smilie:

 

It will be good for me, hopefully for him too! :lol:

[heritagelearningacademy]

I will have a 7th grader which means more intensity for his work, and a 3rd grader in addition to my darling Kindergarten daughter. I am nervous about it.

 

I know one thing we will do is have her do her work first. I am going to be using MFW with her. Then, I will have other things for her including free time and brother board game time. :)

 

My boys will work on a few independent subjects while I work with their sister. Then we will work on our joint subjects (MFW ECC).

 

As learned last year, if I don't do her first, then a lot of times, her things get put off until the end of the day or the next day. She is more focused and eager in the mornings, so I have to also hit her best time of day.

[mskelly]

I am in pretty much the same situation as you. My Kinder son is a morning person also so I do school with him while his brother is still trying to find his groove for the day. I'm not a morning person either by the way.

 

My Kinder is doing OPGTR/RS/HWOT/and I think WriteShopA. So that's about an hour also. What we are doing for summer is the older DS can play educational games on the iPad or computer for that hour. That's more screen time than we usually allow, but we live in FL so summer is indoor time. During the fall/winter/spring we do most of our schoolwork outside so one boy is doing something with wheels, a ball, a stick, etc while the other does school.

 

After that first hour we do combined subjects like science and history then we break for lunch. I finish up the older one after lunch when my kinder just zones out. He's allowed his screen time during this time.

 

We are using summer to ease him into the schedule. Up until this point it was hit or miss and he did what he wanted to as far as "school" work.

 

I don't know if I helped or just rambled on and made it worse for you! :001_smile:

[RootAnn]

I'm ALWAYS nervous about adding another into the mix. Luckily for me, my "K'er" isn't ready for sit-down stuff at all. So, I'll be doing pre-K stuff that will take about 5-10 minutes per day at the beginning & maybe 15-20 minutes by mid-year.

 

Easier to EASE into it, especially when there isn't enough of you to go around....

[CatholicMom]

I'm always kind of nervous about adding a Ker to the mix.

 

Not the material so much, since I've been there twice now, but having to fit in the time every day. I'm afraid she'll get put aside so I can work with the older boys and I won't get our goals accomplished. I also feel bad about adding her when her 3 yo brother will then be left alone to play... er, with the 1 yo sister, which is kind of alone... only more annoying. :tongue_smilie:

 

The good thing is I bet you can get the K essentials done in an hour or 2.

[SorrelZG]

Meh .. I just started rolling her in slowly. DS works better if his sister is working also rather than off playing and it's one less fighting over toys in the background.

[boscopup]

We just started up yesterday, adding my K'er into the mix as a required thing (last year, it was "when he wanted to"). Yesterday went well, though we are only doing "half school" until August, so I haven't added in the two SL cores we're doing. :D But I think we'll be ok when we do. Yesterday, we were away from the house for 4 hours in the middle of the day and we STILL got everything done (though it was 4pm, not 2pm :tongue_smilie:). That also included a first day of IEW SWI-A, which is a bit long. 37 minutes of video turns into an hour and a half pretty easily.

 

Anyway, here's what I did yesterday:

 

- Shower/breakfast before kids are up

- During breakfast, read the Bible

- After breakfast, grabbed my 3 year old and read to him a little bit.

- Next, grabbed the K'er and did 10 minutes of reading (set the timer!) and one math lesson. This totaled about 30 minutes, and then he was done. Part of the problem was that the first math lesson included reading number words, and that was extending the horrible "reading" time. :lol: He did fine though.

- Then I grabbed the 3rd grader and went over his math lesson. I assigned his independent math work and loaded the dishwasher (I had him working at the kitchen table).

- When math was done, I got the K'er back and did handwriting for about 10 minutes. Handwriting will be the end of me. I have very little patience for it, and I'm trying to keep the happy face during the lesson. :tongue_smilie:

- We then did science on the couch together - all 3 kids, though 3 year old was running around playing. He does NOT understand Apologia yet. K'er got antsy toward the end, but he did well giving me something to write in the notebook about what we learned.

- Then I did Reading Eggs with 3 year old while 3rd grader worked on spelling (independent).

- Installed Typing Instructor on the kids' "new" computer (my old computer) for the 3rd grader, but didn't get to use it yet.

- Went to the dentist/Walmart/lunch, gone from 10am-2pm.

- Put littles down for naps (K'er has to nap on hockey days or he'll be laying on the ice during his lesson that night :lol:).

- Watched SWI-A video with 3rd grader, helping him as needed. He has a third of his paragraph written. Yay!

- 3rd grader then played Typing Instructor, Spelling City (with R&S Spelling lists put in there), and finally Minesweeper until Mama noticed. :glare:

 

Then we were done!

 

Normally we won't have 4 hours of errands, so we can do our SL cores during that time. ;) We also started EARLY - like 7:30 or maybe a bit before.

 

Looking at my schedule for this year, my 3rd grader should need about 2 hours of my time. His total work time is around 4 hours. My K'er needs me for everything, of course, and his total time will be around an hour and 15 minutes, I think. So *I* am needed for only 3-3.5 hours or so. That doesn't count working with the 3 year old, though DS1 works with him a bit while I work with DS2. DS1 likes to teach him math... I will not have to ever teach that child his multiplication tables. :lol:

[ChicoryChick]

My baby will be a K'er this year and I am already nervous about how I am going to fit him into my already full schedule with a 9th grader, 7th grader, 5th grader and a struggling reader 4th grader.

[3peasinapod]

I am nervous about officially adding in our K'er this year. I'll have 3 to school, and I know we'll get in a groove, but finding it irritates me. I'm such a schedule person, and adding in a new student and just a new set of books for everyone always gets to me a little. It takes me about a month to find a groove usually. Her things will probably take about an hour, and I plan to get her math and LA done early and all the gravy stuff later whenever there is a gap. I don't know where the gap is now, though. :glare:

 

Her schedule is pretty laid out. We'll do Abeka Math K, SL LA K with the sound portion of AAR pre-1, SL P4/5, and she'll tag along for art with her older sisters. I'm happy with the line-up, as most of it is laid out for me so I'll get it done. For her PK year, we did a "if you want to" type schooling, but we did accomplish a lot. It just wasn't regular, and since she never knew when we were going to do her things, she asked and asked and asked :001_huh:. Now she'll know what's coming and find a niche for herself too. I always felt she was just wandering around, not integrated as much as I wanted her to be. Hopefully the schedule will help.

[bethben]

I'm adding a K'er this year also. I'm not too overwhelmed since my older two homeschoolers can be independent for some subjects. She is also not totally ready for sit down work for long periods of time, so I'm calling this her K-5 year followed by K-6. I'm doing that because she has a late May birthday and as a friend of mine said, "you can always graduate a child early, but it's hard keeping them back a year to mature further if they've already graduated in their mind". We'll see how things go - I will try to engage her in the history and science that I'm doing with ds#3, but with her activity level, I'm not going to force the issue. If she learns how to write letters, starts reading, and does some simple math concepts (basically how to write letters and figuring out what addition/subtraction are), I'll be happy.

 

Beth

[famof6]

I totally understand! I'm adding 2 k'ers next year a five and a six-year-old. With a dreamy 10-year-old, I can't even begin to imagine how I will get everyone to get their work completed and have enough of me to go around. Good luck to all!

[sagira]

I admit, I am a little nervous. We sent ds to a VPK program at our church this year 3 days a week, and i admit the days he was home I too often sent him off to play by himself. I know dd's workload will not be decreasing from last year, though I imagine much will be about the same timewise... But for some reason adding the responsibility of ds is kind of freaking me out a little! :tongue_smilie:

 

Anyone else wondering how they will fit it all in with a new Ker?

 

Oh.. Yeah.. My dd4 gets irritated really easily by ds8's presence and they both get each other riled up. It was fairly easy teaching ds last year with dd in VPK. Add a busy toddler in the mix and it may become combustible :lol:

 

I'm a bit nervous.