Kindergarten 2021-2022 Choices?

[OurRosewoodAcademy]

I am looking for recommendations for kindergarten. My son will be 5.5 going into the school year this fall. We are going to do more of a year around school schedule so I plan to start this mid summer. 

 

I want to prepare him for a classical education with a Charlotte Mason twist starting with formal lessons in Grade 1 but don't want to overwhelm him or me either during his kindergarten year. I’m having paralysis by analysis after spending so much time researching. 

 

I’m leaning towards this and any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. 

 

Biblical Symposium/Morning Time (5x a week) 

- Bible story with narration (he tells me one thing about the story and then draws a picture)

- Bible verse memory 

- Our 24 Ways or Leading Little Ones to God

- A Child’s Book of Character Building or Simply Charlotte Mason Laying Down the Rails 

- Manner Cards by September Co

- Hymn 

- Poem

- Catechism     

 

LA (20 minutes 4x week)

- The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading with IEW phonetic games or Simply Charlotte Mason Delightful Reading 

- Hand Writing Without Tears or Simply Charlotte Mason Delightful Handwriting (I don’t want to introduce copy work until he is reading so we’ll focus on building letter shapes)

- Readers from All About Reading, The Good and The Beautiful and Dash Into Learning 

 

Math (15 minutes 4x a week)

- Math with Confidence Kindergarten or The Good and The Beautiful Level K (it depends on what the revised level K looks like when it’s previewed in March) 

 

Literature (30 minutes 4x a week) 

A Humble Place’s Kindergarten book list (It covers history in terms of learning about kids around the world.)

 

I’d rotate through these with two a day:

 

Art (1-2x a week)

The Artful Year or The Way They See It or Artistic Pursuits 

 

Artist Study (1-2x a week)

Simply Charlotte Mason A Is for Art: A Fine Art Alphabet Book or SCM artist studies 

 

Science (1-2x a week) 

Science In Seconds for Kids or Science Play

 

Composer Study (1x a week) 

Memoria Press Music Enrichment or A Child’s Introduction to the Orchestra 

 

Nature Study (2x a week)

I’m torn on if I want to do something formal with this or just do nature walks with some journaling. 

 

Poetry Tea Time (1-2x a week)

- The Blue Fairy Book

- Story Time (My Book House)

- In The Nursery (My Book House)

- Aesop’s Fables 

- Poetry Teatime Companion 

- A Year Full of Poems 

- Sing a Song of Seasons 

- Circle of Seasons 

- Sing a Song of Popcorn 

 

STEM (1x a month) 

KiwiCrate 

 

We will also have his tagalong 3 year old little brother who will be welcome to join in as he wishes. I’ll have some little Kumon books for him to do as he wishes (tracing, cutting, etc) and he also likes to play with our math and LA manipulatives or color. 

[Mirror]

Hello we are doing similar this year, we started in September when my daughter was 5.5 years old, to prepare us both for a Classical / Charlotte Mason first year. 

When I first read your post my first thought was that might be a bit too much for morning time especially on the memory work. 

Our 24 family ways I have found can take a bit more time than it looks it also suggests verses related to that weeks themes for memory work. 

For Bible we began with 101 Favourite stories from the Bible by Ura Miller, it is in included in one of the big box Christian curriculum companies but I can't recall which one. It has one page of fairly detailed text with an illustration on the opposite Under the illustration it has a short bible verse and three short questions like Why did God reject Saul from being king? I found as we worked our way through it my daughter naturally started to narrate having been prompted by the questions.  It was such an unexpected seamless transition to Narrating which I hadn't expected when I first chose it. 

 

I had planned to start Delightful handwriting earlier in the year but felt she was not ready which might have led to bad habits, after our Easter break when she is 6 I plan to introduce it to her. 

 

For Nature study I bought Exploring Nature with children it is extremely popular in Charlotte Mason circles but it really wasn't for us. Instead to go on nature walks and I use The handbook of nature study by Anna Botsford Comstock for inspiration it also comes with lots of questions about each topic. 

[OurRosewoodAcademy]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts! 

I haven’t been able to get my hands on Our 24 Ways so my knowledge of it is from a couple of blog reviews and Amazon reviews. I was thinking more to use it with the coloring sheets in the back and talk about it without requiring memorization.  I didn’t realize it had scripture verses too. I might save it for Grade 1 then. 

The only memorization we currently do and that I really have planned for next year is a memory verse every week or every other week. We have a book that has a little story with each memory verse that my son likes. He wants to read each story a couple of times. The verses are really short which I like for this age. We read through and listen to the songs from New Life Catechism but we haven’t worked on memorizing them. We haven’t memorized much in that he doesn’t know months, hours in a day or all the stuff that curriculums like Memoria Press have for daily recitation. 

Thanks for sharing the Bible recommendation. I’ll take a look at it. We’ve done the Jesus Storybook Bible a couple of times and just started The Gospel Story Bible. He doesn’t care for it as much. I’ve also looked at The Child’s Story Bible. 

We tried Exploring Nature With Children this year as well. It also didn’t work for us. My son has no grasp of moons and some of their other topics and I felt it was hard to keep using it when those topics were repeated so often. For some of the fun topics I’ve checked the recommended books out from the library and additional ones on the topic and we have story lunch time and read them all and talk a bit about the topic. I haven’t looked at Handbook of Nature Study yet as our library doesn’t have it. That could be a good option for us! 

[Xahm]

It looks like you have a wonderful plan that you've researched carefully to fit your child, your family, and your values. One thing I'd encourage you to do is take informal inventory of where your child is right now in a variety of areas. What are strengths you want to build on and weaknesses you want to work on in large and fine motor skills, language skills, math skills, character traits and habits, self care skills, and anything you can think of. Think about, and write down, what your priorities are in the coming months, then revaluate every few months to see if you want to move things up and down the priority list. I know that when I have a carefully made and crafted plan, I sometimes make that the driving force for our days, but when I've thought about my priorities, I'm much better at taking good opportunities when they come and changing things when needed.

[MotherGoose]

Thanks for this. I’ve already homeschooled  K twice (6th and 9th grade girls; still homeschooling the 6th grader but 9th grader is in private high school)and I planned for my son (6 next October) to go to public school, but COVID happened.  Right now, besides the masks and social distancing and all that for little ones which I don’t like but could maybe tolerate, parents aren’t allowed inside the school and I would have to drop off my baby at the door and hand him over to strangers.  He’s attended preschool and he does fine with drop off, eventually, but there is a period where I need to walk him in and sit with him for a few days. I can’t imagine peeling him out of the carseat and directing hiM to a teacher who can’t even give him a reassuring hug. So I may be homeschooling depending on the rules and how they change by the fall.  I’m mostly reading this thread. Although I was totally gung ho on K with my olders and probably did way too much,  I’m mainly going to want to get him reading, writing, and doing some math. Not sure what I’m using but thanks for the ideas. 

[GoodnightMoogle]

Love the idea of doing a poetry tea time! That sounds so sweet and relaxing 

[AnneGG]

I think it looks well planned. As your school year ebbs and flows, you may find you like certain choices better than others.
 

This is my child’s kinder year and we aren’t using any of the things we started with. So much of it was just completely over his head, or it  became monotonous, or I grew weary of planning it. I definitely feel more confident in selecting curriculum after this year.
 

Things we’ve loved this year:

-poetry tea time with all the art and music appreciation we can get.

-All the books. All of them. Sometimes we narrate or draw. But mostly, we read and enjoy.
 

-Math. Math literature, math games, math workbooks, math, math, math. I was not expecting this. Quite frankly, I’m a little afraid. 
 

Things we didn’t like:

-MP enrichment guide. It was helpful for a few weeks and then it just got in the way. MP in general was too much school at home for us.

-Leading little ones to God. 
 

-Any of the “all in one teach your child to read” type books. My boy was bored out of his mind with them.
 

-I don’t like juggling too many resources and curriculums. 
 

Whatever you use, it will be a great year. It’s like that first year with the baby, when you don’t really know what you’re doing.  But you figure it out and it’s full of  wonderful memories.

[Foofaraw]

Get Kindergarten Math with Confidence.