Planning Kindergarten year. First timer!

[TinyMama]

I'm wanting to start my daughter off correctly as she enters her kindergarten year. I'm worried I won't be teaching her enough or trying to cram too much in. What does your kindergarten year look like? When do you take breaks? What topics are you teaching? How do you incorporate different sensory learning into lessons? I want to make it fun for her. She loves to learn but hates being taught. 

We're thinking of sit down lessons Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Then crafts/activities/hands on learning Tuesdays and Thursdays. I think I've decided on tracking what we do daily instead of trying to plan it so that takes the pressure off a little too. 

Any help would be great. I thought I was prepared until I realized school is starting in the next month or two for us and now I'm freaking out. 

[HomeAgain]

Kindergarten in our house had a LOT of play and choice.  I added in the structure: from x time to x time we're going to have our choices of these activities, and these things (snack, lunch, play group, library hour, etc) are non negotiable.

That made it easier for my kid to understand routine, but not have it forced.  And I made sure that we did a little bit of sit down every day.  Not much.  This was the year we worked on handwriting and it was less than 5 minutes at a time in the beginning.  But I wanted this little bit of consistency to mix in with more active lessons, because kids learn well when they have active learning.

I took a picture of our schedule for the first day, lol:

• playdough time (fine motor skill work, open ended and child directed)
• record him saying a nursery rhyme he learned (Little Boy Blue)
• free play time with blocks, legos, play sets
• math (hands on with blocks)
• draw a picture (child directed - I provided the short crayons and paper.  He could choose what to draw.  As we got further in the year I gave a little more direction in art, showing him something to connect to a theme of the week or such.
• practice writing
• park time
• reading time (for pleasure and quiet time, he had completed reading lessons before this year)
• spelling (short lesson with magnetic letter tiles where he would pull them down, read, or I would say a word slowly and he'd pull down the tiles to match)

I had a kid who really needed full bodied work and activity every single day, and by keeping the sit down work to tiny blocks, we were able to build them up over time as he got more mature.  I rotated out several fine motor skill activities like hole punching, weaving, painting, drawing, playdough, tweezer-work, a spirograph, cutting...

 

I don't think you have a bad plan, and your own child will let you know what they need by either doing well with the plan or balking at it, at which point you'll just adjust.  Flexibility is a good friend to have.

 

[ScoutTN]

We did reading/phonics, handwriting, and math M-F. In terms of time 30/20/30 minutes, but each thing in two smaller blocks.
 

Loads and loads of read-alouds, mostly picture books. Yes, fine motor activities in there too! 

We did library story time, lots of outdoor time (our yard and parks) and mid-week church/Bible study (for me, childcare including Bible lesson, craft, music, and playtime, for my kids) every week.

Many trips to the Zoo and the Nature Center, with occasional other field trips.

Kindy is fun! Do the three R’s well and enjoy your little people!

[Xahm]

You may want to take an inventory of things your child can do now and think about where you want them to be in a year, then use that. Sometimes they'll pass your expectations and sometimes there will be more difficulty than expected, but tracking helps me relax. 

I would include working with numbers, phonics, handwriting, and other academic things, but also physical endurance, like how far can they walk easily; household management, like what chores they can help with; social skills, like whether they can share with others and self advocate when someone is overstepping; and so on. Is your primary science goal to teach basic facts to serve as building blocks for the future, to inspire curiosity, to teach them how to ask good questions, or something else? 

You've likely thought through a lot of this already, but when I have my thoughts centralized it helps me make decisions. If there is a handwriting curriculum my kids is really annoyed by, I will likely ditch it if my goal is to make the kid excited about writing but likely keep it if my goal is to build stamina in doing mildly unpleasant things.

[Clarita]

6 hours ago, TinyMama said:

What does your kindergarten year look like?

It looks like about an hour maybe an hour an a half in total "everyday". We have an outside activity day so "everyday" for us is 4 days/week.

6 hours ago, TinyMama said:

When do you take breaks?

All the time. If they are doing their lessons then I expect full attention and focus. When focus and attention starts to wander then, I ask them to take a break. That said I keep the time I expect them to be actively learning for lessons short (a minute/age short). They can practice the skill or whatever for longer but if they have to actively working and understanding the lesson then that work is kept to 5-6 minutes. 

6 hours ago, TinyMama said:

What topics are you teaching?

 Reading, math, and handwriting. We do history and science too but those are just for fun. Mostly focused on playing/exploring for science and history is just listening to the history book.  Add in writing only if they are interested. 

8 hours ago, TinyMama said:

How do you incorporate different sensory learning into lessons?

I did what makes sense for the thing we are learning. Math curriculums tend to build that in or at least have it as an option. Reading lessons we did All About Reading so that had it built in as well. The edu-speak makes this out to be more than it actually is. Honestly a lot of it you don't have to specifically plan. For example teaching addition, you are likely to grab some stuff to show them 2 things plus 2 things is 4 things, then at some point write out 2 + 2 = 4, you might even say a few words in this process, and at some point you are bound to teach them how to write 2, 4, +, and = (either during this lesson or some other time). There you have it you used different sensory learning. Since you are teaching one child you don't need to incorporate all the sensory in all the lessons, just teach them then if they don't understand then you can bring in another way of showing them.

8 hours ago, TinyMama said:

She loves to learn but hates being taught. 

My eldest is like that. So for him he prefers I show him the work that I want him to do for the day, he works on it and if he needs help then he asks me. So, math would look like me just handing him the problem set first. If he knows how to do it then he just does it (this may happen with or without me explicitly teaching him). If he does not know how to do it then I teach him. I don't prep a lot of hands on activities for him ahead of his lessons. If he struggles with a problem set then I prep the hands on activity for the next day (we are finished for the day in terms of math).    

[Ellie]

When my younger dd was 5yo, our weekly schedule included only two days of Official School Stuff (Monday and Tuesday). On Wednesdays we went to the library; on Thursdays we did a field trip; and on Friday we cleaned house/monthly park day. I counted everything as learning. So on Monday and Tuesday, there would have been some phonics, a little penmanship, and some kind of arithmetic. There would be lots of free time, and doing stuff with her older (8yo) sister. I believe she might also have been in Camp Fire, and so working on Blue Bird badges. I never had assignments that I handed her.

[Clemsondana]

We did phonics, handwriting, and math at the level appropriate for each kid, no more than 30 minutes for any one thing.  I used Hirsh's Core Knowlege (the series that starts with What your kindergartener needs to know) to get ideas.  It turned out that I used that series as a guide for geography/history/science/music/art for all of elementary.  We did units of 2-6 weeks, but they had very little output.  We colored maps, cut out animals from each continent, ate foods from different places and found them on the map, read classic stories (Aesop's fables, fairly tales, and anything else that looked interesting).  When we did our human body unit, or our solar system unit, I'd pull out the floor puzzles, get a pile of books with illustrations to look at, etc.  When we did history units, one kid loved re-enacting battles.  These units weren't a ton of work and took maybe 20 minutes, so our total time was no more than 1.5 hours with part of that being very hands-on if that's what they wanted to do.  There was a lot of time for play, and if there was screen time it was usually at least semi-educational like Magic Schoolbus or Wild Kratts.  We did some kind of ecology every spring because that's when we planted our garden.  We might watch seeds sprout, visit a butterfly exhibit, and look at cool books, with bugs or animals. We are pretty academic (I just graduated my older and my younger will be a sophomore) but we did very little output for anything other than math and language arts in the early years.  There was a lot of looking at books or reading or doing.  

[Clarita]

The best thing I think I did for my kids in Kindergarten was reading aloud with feeling and letting them get bored. 

These things so far translated into ability to do some independent work, reading comprehension abilities and just a more enjoyable school time for me (now they are going into 1st and 2nd).

[TinyMama]

On 7/7/2024 at 4:57 AM, HomeAgain said:

Kindergarten in our house had a LOT of play and choice.  I added in the structure: from x time to x time we're going to have our choices of these activities, and these things (snack, lunch, play group, library hour, etc) are non negotiable.

That made it easier for my kid to understand routine, but not have it forced.  And I made sure that we did a little bit of sit down every day.  Not much.  This was the year we worked on handwriting and it was less than 5 minutes at a time in the beginning.  But I wanted this little bit of consistency to mix in with more active lessons, because kids learn well when they have active learning.

I took a picture of our schedule for the first day, lol:

• playdough time (fine motor skill work, open ended and child directed)
• record him saying a nursery rhyme he learned (Little Boy Blue)
• free play time with blocks, legos, play sets
• math (hands on with blocks)
• draw a picture (child directed - I provided the short crayons and paper.  He could choose what to draw.  As we got further in the year I gave a little more direction in art, showing him something to connect to a theme of the week or such.
• practice writing
• park time
• reading time (for pleasure and quiet time, he had completed reading lessons before this year)
• spelling (short lesson with magnetic letter tiles where he would pull them down, read, or I would say a word slowly and he'd pull down the tiles to match)

I had a kid who really needed full bodied work and activity every single day, and by keeping the sit down work to tiny blocks, we were able to build them up over time as he got more mature.  I rotated out several fine motor skill activities like hole punching, weaving, painting, drawing, playdough, tweezer-work, a spirograph, cutting...

 

I don't think you have a bad plan, and your own child will let you know what they need by either doing well with the plan or balking at it, at which point you'll just adjust.  Flexibility is a good friend to have.

 

This is really helpful. Thank you!! You have given me some good ideas. 

[TinyMama]

On 7/8/2024 at 1:14 PM, Clemsondana said:

We did phonics, handwriting, and math at the level appropriate for each kid, no more than 30 minutes for any one thing.  I used Hirsh's Core Knowlege (the series that starts with What your kindergartener needs to know) to get ideas.  It turned out that I used that series as a guide for geography/history/science/music/art for all of elementary.  We did units of 2-6 weeks, but they had very little output.  We colored maps, cut out animals from each continent, ate foods from different places and found them on the map, read classic stories (Aesop's fables, fairly tales, and anything else that looked interesting).  When we did our human body unit, or our solar system unit, I'd pull out the floor puzzles, get a pile of books with illustrations to look at, etc.  When we did history units, one kid loved re-enacting battles.  These units weren't a ton of work and took maybe 20 minutes, so our total time was no more than 1.5 hours with part of that being very hands-on if that's what they wanted to do.  There was a lot of time for play, and if there was screen time it was usually at least semi-educational like Magic Schoolbus or Wild Kratts.  We did some kind of ecology every spring because that's when we planted our garden.  We might watch seeds sprout, visit a butterfly exhibit, and look at cool books, with bugs or animals. We are pretty academic (I just graduated my older and my younger will be a sophomore) but we did very little output for anything other than math and language arts in the early years.  There was a lot of looking at books or reading or doing.  

That all sounds like a blast!! I'm always looking for ideas to make things more fun! I'm also going to have to look into that book series. Because I'm just starting out, I feel like I need a step by step guide to what needs to be taught. 

[TinyMama]

On 7/7/2024 at 7:33 AM, Xahm said:

You may want to take an inventory of things your child can do now and think about where you want them to be in a year, then use that. Sometimes they'll pass your expectations and sometimes there will be more difficulty than expected, but tracking helps me relax. 

I would include working with numbers, phonics, handwriting, and other academic things, but also physical endurance, like how far can they walk easily; household management, like what chores they can help with; social skills, like whether they can share with others and self advocate when someone is overstepping; and so on. Is your primary science goal to teach basic facts to serve as building blocks for the future, to inspire curiosity, to teach them how to ask good questions, or something else? 

You've likely thought through a lot of this already, but when I have my thoughts centralized it helps me make decisions. If there is a handwriting curriculum my kids is really annoyed by, I will likely ditch it if my goal is to make the kid excited about writing but likely keep it if my goal is to build stamina in doing mildly unpleasant things.

Taking inventory is a really great idea! I've done that before mentally but have never wrote it down on paper before. I love taking inventory and gathering my thoughts. It's so vital for me. I can't focus until everything is in order. 

 

One other thing you mentioned is your goals. I'm dealing with that right now. We're working on a phonics curriculum and she's doing so well reading but she hates it. She says it's boring. On one hand, I want to stop and do something more fun but if it's working as well as it is, I want to push through. Maybe I'll add in some fun supplemental work. 

[ScoutTN]

8 minutes ago, TinyMama said:

That all sounds like a blast!! I'm always looking for ideas to make things more fun! I'm also going to have to look into that book series. Because I'm just starting out, I feel like I need a step by step guide to what needs to be taught. 

After the three R’s, everything is gravy in the early grades. So there isn’t a universal list of what needs to be taught for science, history, art, etc. at what ages. Outlines and suggested paths are indeed helpful to give our content areas some structure, but don’t feel tied to them.
 

We started with TWTM, then realized the science was too focused for us and that we liked to do some in many areas of science each year. Otoh, we enjoyed a chronological approach to history, similar to TWTM’s. I kept a second stream of history going throughout our early elementary years, always doing some American history alongside Ancients, Med/Ren or whatever.

Our choices were not always driven by when they came on someone’s schedule. We often did stargazing and astronomy mid winter, when it is dark early so littles can still get to bed on time. Or when we were camping, fall and spring, and away from city lights. Or mid-summer, when our planetarium often has a local skies show and the A/C is an excellent alternative to 93 degrees with 70% humidity. 
 

Like @Clemsondana, we always did ecology and gardening in the spring. 

A lot of teaching younger kids is common sense. Help them understand the world around them. Let homeschooling foster their innate sense of wonder and curiosity. Begin figuring out how your child learns and what works for you as a teacher and as a mom. It’s a fabulous journey, to get to watch your kids learn! 

[ScoutTN]

I love @Xahm’s suggestion of a skill inventory, bc each kid is different and will hit typical milestones at varying points and because it helps you to look ahead.

Kids do not grow and develop at a steady pace, but often in bursts and plateaus, so our homeschooling adapts to that. Everything is not on the front burner.  

We included many life skills in our homeschool. Tying shoes, riding a bike, swimming well, pet care, chores etc. 

[Clemsondana]

I'll also add that it can be useful to hit on local cultural touchstones that other kids learn at school.  For several years we had Sunday night movie night because I wanted the kids to have some awareness of what their friends were talking about - Disney movies, Looney Toons cartoons, or whatever might be appropriate in your situation.  I also taught them the basic rules to common sports.  This stuff is easy and part of everyday life. In your part of the world, these may be irrelevant and kids talk about something else.  On one hand, we don't need to be tied to culture.  But on the other hand, there's no need to be weird for no reason - if you live somewhere where basketball is big, teaching that free throws are 1 point, field goals are 2, and behind the line is worth 3 is not hard and can help kids to fit in when they hang out.  One of my kids practiced math by doing football scores - I'd say that the game ended 14-21 and kid would rattle off the ways to get 14 - the obvious of 2 touchdowns plus extra points, but maybe 4 field goals plus a safety, or...  This isn't part of formal academics, but is something that I tried to stay aware of.  

[Clarita]

6 hours ago, TinyMama said:

We're working on a phonics curriculum and she's doing so well reading but she hates it. She says it's boring.

Is it obvious to you why it's boring?

I think a learning to read program needs some book reading, otherwise who wants to do that. I know there are some curricula out there that are bare bones and doesn't really schedule in actual reading books. Even some curriculum that has story reading scheduled in it may not be enough. (Kindergartners aren't that mature seeing what hard work right now can translate to some skill in the future is a tiny bit beyond them. So they like some small pieces of immediate results.) I find books with large font and buddy read with them (we switch off reading and I casually point out how to figure out words). Also I've mixed in books they've memorized and ask them to read it to me (then I run my fingers along the words as they recite them).  

If it's not obvious to you why it's boring then ask and probe. How would they like to learn this skill? My son didn't like gamify school so, we skipped all the "games" of his reading program. I just gave him the words he was suppose to learn for that lesson and he would say them to me or I would tell him the phonogram or rule of the lesson. My daughter didn't want to learn how to read and just wanted to jump into writing. So, we made the phonics program focus more on spelling words rather than reading words. 

[rebcoola]

We school 4 days a week.  We do phonics, handwritng and math. We try to keep it very short 10-20 mintues max for each. Very hands on lots of movement no writing beside the handwriting curriculum unless they want to.  If their are workbook type pages we will use stamps, stickers or I will scribe.  We also do five in a row it's basically read a picture book and do any activity kind of covers eveything else.  

[TinyMama]

On 7/7/2024 at 7:16 AM, ScoutTN said:

We did reading/phonics, handwriting, and math M-F. In terms of time 30/20/30 minutes, but each thing in two smaller blocks.
 

Loads and loads of read-alouds, mostly picture books. Yes, fine motor activities in there too! 

We did library story time, lots of outdoor time (our yard and parks) and mid-week church/Bible study (for me, childcare including Bible lesson, craft, music, and playtime, for my kids) every week.

Many trips to the Zoo and the Nature Center, with occasional other field trips.

Kindy is fun! Do the three R’s well and enjoy your little people!

What are the three R's?

[Miss Tick]

3 minutes ago, TinyMama said:

What are the three R's?

Reading, wRiting, and 'Rithmatic 🙄 but a handy shorthand for the essentials.

[TinyMama]

1 hour ago, Miss Tick said:

Reading, wRiting, and 'Rithmatic 🙄 but a handy shorthand for the essentials.

I never would have guessed that 🤣 

Thank you for the clarification. 

[ScoutTN]

1 hour ago, TinyMama said:

I never would have guessed that 🤣 

Thank you for the clarification. 

It’s an old saying! 
Ruth Beechick has a good book by that title. 

[ScoutTN]

On 7/17/2024 at 10:15 PM, rebcoola said:

We school 4 days a week.  We do phonics, handwritng and math. We try to keep it very short 10-20 mintues max for each. Very hands on lots of movement no writing beside the handwriting curriculum unless they want to.  If their are workbook type pages we will use stamps, stickers or I will scribe.  We also do five in a row it's basically read a picture book and do any activity kind of covers eveything else.  

❤️ Five in a Row