I plan to homeschool my son this September. He will be 5 years old. I am just overwhelmed and don’t know what I should use for him. He is really a bright boy (for instance, he was reading since age 2 and now reads chapter books; he knows how to solve very early algebra, such as 100-x=98 or 2+x=6). I want to make sure that I continue helping him to learn. Are there any curriculums you recommend for kindergarten? Or are there any good curriculums you used with your children? I’m looking for any advice. Thanks!
Well for a child who can read fluently, I would let K be a year of reading to learn. There are thousands of educational, nonfiction childrens books available in a variety of subjects so my recommendation would be to dust off the library cards and to get some shelving in the home ready for a lot of library traffic.
Do you have an eReader that you’re willing to stock with materials for him to read?
Are you equipped to print a lot of papers (text or worksheets) off of the internet?
If you want to purchase some programs for him then you need to first decide what you want to cover and whether its worth it to buy or borrow the materials. Check your libraries collection and check into inter library loan also because you can preview a ton of home school materials that way, then you can order the ones that you like the best.
Some different programs that I like for English: First Language Lessons For the Well-TrainedMind level 1
Levels 1 and 2 are completely oral and can be done in K if you compact the program by doing a lesson each day and skipping when necessary instead of 2-3x a week. The value in this program is learning and memorizing a lot of core grammar points and learning to ID them in oral, written and aural language. There is no writing required and it can literally be done in 3-10 minutes a day, the program is very gentle and repetitive, but you can skip some things as needed.
To go along with FLL 1 and 2 I would get books from the
Brian P. Cleary (Words are CATegorical series of about 26 books, check your library for them)
Robin Pulliver (Punctuation takes a Vacation, Silent Letters Loud and Clear, Nouns and Verbs have a Field Day, Happy Endings: A book about Suffixes, The Case of Incapacitated Capitals). That would be enough grammar for a Ker, just go through FLL and read a few of Clearies books on each part of speech, then just ID nouns and such in your reading time and viola, an excellent and easy grammar curriculum for a Ker.
For math, you can take a similar approach, find a math program that you like and read as many living math books as you want to go with it.
Mathematics Enhancement Program is free for the cost of printing. You can compact Reception (K) and Year 1 for an advanced K student. If you don’t want to have to print then there are many other options and many publishers offer placement tests so that you can place your son at the appropriate level in their scope and sequence.
Check out LivingMath.net for booklists and ideas about how to enrich a math curriculum with picture books.
Science: If you have a PDF capable eReader than I strongly suggest you visit this site. You can download PDF versions Science textbooks for 1st-6th grade and since your son is already reading so well, I’d just read through the textbooks together, discussing as you went along. Each book has grade level life science topics so you can read through the 1st grade book, then read about each topic at a higher level in the 2nd grade book, then read about the same topics at a higher level in the 3rd grade book. You can also download and print workbooks to go with the texts, but they aren’t necessary but you will be able to pick and choose which pages your son might enjoy rather than printing the whole book. You can still supplement and enhance your sons science studies with projects if you want to (or not) or with library books, but reading and discussing from a series of texts can be a wonderful way to gain a large amount of background knowledge.
Geography: Get a good atlas and spend several minutes with it each day, play geography games on SheppardsSoftwares geography section. Evan Moor makes good geography workbooks that are easy to implement. You can also google “blobbing” to see if that is something you might be interested in.
There are only a very few “wrong” ways to do Kindergarten-2nd grade. So long as the student is learning to read, write and developing mathematically these should be very low pressure years for you and for him. Your son can already read so K should be the year that he learns knowledge by reading, drawing and playing his way through the school day.
I’m sure that you already have quite a collection of educational toys such as blocks, puzzles, games, but you might go through and see about purging unused games and puzzles and replacing them with more educational versions such as geopuzzles or getting more detailed wall maps/globes just so that you have those tools on hand.
Thank you for such a great wealth of information. I have heard many great things about FLL Levels 1 and 2. I like that they are completely oral, so I think I’ll be using those.
For math, I am thinking about using Singapore Math. I am also very interested in Soroban/Abacus math and would love to find a class for him nearby.
I really like the science website you provided. I looked through the first grade textbook and activity book, and I really like them. I also like that it’s free!
I really like the SheppardsSoftware website. I looked through it today, and the U.S. Map Puzzle gained my son’s attention. It’s definitely something I am interested in using. I also plan to buy the Evan Moor workbooks.
I have never heard of blobbing before, but it’s definitely something I would love for my son to do. I just need to figure out how to get him started with that!
Again, thanks for all of your suggestions. They are all very helpful and I will be using a lot, if not most, of them!
Building on what was said, you have to look at Classical Conversations. This is an all encompassing curriculum. Despite it being Classical, the foundations part is like Doman. Kids are taught 7 facts for the week for each subject, English, Math, Science, Geography, Latin, Timeline, Music or Art and you can expound on it during the week. However, the morning class are these 7 facts flashed 7 times. If you are not in the US, you could simply buy the curriculum and do it at home. My kids were completely Doman Style, so this was a fantastic extension of EL. I am now a CC tutor. That is how much I believe in the curriculum.
Best
Mandy
K for my eldest seems a while back now and I am starting K for my youngest next year in January.
For my eldest I used books that I chose for her and also let her choose some herself. We used Singapore Maths which she went through fairly quickly. I also did a little MEP with her (the challenge questions) and various logic puzzles. We mostly did copywork that year working to her writing her own sentences by the end of the year - I was working on pencil grip a lot and my eldest is not very keen on writing even now.
We used SOTW for History and taught a lot of Geography with it too and also included some of our own country’s history, built maps in the mud outside (this is my hands on-get messy child) and BFSU (Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding) for Science - again doing the experiments and also finding plenty of books on the topic that I read to her to fit with both our personalities. She also watched some youtube videos and other programs on the science topics.
With my youngest who will be younger than my other child was upon entering kindergarten, I will work first on the reading and math and probably just read books that interest her for other subjects. She likes to join my eldest for Science now, but I will need to make sure she doesn’t have gaps by following up with BFSU1 and making sure it has all been covered. My youngest has a very different personality and likes worksheets and books, learns through her eyes and does not like getting messy at all, so her kindergarten year will likely be very very different from her elder sisters. I had them both write their cousin a letter the other day and the youngest stuck to the task and enjoyed it while the eldest complained and couldn’t think what to write - she would probably have done better writing in mud or glittery paint - anything that would make a mess would have made her happy.
Thanks, everyone. I am actually in NYC, but can’t seem to find any Soroban schools.
I will look more into Classical Conversations. I really like the fact that 7 facts are presented each week.
SOTW may be a good history curriculum for us. I will most likely get the activity book, too.
Thanks, everyone!
You don’t need a curriculum. But I understand you want something solid to work off. Trust me, in 2 years you will look back and chuckle. Some phonics books (“Explode the Code”?), a math program (IXL.com or KhanAcademy.com),…lots of reading for science and history (biographies) supplemented by all the wonderful homeschooling museum and nature preserve trips around NYC - which I believe in many ways is the best place in the world to homeschool! Personally I’m a big advocate of chess and piano too. Best, Dan
Thanks! If I don’t use a curriculum, I don’t know how the state will approve my request to home school. I was planning to write the books he’d use for schooling on the IHIP. I actually created an account with KhanAcademy, but haven’t used it yet. My son actually plays chess and takes piano and violin lessons. I want him to continue doing that. Thanks again.
Your IHIP is just an outline of what you MAY study. Most people use a generic one based upon (I think) some encyclopedia’s contents…and then just do whatever over the course of the year. I tell my educrat we’ve covered…everything they say we need to cover.
Here is the link to all of my NY paperwork over the years. Feel free to borrow/steal whatever you like - after all I got my first IHIP from another NY homeschooler (http://homeschoolinginnewyorkcity.blogspot.com/).
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B6kUXvPYaUDrbGtDOXlla2htTnc&usp=sharing
I think when we started out we were using Time4Learning…which has a handy “full curriculum” page I included in my quarterly reports.
Dan
Okay. Thanks for clearing that up.
Does anyone know if I can use his violin/piano lessons as music on his IHIP, and swimming/sport classes for PE? I would like to, but I’m not sure if I can.
In general yes. Taking music lessons counts as “Music” the same as educational, physical activities count as “Physical Education”. You can also count time spent running around at the park as PE–after all that is what most schools do for PE–put kids on the playground and have them run around.