A+ Team Homeschool: Kindergarten

(Helping mom make Mexican Wedding Cakes for Christmas)

So in my last post, I told you all about the changes we have had around here in the last few months and how it will affect our homeschool, but what I didn't mention was that we have also changed curriculum. We loved ACE, and will be using it through out the years for various subjects, but needed to put it to the side for various reasons right now.

With that said, I found a few other things that I would like to try with her but will no longer hold to the mentality that she MUST be at a certain "level" or MUST be reading etc by years end. Its KINDERGARTEN. I remember my own days of Kinder......painting, centers, snack time, naptime..go home mid day! I am a little more relaxed now in my 5th year of homeschooling, but still have yet to experience the JOY of teaching Kindergarten....and I refuse to ruin it with too much academics that will come..... next year..lol...i mean later on down the road ;p We are technically mid-year with school, but these things will last until September since we are schooling through the summer this year:

**Bible: Choosing Obedience, Leading Little Ones to God, and R&S Bible Stories to read with coloring book.

**Math- Horizons Math K, Various Manipulatives for a hands on math (the focus is fun and keeping lessons SHORT)

**Phonics/Learn to read- Abeka Phonics for K5

**Reading(aloud)- Ambleside Year 0. I love having most of these books on my iPad to go!

**Writing: Copywork and Reason for Handwriting K

**Science: Interest Led: Currently Insects are the topic of choice, so I am planning on using these lapbook Ideas from Homeschool Share along with observing them via nature walks and habitats like this one. We also will plant our garden this spring (and read about it, put our days of planting/harvesting on a calendar), raise chicks in the spring and other fun things to come :)

**Social Studies/History: This subject is pretty random and is just being taught naturally. Yesterday, for instance, was MLK Jr day and we read and discussed who he was etc. I think we'll keep this subject open for learning about the community and holidays just as we have been. She also listens in on her brothers history readings in Mystery of History..so its a win win situation :)

I am sure I am missing something, but those are our core "subjects". Everything and anything else we do will be just gravy and intertwined with the rest of her day. The idea is to keep her lessons short, add lots of visual and hands on learning, and enjoying this year with her.....her Kindergarten year which only happens once, right :)

I have mentioned in a couple of other posts that we have changed gears with our kindergarten curriculum and thought I would elaborate a little more in a separate post. There are several reasons why I decided to make a change, but here's a couple that are relevant to the rest of this post:

1) I wanted Middle A to be challenged, but have fun at the same time. I did not find her challenged by the K program at all. The only challenge was getting her to sit still through all the stories that I was reading to her....and unfortunately, they were not engaging her at all. We did do some cut and paste and craft activities and she did enjoy them though.

2) Middle A has learned most of her letter sounds and one per week was just too slow of a pace for her in Kindergarten with Ace and Christi. We are now doing one letter a day and she is blending! Frontline Phonics seems to be working great for her so far and I am amazed at the progress she has made in just 2 weeks! She loves the songs and the repetition is awesome! We do a workbook page, which is basically writing the letter she's learned and an activity to correspond to the lesson. Sometimes we do a craft as well to reinforce that sound.

3) The K program was geared for an ACE school and I was having to drop a lot of things in the teachers manual. That in itself is fine, the problem I started having was due to the amount of stories being read. I would read the animal story, which would take 5-10 mins (and stopping to tend to a baby etc) and then the PACE work would take her less than 2 minutes. Usually there should be some sort of break in between etc..but with only having a limited time to work with her before I needed to tend to a little one or teach her brother, this just wasnt going to work. What ended up happening was instead of the stories in the TM getting divided up throughout the day, they were being lumped into the one time frame I had to teach. Not good for a wiggly 5 year old who is just learning to pay attention. Now we are reading a book 3-4 times a week and she is having GREAT comprehension!

So now that you know my main focus in on PHONICS for her kindergarten year, what else am I using?

We are still using ACE for Math and some of the PACE work for English, and I will eventually add back in science and social studies, but want to get her reading before I add those in.

I also found a link for an awesome enrichment curriculum via Daisy on Facebook and we are loving it! I am tweaking it as I go along (adding in projects that might suit us better etc) but it really is so much fun!

Here's the program we are using (click on it to get to the complete curriculum plan) and hope to continue with the rest of the fall (for the next 3 weeks)...

Here's some of what Middle A did last week:

~listened to both Mom and Big A read aloud Tops and Bottoms no less than 3 times each...

~loved looking at the pictures in The Vegetables We Eat by Gail Gibbons...

~Watched a movie about where our food comes from (the farm)...

~Baked Carrot-Oatmeal muffins and talked about how most of the ingredients came from a farm....

~Made fruits and veggies for our Melissa and Doug farm out of Salt Dough.

~Discussed the different types of fruits and veggies we had in our house at that time, which happened to be good variety of colors!

One of the best things is that I can get my preschooler in on everything she does....works out great! He's actually listening in on the Phonics lessons as well =)