What does your middle of the road kindy look like?

[nitemarehippygirl]

I guess I should elaborate. We aren't unschoolers, but we're also not into really intense academics at this age. That's what I meant by middle of the road.
My son will be 5 this spring. I'm trying to plan for next year. We've been unofficially homeschooling him off and on for about a year, and the biggest thing I struggle with is finding and sticking to a workable routine. I either overplan, and never get around to doing everything, or we just sort of hang loose, and don't do much of anything. I'm having trouble finding the middle ground.
Our situation is somewhat complicated by my son's special needs: ADHD, sensory issues, and likely Asperger's or something along those lines. Some days he's very cooperative, and some days it's very hard to get him to concentrate more than a few minutes. I also have a daughter who will be 2 next year, who is right in the middle of everything.
Our curriculum next year is going to consist of a hodgepodge of workbooks/library books/real life experiences, (cooking, gardening, etc.)
When I was a kid, we only had kindergarten for half a day, and a big part of that was spent playing house, or playing play doh, or eating snack. By the end of the year, we were expected to know the alphabet, and how to write our names. (DS already knows both.) Now I see people planning literally hours teaching the three R's to 5 year olds. I'm wondering exactly how much actual sit down "work" I should be planning.
I'd love some input from anyone whose btdt, or anyone who's doing it now. What does your schedule for the week look like?

[BellinghamCrunchie]

Kindergarten was like that for me, when I was a child, too. It seems to be very different now. The kindergarteners in our neighborhood are expected to read and come home regularly with homework. They have lists of sight words they are expected to memorize. Honestly, it seems to me kindergartners are doing these days what I didn't do until second or even third grade.

DD will be 5.75 when public school kindergarten starts in the fall.

We have no schedule for things like playdoh, arts and crafts, music etc. That is all very spontaneous.

We spend about an hour a day on academic stuff. Sometimes its all at once, sometimes its split up. It depends on what DD feels like doing at any given time. Some days we don't do anything academic at all.

We have a chart on the wall and DD can choose what she wants to do from the chart. It includes things like:

Read a story or write a story (she dictates, I write). We've been using BOB books for learning to read, and before bed we read whatever she wants to.

Math worksheets or play a board game that involves math or some other math activity (e.g. using Uno cards and pennies to practice adding). We've been using Singapore Math but not consistently; depends on what her interest is any given day.

A logic activity (either Castle Logix, or Lollipop logic, or something along those lines)

A writing activity (mostly for fine motor): either a maze, or dot-to-dot, or drawing a picture

That's it!

[annettemarie]

I don't know how middle of the road it is, but my kindy kid's day goes like this
-Usually listens to devotions, but is welcome to play quietly
-Sometimes listens to Story of the World, but usually plays with his little brother
-Has circle time with me and little brother
-Then he and I spend about a half hour together, telling a fairy tale or reading a story, doing a craft or a puzzle or a game, doing a Let's Find Out or working on some very beginner math concepts
-Usually at this point it's 10, so we have snack.
-Then he spends the rest of the morning (2 hours) working through Workboxes. Ours are pretty non-academic. I've documented some on my blog on Workbox Wednesdays. Today, for example, he looked at an alphabet book, made a Shamrock suncatcher, rolled dice and helped a gnome collect "treasure", told stories with his robot cards, played with stones and trucks, played with silks and blocks, read It Looked Like Spilt Milk, made a cloud painting, matched cloud shapes, drew shamrocks, and a couple other things I can't remember.

I have to keep things fairly simple for him because I have a toddler running around plus two older kids in third and fifth grade.

[sbgrace]

I ended up deciding I needed a gentle, low academic set program for myself. I am sort of like you in terms of over-planning (and then I burn out) or just flying by and we don't do anything I would really like to do with them. I mostly did the flying by and doing whatever (lots of play here) until they turned six which would be half way through their K year if they were enrolled. They learned stuff of course but just as they went and had an interest. My non-attention deficit and non-spectrum kid learned a wider variety of things as would be expected!

At six years old I started Heart of Dakota K curriculum with them. It's got Christian over-tones so wouldn't work for everyone but I'm sure there are other curriculums like it. It's Charlotte Mason and very gentle, lots of activity and hands on stuff and not overly academic. I picked a reading program (HeadSprout) I thought might hold my special needs kiddos attention. We do RightStart math which has been good for him--very quick and active lessons. I put the stuff we're doing in workboxes mostly for me though I think it might be good for him too and they enjoy it. It takes me about 15 minutes at the most and often less to get ready for the next day and I do that as soon as we're done with our school for the current day. It's fast because it's already planned for me and all I have to do is gather any materials and look over the lesson. Yet it fits us and is similar to what I would plan myself if I wasn't so prone to go overboard planning. The lessons all together take very little time--maybe an hour tops. That is broken up into at least twelve different activities or lessons so it goes very quickly for my attention deficit child (who begs me to do school if I am late starting on a particular day/both boys really enjoy what we're doing). The rest of our time is just play and reading together and the like. It's working well.

The take away: I think prior to six just playing and exploring and lots of great books to read is a good choice. Then when I was ready to start more formal stuff (six for us) I needed something sort of planned for me and easy to follow (and enjoyable for all) so I stuck with it consistently.

That said, maybe something like FIAR would be nice for you if he likes to be read to. I have a friend who really likes it.

[CariOfOz]

We just started grade 1 with my almost 6yo this Jan, so this was us last year. I'd call us middle of the roaders...I'm very laid back with curriculum, although we have plenty OF it! Last year about the most my guy was expected to do (and it really wasn't MY expectation, as he would ask me from the time he rolled out of bed lol) was an episode of Headsprout, and maybe a page of his math u see primer when we finally got it. He would, of his own choice, listen in for science & history reads with his older brother. And of course had to do any craft that came alone with those as well

When his brother was working on something that didn't interest him, or required no interference from him.. he was playing lego, or play doh, or drawing or running around the yard with younger brother Tall fences + gates that lock = sanity saver for mom!

[Bluegoat]

OUr plan which we've only just started is about an hour a day. We spend 10 min each on math and reading, french or history, and Bible. For the most part it means reading, say a book on a Canadian historical figure. 5 min are spent on handwriting, and 15 on poetry or a story. Fridays are 20 min or so on a handicraft.

So far, we've just recently started the reading program, and we are going to add in things one at a time until we do our hour each day. For reading we are using the little phonics primer from the Tanglewood website and then we will just practice with real books.

[kittywitty]

We are unschool inspired CM homeschoolers if that makes sense. I don't require anything, but I do strew more than most unschoolers. My 5 yo wants desperately to do kindy work, so I got:

Peak with Books
MEP (online math program to print and use)
Explode the Code
OPGTR

And then she does circle time, read alouds, science, and history with my other kids.

[nitemarehippygirl]

Thanks so much for all the input. I see several things I hadn't heard of that I will be following up on. It looks like the consensus for most of you is about an hour a day on "work". I was thinking along those same lines.
I'll be back to post more later. Gotta get the kids dressed.

[MJB]

My oldest was 5.5 when we started homeschooling K. We used "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" and math workbooks (a huge mishmash of Kumon, DK 1st grade, and Master Skills 2nd grade) daily. We read a lot of books about science and history including most of these history comics: http://www.nclsolutions.com/products...iclibrary.html
The kids caught a lot of bugs, frogs and toads in their little frog habitat. We looked at stars and planets through a telescope. I'd say we got in maybe 45 minutes a day of math and reading on a good day. I focused on reading because math comes really easy to him and he struggled with reading (he's great now!) For the last few months of the year we used and loved time4learning.com which I also used for the first half of this year with my gifted preschooler. I don't love t4l's kindergarten math but both of my sons were able to skip it and start on the 1st grade level. The language arts was great for K and 1st but I don't love the 2nd grade LA. I like that you can choose the grade level for each subject.

[kgianforti]

That's the beauty of homeschooling - you can tailor your "school" to suit the needs of your kiddo and family!!

We start official school aged Kindy this coming fall but we are doing K work right now. I trimmed our week from 5 days to 3 days, for the most part (my dd had me going 5 days and that was overwhelming).

I am going to basically focus on the 3R's simply because I have align with state standards. BUT, I did ask my dd what she wanted to learn about and bought stuff according to that (math, science and art - like craft projects). So we do a lot of those 3 things right now. She is also self-led when it comes to reading and writing. Her writing is on point for her age and she is reading at about a K level - so I'm not concerned about using anything "formal" yet. She is also a workbook lover so our curriculum has workbooks in it (math) but our science is mix of reading books, activity sheets and projects. We use Horizons K math and Sonlight Science K right now.

We also listen to a lot of Bible based audio stories in the van while on the road. And read a devotional and listen to worship songs.

We also go about one hour of actual work. I don't include the craft projects or read alouds in that time though. The other night, she worked in her math book for about 45 minutes and I had to stop her cause it was approaching 9pm and I wanted to sleep! She cried and begged and I still said no (mean mama!)

[Shelsi]

I think a lot of it depends on your own child. We do much more than what the pp's have posted but it's not really ever a struggle to get ds to do it. He also was in full day public kindy until xmas break before I pulled him out so even doing 3 hours of work a day is still less than half than what he was doing before (7 hr school day with only 1 recess!). He also really wants to learn the stuff we're doing and I think he enjoys the one on one time with me.

So our typical day: We usually start school around 9 a.m. or so. I read a story or a book about one of the things he's interested in right now - at the moment it's Mt St Helens/volcanoes. Then my 2 yr old usually wants to nurse so while I nurse her ds does a quick letter worksheet. Then we play a board game of his choosing. We then finish our language arts for the day, we use Sing, Spell, Read, and Write. Then we have a snack while he reads a bit from one of his readers. Then we do math, we use Math U See, he just finished Primer so we're waiting on Alpha to arrive. Then it's lunch time usually so we eat lunch. And then we finish up with either a chemistry lab or SOTW. The rest of the day is all spontaneous stuff with him helping me cook, garden, etc.