Fall Kindergarten Thread

[kgianforti]

Hello! Anyone want to chat about our K students?

We started K this past Monday and have had a very exciting week! We have been studying birds in science (Sonlight Science K) and have made a bunch of bird related projects.

We began reading through the Sonlight P3/4 reading list as well as continuing with the Peak With Books book list. I increased my big girl's book limit at the library from 15 to 20 so we have been going through those as well. The latest "craze" is the Magic School Bus books - I have 9 coming via the library and ordered 2 of the chapter books from paperbackswap.com.

We made "craft dough", baked it then painted it.

Math is going well and we are just about to wrap up Singapore 1a.

On the down side, we've been stuck inside a little bit more than usual because my seaonal allergies are terrible this year. But the girls are still having fun outside and all that jazz!

Going to get ice cream when the shop opens at 3pm!!

What about you? How is K going in your homeschool??

[astra]

I love the idea of kindergarten thread!!

We started Kindergarten on Monday too!! Our week started off great, but yesterday was a little rough. He hates the thought of "school" everyday of the week. Today was better. He loves learning, but he is feeling a little overwhelmed.

We are using Calvert material and noticed that we are missing the science text, so we will be on the look out for some type of science material soon.

This week we made our own finger paint, which was a big hit!

[lonegirl]

We will be starting on Tuesday with a Not Going Back to School picnic with a local homeschool group. This will be our first meeting of everyone there so hopefully it will go well.
Next Friday we head on a cruise for 2 weeks...so school will be on the ship. I have printed out maps and flags of all the countries we will be visiting, as well I have packed several small, clear plastic bottles for beach sand.
I think that I will start with just 1 hour of structured lessons a day....lots of play and craft time. He is already familiar with all the letter sounds and can read many words and is trying to sound out many more. We will continue with his math skills as he is grasping basic addition and subtraction.
One think I want to practice is his printing. He can trace all the letters perfectly and can print most....but it is just barely legible
I have Canadian Curriculum books for JK-G1 and lots of fun activity books for ages3-6....so I am hoping that we can have lots of fun learning.
I know one blocker I will meet will be his stubbornness....if he can't do it perfectly the first time he decides he can't do it at all and wants you to do it instead.

[frugalmama]

We're a week into K, and DD is LOVING it. We're using CHC but subbing out the religion for another program, and adding in read-alouds and science. We do school 4 days a week, with Wednesdays open for PE/ Park Day and errands. It's taking us about an hour and a half a day, with lots of that being coloring and reading.

DD is in LOVE with dry erase books for letters, numbers, shapes - really anything she can find dry erase. She asks to "Do School" and I hand her a marker and dry erase book and she is good for a good 20 minutes!

I need to make some play dough for making letters with {anyone have a good recipe?} and work on our memory items for the week.

[VisionaryMom]

for now

I'm really supposed to be cleaning my kitchen!

[Kelabu]

Originally Posted by lonegirl

We will be starting on Tuesday with a Not Going Back to School picnic with a local homeschool group. This will be our first meeting of everyone there so hopefully it will go well.
Next Friday we head on a cruise for 2 weeks...so school will be on the ship. I have printed out maps and flags of all the countries we will be visiting, as well I have packed several small, clear plastic bottles for beach sand.
I think that I will start with just 1 hour of structured lessons a day....lots of play and craft time. He is already familiar with all the letter sounds and can read many words and is trying to sound out many more. We will continue with his math skills as he is grasping basic addition and subtraction.
One think I want to practice is his printing. He can trace all the letters perfectly and can print most....but it is just barely legible
I have Canadian Curriculum books for JK-G1 and lots of fun activity books for ages3-6....so I am hoping that we can have lots of fun learning.
I know one blocker I will meet will be his stubbornness....if he can't do it perfectly the first time he decides he can't do it at all and wants you to do it instead.

Mine won't officially start K till next Fall so I'm really just poaching in your thread. I love the sand idea. One of the reasons I decided to homeschool was for the traveling flexibility. I'm stealing your activities for next month!

[EllieJelly]

I'm loving homeschooling kindergarten so far! Way more fun than I was expecting it to be. We are in our third week and are almost done with singapore A too. So glad to hear someone else doing the same. So far it's been way too easy and what I felt was a time suck, but dd loves it. I'm doing Handwriting without tears with both kids and we've been easing into the Language arts. Otherwise, we have just been doing a ton of really fun crafts and some easy recipes too, mostly from Pretend Soup cookbook.

[onyxravnos]

thread crashing. Ds is 3 1/2 but we are doing oak meadows k this year so i may pop in and out.

Originally Posted by lonegirl

, as well I have packed several small, clear plastic bottles for beach sand.

not to burst your bubble but make sure you collect seashells or something too, they may not let you bring sand in back through customs. When i went to the bahamas they made me leave the sand.... something about microbs?
that is of course only if they notice you can always try and just play dumb about it.

oh well in the us anyway...maybe not canada? anyway just FYI

[kgianforti]

Originally Posted by EllieJelly

We are in our third week and are almost done with singapore A too. So glad to hear someone else doing the same. .

Cool, another Singapore Math user and you are new to mothering.com! Welcome!!

When you say Singapore A, do you mean Earlybird A or Primary Math 1a? If you mean Primary Math, are you using US or Standards Edition? We are using US Edition for 1a and 1b but I'll probably switch to Standards Edition at 2a since I've heard the HiG is soooo much better!

What is everyone using for K - curriculum wise?

[eastkygal]

We are two weeks into K and we are having a good time. We are using Rod and Staff, and I am supplementing for Science, Health, and such from library books. I want to do year around school, with breaks in between, so when I originally looked at Oak Meadow, I decided against it because I could not do that sort of schedule, though I love the curriculum. It is very Fall to Spring based from what I saw.
I'm confused about teaching phonics right now, and posted another thread about it.
Not much time to write now, but will later.

[JulieNicole23]

Jumping in!! This is our first year of homeschooling...DD will be Kindergarten this year, and DS is PreSchool...We have had a few setbacks recently (DS broke his femur last month, my grandmother had surgery x2 last month) but we hope to start school Tuesday or Wednesday!

[pampered_mom]

Originally Posted by lonegirl

I know one blocker I will meet will be his stubbornness....if he can't do it perfectly the first time he decides he can't do it at all and wants you to do it instead.

My ds is the same way. It's been that way for awhile now which is a little bit frustrating. I have to catch myself and try not to make it too big of a deal which ends up being totally counter-productive. I have to remind myself that if I just let it slide a bit and give him some space he'll tend to pick it up down the road. It always amazes me when this happens...don't know why, I should know better by now. For my ds it's almost as if he has to digest things a bit before he can feel confident enough to do it.

We started last week and are just about at the end of our second week. We're working on a non-traditional schedule that follows my husband rotating work schedule so technically tomorrow is our Friday. We've been working on HWOT Pre-K every school day (basically five days a week...or so) for two hours. HWOT has been a *big* hit and not just with my 5 1/2 yo, but with my 2 1/2 yo as well (who insists upon doing "dool" just like her brother). They love Mat Man which pretty much revolutionized my son's ability to draw people in one session. I'm still amazed every time I see it. He went from refusing to draw people (because he couldn't do it, didn't know how) to being very confident in his abilities. We've worked a lot with the capital letter pieces, songs, and fingerplays before working on pencil grip (another struggle). We're only a few pages into the workbook, but we're loving that as well.

For science we're working through The Magic School Bus. We started out with magnets and electricity because that's what ds is most interested in and will move into the human body and nutrition (using Food Renegade's curriculum when it's available for his age range).

For math we're mostly working on color and shapes which is more review than new stuff - although there have been a few new shapes.

For social studies we're going with something I put together on my own. We started with maps because ds has an abiding, years long obsession with them. I'd like to move from maps in general to getting a broader picture of the world around us (and using a neat lesson plan from Unicef of Canada called "Rights, Wants, and Needs"). From there I'm a little stuck. I'm tempted to purchase the corresponding unit studies from Intellego, but I'm also tempted to come up with something that studies history through the lens of our state simply because there'd be more opportunities for hands on experience and trips.

For Phonics...mostly we're working on decoding. He has his letter sounds just about down pat, but the concept of blending really seems to have him a bit stuck. We just checked out another Leap Frog video (the talking word factory) which I hate. I don't want to use them...but they really seem to work so well for ds. He'll pick things up from the video faster than if I try explaining it to him myself. I ended up ordering the first set of BOB readers so we'll see how that goes. Otherwise, I have high hopes for "Alpha Phonics".

Then there's the Art Group I'm trying to start with our local group (ala the 2007 idea mentioned in Mothering), lots of small motor skill practice which seems to be very much needed, story times at the library and other locations, homeschool gym class through the Y, and homeschool classes through the nature center we've done "summer day camp" through the past two years. We'll..that and all the general arts, crafts, and play we can fit in. Typing it out it really does look like more than it feels like.

[Bluegoat]

We start K on Tuesday too. We are going to be using Ambleside Online but they only have a book list for this year, so we are doing some very informal work, about an hour a day. We are doing the MEP intake year for math, and reading will be our main goal. We are going to do some study of the middle ages for history, and whatever science topics interest us. We are starting with astronomy since she recently visited the planetarium (or as she says, the star aquarium.) A bit of French, mostly songs I think.

She is also taking a homeschooler's art class, and a music class.

I had decided not to enroll her in dance, but when I told her tonight she started to cry, so now I am not sure. She rides in the summer and usually until it starts to get cold, and I don't want to do both. But dance really can't be started mid year. I feel like a mean mommy when she is so set on dance.

[VisionaryMom]

Originally Posted by pampered_mom

For social studies we're going with something I put together on my own. We started with maps because ds has an abiding, years long obsession with them. I'd like to move from maps in general to getting a broader picture of the world around us (and using a neat lesson plan from Unicef of Canada called "Rights, Wants, and Needs"). From there I'm a little stuck. I'm tempted to purchase the corresponding unit studies from Intellego, but I'm also tempted to come up with something that studies history through the lens of our state simply because there'd be more opportunities for hands on experience and trips.

Social Studies/History: We are in a similar place with social studies/history. I don't feel any pressure because here K and 1 do mostly community helpers and neighborhoods stuff, so even if we go to a traditional school at some point, we're okay.

I'm doing a Map Skills workbook just to introduce some concepts on a smaller scale - legends, scale, etc. Then we're going to do some fun things with aerial maps of our neighborhood, creating a map of a couple of blocks of downtown, etc.

I also seem to be moving toward using our state has a backdrop for discussions about the development of the US. First, our state stood as a sort of middle ground for a lot of important movements and events but also because we can take day trips to see things we discuss, which makes them more real.

We currently have a stash of books about the medieval period, though, and I'm prepping a unit study on it that will, I hope, incorporate science, art, math, & history at least.

---
Ok, math - here's what I've done.

We have only 1 educational supply store near us, and unfortunately they have a poor selection. I bought the "Singapore Math Practice" workbook they had, but now I'm realizing that it's not the official workbook from SingaporeMath.com, but it's a workbook from a different publisher. I've been reading up on them, and they're supposed to be at the same grade level. Ours is the 2nd grade level. We should finish the first half in 2 weeks. Then we're going to do some work on place values for adding and subtracting with multi-digits and move to the 2nd half of the Singapore imposter. I anticipate being done with all of that by the end of October with the way DS inhales math work. (I stopped him at 10:30 tonight and told him that he had to go to bed.)

Anyway...I'm not sure what to do then. The book I have on place value looks like it probably overlaps a good bit with the next level of the SM. It may make more sense anyway to stick with the publisher we have now. I may do something just fun, though, like work on Roman numerals or introduce the metric system. We probably will do a good bit of hands-on math.

---
Science/Nature: I am taking DD3's lead on nature studies because she is more interested in nature than the rest of us! Right now we are reading about hummingbirds and doing some hummingbird feeding and watching at our house. We've also been reading about butterfly life cycles. I'm completely okay with taking their lead in science and going as in-depth as they want.

---

Life Skills: Sometimes I question whether these things are more "parenting" or "schooling," but since i have to record instructional hours, they're school! We've just started allowances, so we talked last week about how we can use money - spend, save, give, tax. Each picked something to save for, and we are making a chart for how long they have to save a certain amount to get the item. They also talked about charities and picked one for a donation.

He also planned and cooked dinner tonight (pizzas made on halved hamburger buns). So, now if I can just add laundry to his schooling...

---

Literature: Read. Read. Read. We have been going to the library every 2-3 days and getting oodles of books. I am reading a biography of Daniel Boone to them, though we are going very slowly because we're doing some related activities. We just started Little House in the Big Woods last night as bedtime reading. We've always read a good bit, but we've ramped it up, and now I am trying to engage them in thinking about the stories and recalling what happened.

---

Reading: Ahh! DS has no interest in reading. When he concentrates, he can sound out words, but he just doesn't want to do it. DD has been asking to learn to read, though, and she gets all twinkly-eyed about it. I've enlisted DS' help in teaching DD her letter sounds. He thinks he's the cat's meow because of it, and I'm happy with him really working on letter sounds. We probably will try to work really heavily on reading again during the winter holidays when DH is home to occupy Little Sis.

[VisionaryMom]

Originally Posted by Bluegoat

We are going to be using Ambleside Online but they only have a book list for this year, so we are doing some very informal work, about an hour a day.

We are going through the AO reading list as well. We've already read a few, but they have really enjoyed the others we have read. We read Blueberries for Sal last week, and they asked if we could just buy it rather than return it to the library. Our library also has a "50 Books to Read Before Kindergarten" list that we started in the summer and are still working through.

Originally Posted by Bluegoat

A bit of French, mostly songs I think.

Yay! I took several years of French and am probably an intermediate speaker at this point. I haven't made any decision on languages because I have an internal battle between the practicality of Spanish and my love of French. DS checked out a book of beginning Swahili words a while back and still remembers many of them. He says that's his language choice, but oy. I have to really think about it before I can take that on and make it valuable (and correct!).

Originally Posted by Bluegoat

I had decided not to enroll her in dance, but when I told her tonight she started to cry, so now I am not sure.

We went through this, too. School here started Aug. 9, so we are a couple of weeks into activities. We overextended in the spring, and we talked to DC about not doing anything at least for the fall. I spoke to our dance school director, and she's completely okay with them starting in January at the beginning of the second semester. They both cried, though. I mean, geez, they even got invited to performances of the dances they learned in the spring, but the weekly lessons I didn't want to do right now.

[tankgirl73]

We're sorta doing kindy here...

DD is only 3.5yo (4 in December) but seems advanced. Her older brother (now 12), I pressured and pushed and did WAY too much academics WAY too soon, he hated it and I forced it, we're still recovering from some of the issues I caused because of it... so I was very proud of myself that I'd learned my lesson, and would just let DD play, play, play -- no 'real' academics until she was at least 6 or 7.

Then my daughter ends up demanding worksheets, sitting at her little table for THREE HOURS one day just doing worksheets and projects... If I ask her "would you like to do school tomorrow morning?" she says "YES!!!"

So we've been doing some very light things, after a Montessori-inspired toddlerhood. But when I looked at the stuff we're doing, I suddenly realized "wow, she's doing kindergarten... "

We've just been doing it piecemeal, once in awhile... but recently have started to get more regular. Going to try to do at least a little something every day, but not going to fret if we don't. She's just 3 for crying out loud lol...

What we're doing:

Math: RightStart Math A. We're at lesson 19 and she loves it, and totally "gets" it.

Science/Social Studies/Etc: Teachers Book Bags monthly themed unit studies. We got the discount deal of the entire 2009 set. We've finished one on the ocean, almost done the one on seasons, about to start the one about neighbourhoods. Love the variety of activities in these (she especially loved making the lapbook for the oceans unit and asks to do more lapbooks!) and we're really making use of our library's "hold" service for all the suggested reading!

Reading/phonics: Partly winging it. Using some Progressive Phonics. Using some old, old readers online. Did the trials on Headsprout and Reading Eggs. Going to try 100 Easy Lessons and see what we think. She can read CVC words and the occasional more complicated word, she's really eager to learn, just a matter of finding something we all like. Or not, and just continuing to wing it lol...

Handwriting: Not sure yet. Until a couple weeks ago, she could only trace letters (and loved to) but on her own, had no 'muscle memory' of the shapes. Then suddenly, she independently wrote her whole name including a couple letters we had never taught her (because she wrote them in capital and we've only ever actually practiced lower case). Now she's writing all the time, has learned most of the numbers too (as they're being covered in RS Math). Was thinking about A Beka writing books, also Cursive First, and we have Penny Gardner's Italics. Which to use? TBD.

Art: Meet the Masters. Using the 10+ program with DS, using the 5-7 with her, same artists so we can do the projects together. She did the preview unit last week and made her portfolio, and has been vehemently requesting to do the next unit (we just haven't had time yet).

PE: Registered in ballet and tap dancing classes, this is her second year.

Practical skills: We're learning hand knitting. She can actually almost do it all by herself, I just have to watch over her in case she misses a finger now and then. She helps me with cooking and cleaning.

Music: I'm teaching her piano (I'm a professional teacher) and she tootles on our old trumpet and my trombone, gets a surprisingly good sound too lol...

Miscellaneous: She loves playing the silly 'educational' software games I had bought years ago for DS, things like "Math with Pooh" and Jumpstart and Reader Rabbit. Hate to say it, but I think that's where she learned those letters she suddenly started writing, and she's definitely picked up some other things too... so they do work. A bit. For her. (Never did for DS lol) We also have miscellaneous collections of worksheets/books from the bookstore and from currclick, "match the objects" and "finish the pattern" and "colour by shape" kinds of things. She just looooves those too...

Most of her day is totally free-range, we're still just playing around to see how much and what kind of structure works for her.

[EllieJelly]

Originally Posted by kgianforti

Cool, another Singapore Math user and you are new to mothering.com! Welcome!!

When you say Singapore A, do you mean Earlybird A or Primary Math 1a?

We are using earlybird so I guess I'm no help, sorry! When I get up to the primary I was told that there was a special California edition I am to use I guess because I'm going through a charter I had no idea there were so many editions!

[naturegirl7]

So excited to see this thread!!
We just finished our 2nd week of kindy and are LOVING it!! I am using a very eclectic curriculum, and since DS seems to be advanced, I am working with him at his level.

Math - We are using MathUSee Alpha and over the last two weeks have done place value, counting/writing to 1-20 (which we barely spent time on cuz DS can count to 100 - writing on the other hand is rough but improving!), and just moved onto the number blocks. Lots of free exploration time with these - definitely have to get the boy some Legos too

Language Arts - DS has been reading for a few years now, so I am not doing anything formal for reading/phonics. He reads on his own all the time, plus we read to him throughout the day and at bedtime. Right now we are reading Magic Tree House and Magic School Bus books that pair with science/history topics. We found great grammar cartoons and interactive games on Cosmeo.com (LOVE that site!) - so we have watched that and played that game about nouns, and named objects that are nouns. And yesterday I copied a few sentences from our history story book and he circled the nouns, then today when he did it again he felt the need to label them too - P for person, T for thing, and the place stumped him since it was another P but we decided on Pl. LOL Practicing his writing using a wipe off placemat by Melissa and Doug that is awesome, and a wipe off lap board from target.

History - We are doing Story of the World Ancient History cuz DS is OBSESSED with ancient Greece and Egypt. We are currently working on finishing up our dino and pre-dino history and hopefully next week will move on to pre-historic man. Lots of great Discovery Channel videos on Netflix plus our personal dino library, and our super awesome Usborne World History Encyclopedia. I am really just using this as a core and branching out from here. Science will be related to the period of history we are learning, literature/language arts will be thru the various books, audio books, websites, etc that we use to supplement (like the Magic Tree House books).
Also doing a Flat Stanley exchange for geography

Science - just kinda pulling stuff together to go along with SOTW - like for the dinos, we are learnng about dinos and evolution. Prehistoric man will be seasons. Fertile crescent and start of farming - it will be about farming and growing things. Egypt we'll mummify an apple, or perhaps a chicken if I am brave (I knda lke the apple though cz we could put half in the salt mix and the other half allow to decay for a double whammy experiment). For Pompeii we will make a volcano - that sort of thing
Lots of Magic School Bus books stuff being worked in there too. And field trps toteh various nature centers around here.

I also count life skills such as cooking and shopping (both involve math!). And DS is in a ton of activities at the moment. He goes to swim 2 mornings a week thru Oct. Homeschool gymnastics one morning a week. And Level 3 Ballet/tap one night and Boys HipHop another night. Plus regular playdates and almost daily trips to the park with daddy at night while I am working. And art time of course. Today he played with clay while watching (and singing and dancing along wth MJ's This Is It! LOL)

Anyone else work outside the home? I work 3-11 and so far that has been my biggest challenge. Some mornings we skip school and snuggle and play instead DS begs for homework so he can be like Daddy (who is in school at the moment too), but never does it LOL so I find that we take one morning on the weekends to do school without interuptions of running off to activities like swim or gymnastics. I honestly can not wait until Swim is over and I get 2 mornings back!

[kgianforti]

Originally Posted by kgianforti

What is everyone using for K - curriculum wise?

Here's what we are using for K4:

Bible - Rod & Staff Bible Stories and Coloring, various devotionals

Math - Singapore 1/ CWP 1, Horizons 1 and we also play around with MEP 1a

Science - Sonlight Science K/Singapore Start Up Science

Phonics - I'm kind of letting DD self teach right now and she is using various websites and JumpStart Advanced: 1st Grade (CD ROM)

Handwriting - using some Kumon books for now (dd is also self teaching right now)

Reading - she is reading books to me. We have Scholastic Brain Bank Readers and those "leveled" readers

Read alouds:

-Bible devotional/stories
-Peak With Books book list
-Sonlight P 3/4 book list
-the 20 books we get from the library (every 2 to 3 weeks -I increased Squeak's limit from 15 to 20)
-Magic School Bus books, various science readers, math story books
-whatever the girls pull out from the book basket (I recently bought some new Berenstain Bear books)
And we read chapter books at bedtime...currently Stuart Little and I have Magic School Bus chapter books coming via paperbackswap.com.

Other - I made up "activity drawers" for her - sort of like workboxes but filled with just fun stuff.

Also everyday play and fun things like that - crafts, art, painting, outside stuff. Today we are going to melt old crayons to make new ones!

[kgianforti]

Originally Posted by EllieJelly

We are using earlybird so I guess I'm no help, sorry! When I get up to the primary I was told that there was a special California edition I am to use I guess because I'm going through a charter I had no idea there were so many editions!

Just two: US and Standards. Standards is aligned with California state standards. We'll switch over to Standards when we get to 2a. But I have everything in US for 1b right now so I'll just stick with it.