Not sure what to do with my 4 (almost 5 year old) this year

[Treehuggermama5]

DD can read fluently, add and subtract single digits, count to 100, etc. but she is still too young for kindergarden. She doesn't turn 5 until mid-November. I was planning on doing the online public school curriculum that you do at home but it turns out she can't start either because of her age. She wants to do school so badly but I am having trouble finding a place where she fits exactly. Anyone in my shoes? I know i can just figure out a curriculum on my own but, with her almost 2 year old brother running around, I feel like I could use some direction this year. I figure there are probably options out there that I haven't come across yet!

[Tjej]

It really depends on how you want to approach it. Sonlight is a literature based cirriculum that seems really interesting. Enki is different cirriculum that looks really neat to me as well. Do you want to have a "classical" approach (history, latin, etc.)? Would you rather folow your child's lead and read about unschooling? Would you like to have your child study a variety of subjects centered on a subject of interest (unit studies)?

And with your DD's age, really the BEST thing is to read great books with her, do all sorts of fun outdoors stuff and just bask in the wonder of the newness of the world - .

There are a million cool ways to approach education. It'd be easier to know how to advise you if you could give a couple of ideas of how you are thinking you want to do it.

Tjej

[lonegirl]

Do you need a curriculum? My son will be 4 in Nov. Were he in PS he would be in Junior Kindergarten here. He loves the idea of school. We started school today. I basically did an hour of structured lessons at the dining room table. He is already beginning to read (we have level 1 readers and he can manage a good 1/4-1/2 the words). He is doing basic addition and we have started on subtraction.
What we did today:
- printouts of number trains for him to trace the numbers
- domino math (ie 1dot +2dots =?) he loved that!!
- colour printouts of colour words to trace (with corresponding colour) and read
- cutting out pre printed shapes
- World Almanac for Kids Science cards (he loves these cards)
He wanted to do more and more but I said for today we will just do a bit and perhaps later we would do more....that's when he brought his Science cards for me to read to him.

I also have some fun Kindergarten curriculum books I picked up at a local Scholar's Choice. (Total Basic Skills -K, Senior Kindergarten from the Smart series, and Scholar Power Skillbook-K) I also have The GIANT Encyclopedia of Monthly Activities: For Children 3 to 6

We also do arts and crafts and lots of play. We are going on a cruise-leaving this Friday-for 2 weeks and I have printed colouring pages of the ship and islands we will be seeing as well as the flags of the countries, and small plastic bottles for beach sand....so lots of fun learning.

[Treehuggermama5]

Both responses actually help a lot. I just moved to a more rural area and the lack of free nature and craft classes we're accustomed to is a big adjustment. I feel like it's so much harder to find direction. I'm going to check out the curriculums and in the mean time I think I'm going to adapt the free style version with print outs!

I am not really sure what direction I want to take as far as un-schooling vs. classical curriculum (and then what kind of curriculum). I will sit on this tonight!

[WhaleinGaloshes]

You sound a lot like me and my DD (she's a 9/2005 birthday.) She went to a 2.5 hour afternoon, 5-day preschool program this past year at the Y which focused on large muscle play, swimming, the gym, getting tired etc.

Things we've taken this time as an opportunity to spend learning/exploring at home:

Foundational math basics like place value, counting strategies, partitioning numbers etc. She is using RightStart level B, and I also like MEP which is free to download. (http://www.cimt.plymouth.ac.uk/projects/mep/default.htm)

Phonics. I'm a stickler. She is reading just beyond about a 3rd grade level now, can read so many things you hand her including words she doesn't know the meaning of and proper nouns, so we've used tools like Webster's Speller to casually practice syllable division and play with the rules of phonics. Among the things she has to choose to read from are still advanced-level controlled readers (I love I See Sam, which at level 7 are currently increasing her reading stamina by gently increasing the words per page and gently decreasing the font size, with quality stories IMHO.)

Handwriting practice, which for her worked best as drawing practice. She never went in for handwriting drills at all, I bought a Draw Write Now book for my niece and they sold me on how drawing is also improving your handwriting and man, it worked! Then this summer she asked for cursive so we practiced that on a chalkboard for a while.

Art. http://www.teachartathome.com/ is a nice site and she and I have done a number of their projects. I bought her MediaJr ebook and we did all of those, too.

I got her this CD, which we both enjoyed learning and then I realized that she hadn't learned many traditional folk/kid's songs at all (in her preschool, they taught songs that sometimes used the melodies but they never did songs like Twinkle Twinkle, Friar Jacque, Yankee Doodle), so I downloaded a bunch from iTunes and we sang them on car trips.

This is an awesome book for early composition (we have done no grammar to date)

We also do some science and history together, but I don't feel like these are very important at this age. I'm a scientist, and so I can't help myself going through BFSU with her, but we do that around 3 times a month these days. I made a history program for her based on Hirch's Books to Build On which we do about the same frequency, when the spirit moves us.

We travel as much as possible (and I include local travel in that, too) before we get more tied down with schedules as she gets bigger. We go to kid-interesting museums as much as possible. The best is to go to the same museum (zoo, etc.) over and over, almost, so you get to know it and see everything it has.

And the biggest focus is really literature (her reading and her listening.) Book lists abound...Ambleside is one good one but I've found I like somewhat more modern lists better for myself, the NYPL is my go-to right now when I'm looking for something to check out (they have a picture book list and now that she's reading, this one too) We read a lot, which I'm sure goes without saying, fiction and non-fiction.

So that's my own long post of recommendations, things that have worked well for my DD.

[MommaCrystal]

I have a son exactly like your daughter, November birthday and all. We are doing Five In a Row which is reading a lot of excellent books and accompanying activities.

[SundayCrepes]

My son will be 5 in Christmas. We are unschoolers. I buy the secular sonlight books. There is a secular sonlight users group in yahoo groups. I really like their books because they introduce so many different ideas to my son. However, the way we are using them is we have them and if he's interested we read them or one of the other MANY books we have. We've got a few workbooks for him whenever he wants, which is rare. Plus lots and lots of art stuff, creative play stuff, games, etc. He's always finding something to do because we have a wide variety of stuff for him to choose from (and it's relatively well organized.)

[Treehuggermama5]

Oh wow! Thank you for all the links!! Okay. I am feeling much more Inspired after looking at all this stuff. I really appreciate it!