Kindergarden -- what were your main goals? - Page 2

[Mittsy]

beezer75: I'm loving the looks of the Earth School curricula for my 2, thanks!!

[Momma Aimee]

thanks evyone -- all the help has been great.

I have our kindy choices picked out -- no daily or weekly plan yet though

http://scribinglife.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/our-chosenkindergarten-curriculum-final/

[frugalmama]

We're more structured for K than you're looking for I think, but we're finishing up K now. We're loosely following Catholic Heritage Curricula's K plans.

Our main goals were:

Learning to read - this was a big point of frustration for dd because she wanted to read so badly

Basic math {counting, numbers to 100, skip counting, some basic addition and subtraction} - we used Modern Curriculum Press Math K for this.

Handwriting - we used Catholic Heritage Curricula's K book for this. We liked it but it doesn't give a lot of practice unlike most programs

Religion / Catechism - we quickly abandoned the set program and just read stories for this.

Phonics  - we do this as a semi-separate subject from reading, as I believe Phonics to be VERY important.

[CoUnTrYcUtIe07]

we're starting in K september and just will focus on:

letter recognition

number recognition

spelling whole name

learning to read basic words

nature

we're going to be taking the "free-schooling" approach

[sarahtar]

For kindy with DS (just last year, wow), we did unit studies, each unit 2-3 weeks. We tried to incorporate all subjects (reading, math, language, science, and social studies) with each unit, but didn't sweat it if we couldn't do it. Units were things like "neighborhood helpers," "seasons," "water cycle," etc.

I think we also worked on math separately from the units.

[Momma Aimee]

thanks :0)

Sarahtar - if my son does as well as your's I'll be very happy

[heatherdeg]

We didn't have our act together for Kindy.  I wish I would've spent our time just reading stories, doing Montessori activities (mostly self-care), playdates and learning to keep ourselves and our spaces clean and organized.  I'm sure that last part sounds horrible, but reading different philosophies (Montessori, Steinert) it's clear that these are things that need to be instilled early on; and I'm paying the price with my 7yo.  :(

We're a delayed academics family, too.

[Greenmama2]

Posted in your other thread but following on from Heather's post I'd really like to work on rhythm too

[urchin_grey]

My DS has SN so our goals are sort of all over the place.  He's delayed in some areas (he is years behind socially and emotionally) but he's very into academics so he picked up many of the typical Kindy skills by 2.5.  At the same time, he's not ready to do much sit down type work, so Kindy hasn't been much different than his "preschool" year.  He's also a younger Kindy (just turned 6 a week ago) so that's another reason not to push. 

On the other hand, he started reading and spelling a bit about a year ago but it doesn't seem like he's made too much progress with reading since.  He's obviously ready, so I think we will spend the summer really focusing on reading.  There's a summer reading program through our library we'll likely join and I'm planning on getting Click-n-Read as soon as we can fit that into our budget.

Next year (which will probably be sort of a combo of K and 1st for us given his delays) I plan on starting FIAR, continuing with Click-n-Read (and possibly adding Click-n-Spell), and MEP for math.  It seems like he's sort of between reception and year 1, so I'm not sure what we'll start with.  I sort of dread printing out the reception year though because it looks like it would take a LOT of ink.