My favorite question as of late… “How did homeschool go this year?”
It was FANTASTIC! It was so laid back but also rich in activity. My kindergartener picked up amazing academic skills like reading and telling time on an analog clock like a champ. While not every day was met with excitement to learn, I was so pleased with his willingness to put attitude aside to get done what we needed to. He was a dream that way. What a privilege it was to get to learn with him and watch him grow.
In an effort to answer questions of curious minds I made a quick review of our year. Specifically the curriculum that carried us along the way a final review.
This post may contain affiliate links which means I receive a small commission if you purchase thru the links at no added cost to you.
Kindergarten
Im not sure there is a better year to dip your toe in the homeschool waters than starting with Kindergarten. Truthfully I feel like it is was just an extension of preschool and I didn’t really feel pressure to do and be all the things. School days were kept pretty short and most successfully accomplished in the mornings. Our biggest hurdle was a little two year old brother. He seemed too pleased to provide all the distractions every morning. Our general plan for Kindergarten was focusing on language arts, math, reading and handwriting.
As far as curriculum goes, we pulled from two sources. Our math, language arts, and handwriting materials came from the popular The Good And The Beautiful. Their website provides a placement test to help you pick a curriculum level. We stayed with Level K in all these areas. This curriculum was beautiful and super easy to navigate—a true open-and-go kind of approach, which is exactly my kind of speed. We especially loved the Math lessons and the manipulative box it comes with. It gave a fun approach to learning number basics by using counting sticks, toy cars, and dice for interactive games.
Language arts was an especially beautiful collection of work to go thru. We enjoyed the geography lessons and beautiful art and story telling in this workbook. My kindergartener really excelled at the independent work provided. This collection comes with tools to teach your child to read, including what they call “booster cards” and a “reading booster book set” We loosely utilized them as I preferred to supplement reading with Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons.
Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons was a fantastic source and really did the trick for us in learning how to read. I actually started this material during the summer before our official school year kicked off. Im so glad I did because it gave me “teaching practice” and also provided a good foundation for when true kindergarten lessons would start. We loved the approach of this material and it worked really well for us. I recommend taking your time to get familiar with the books teaching style before starting this curriculum with your young learner. The instruction provided is laid out really easy but you will want to be well versed in it before you begin. Once you get the rhythm of how to teach in this specific way these lessons become easy open and go.
Other Resources
Other resources we used and enjoyed was Art For Kids youtube channel, quiet time with our Tonies Box collection and reading aloud Winnie The Pooh while loosely pulling from this Primer With Pooh Bundle. I’ll share below a small round up of “classroom” essentials we used almost every lesson including our favorite coloring tools, a small white board and large page tabs I used to divide lessons up via month (to help keep us moving a long and on track with lessons). We also stayed involved with several activities including, ice skating lessons, Ninja gym, voice lessons and played indoor/outdoor soccer. I mean It was such a full fun year!
Review
Overall 10/10 loved the material we used. My frame of mind this year was to begin knowing I would just take this adventure one year at a time. I didn’t want to put myself in “homeschool prison” for the rest of our academic careers. We ended up enjoying the year so much we decided to take another swing at it for next year. So wish us luck! With a brand new baby arriving at the end of the summer I think we are really in for what will be a busy and fun school year.
xo, Lauren