These young years are the best! I love all the hands-on games and manipulatives and dry-erase activities and stickers. My littlest is in kindergarten this year. Because there is so much available for free or for very cheap at this level (both online and at the local dollar store), I keep our homeschool curriculum for kindergarten pretty simple for the most part, with a few fun surprises sprinkled in. Phonics and math are our priority, while the other subjects he is enjoying simply because of the whole-family learning approach we take to those subjects.
Our Homeschool Curriculum for Kindergarten
History and Geography
As I’ve mentioned in my other curriculum posts for 4th grade and 6th grade, we use Tapestry of Grace as our core for history, Bible and worldview, literature and writing. I love using Tapestry for whole family learning, and my youngest is enjoying this opportunity because my older kids are using the curriculum. The fun thing about whole family learning is that my youngest is already used to being part of our routine. Last year, he listened to our read-alouds, completed his own notebooking crafts, and made his own display board. He was right in the middle of all of it, and he has no expectation that it should be any different. So this year as he enters kindergarten, the only difference will be that he is more aware of what we are studying and more capable of completing the projects on his own. And he’ll have his own portfolio to show off at our unit parties.
While my older kids use a lot of the projects from Homeschool-in-the-Woods and History Pockets, my kindergartener will be using more of the Story of the World activities from the pdf I purchased four years ago when my older kids were little. Oh, and he’ll have some cool Usborne sticker books that have the older kids envious.
Littlest will also be tagging along in our Visualize World Geography curriculum, learning countries from around the world through stories and pictography. One thing I’ve learned over the years is to never underestimate my kids. As a preschooler, he learned his continents and could locate the pyramids and the Ishtar Gate on his Vtech globe we picked up from a thrift store. He fully intends to hang with the older ones during geography time this next year.
Phonics
I loved using Logic of English Foundations for my daughter. It was key in helping her work through her dyslexia challenges and learn to read. With my littlest, I knew right away I’d be using this curriculum again. I love it! Solid phonics—the best I’ve seen—and lots of fun kinesthetic activities to make learning to read busy, active, and fun. One of the greatest challenges of teaching busy young kiddos to read is having them sit still long enough to read the book or list of words. But Logic of English Foundations is very good at incorporating games throughout the curriculum that has my kids running the stairs to read a word, going on a “word hunt” around the house to find strips of paper to read, playing phonogram bingo, and tons of other engaging activities.
We started Foundations A toward the end of this last year, so we’ll be wrapping up Level A and completing Level B for kindergarten. While he is not reading yet, all of the tools and skills are in place. He understands sounds and blending. He’s just a step or two away from putting those skills together to read.
Math
My littlest loves math. He devours it. While I intended to take our time through preschool math, he took off. Consequently, he’s got a good head start on kindergarten math skills. I’ve chosen to start him with Math Mammoth 1. While it is technically first grade, it starts slowly enough that I think he will do just fine. Plus it will continue to challenge him throughout this next year. Otherwise, I’m afraid we’d be done with kindergarten math by November. Another perk is that I already own this curriculum as a pdf, so it costs me nothing right now to have both my fourth grader and my first grader working through this curriculum.
As a bonus, I’ll also have some Star Wars Math on hand for him. Last year, he bought the Star Wars preschool math from Barnes and Noble with his own money, and worked the entire book in about a week. I’m telling you, this child consumes math!
UPDATE: While we did quite a bit in Math Mammoth 1 A, we did end up switching to RightStart Math.
Science
At this stage, I’m pretty laid back about science. My plan is to read fun science books together, either from our own personal library or from the public library, and then play science board games with his older sister. I picked up SomeBody game for our anatomy unit and Hit the Habitat Trail board game for our animal science unit.
My little guy is raring to go. He simply cannot wait for kindergarten. And the more I organize his homeschool curriculum for kindergarten—and counting bears, cuisenaire rods, sticker books, and phonogram tiles—I can’t wait either.
**Updated in June 2008 to reflect curriculum changes made during the year.**
You can check out the rest of our curriculum here:
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