Our Curriculum 2013-2014: Kindergarten

coloring in the lines at VBS

My 8th born child is 4 years old. Although we did work on phonics some last year, this will be his first "official" year of school. My philosophy is to start early and keep it fun. Kids absorb so much at this age, and when all their older siblings are learning, they want to participate. 

His younger sister (the "baby") just turned 2, but I'm sure she will do her best to keep up with him. The two of them are inseparable. She already wants to do phonics every time he does, even though she can't pronounce half of the sounds. 

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BIBLE

• Questions with Answers Volume 1 from Songs For Saplings* with free printables  from 1plus1plus1equals1. 
• Songs For Saplings: ABC from Songs For Saplings* with freeprintables  from 1plus1plus1equals1. 
• Gopher Buddies Quiet Time from Word of Life

SCIENCE 

Zoology 2: Swimming Creatures of the 5th Day  Zoology 3: Land Animals of the 6th Day (He will be listening in on his older siblings lessons and participating as able.)

HISTORY

• The Mystery of History, Volume 1 

(He will be listening in on his older siblings lessons and participating as able.)

LANGUAGE ARTS

• Preschool Phonics 
• Draw Write Now, Book 1  with free printables from 1plus1plus1equals1.
• Paper Cutting Practice Strips (to strengthen muscles used for writing.) 
• ABC Pattern Block Designs 

COUNTING & NUMBER SKILLS

• Pom Pom Number Flashcards (adding stickers instead of pom poms)  
• Numbered Punch Strips (using a hole punch)
• How Many Fingerprints booklet

ADDITIONAL ACTIVITIES

counting & cutting

I'm not sure yet what else we will do. We will probably do some cooking together too, since he is anxious to learn this skill. 

See my Pinterest board for Activities Bags/Quiet Books

Preserving Homeschool Memories With a Yearbook

At the end of third grade, my parents removed my sister and me from the private Christian school we had been attending and began home schooling. While I eventually grew to like being at home, I still to this day enjoy looking at my old school year books from the private school. I'm sure I would enjoy looking at my home school year books as well, but there aren't any. Nor are there any pictures. Not one single photo to prove that I ever attended school after the third grade. So, when I was paging through an old Teaching Home Magazine and read about the yearbooks someone else had done, I knew this was a tradition I was going to start.

Memories created while learning at home are just as important as those created in a traditional school environment and have just as much right to be preserved. Just because you are a home educator doesn't mean you can't have a school yearbook. Making a homeschool yearbook is easy and it's almost as much fun as looking at one.

How Do You Make a Home School Yearbook?

Making a home school year book is a little more complicated than making a yearbook for your average school. There are no pages of class pictures to fill it with. There's few athletic teams and such. Instead, there are your children. That's wonderful, ofcourse, but it does require a little more creativity. It requires you to think about the things your children will want to remember from their school years and to be active in documenting them. Meaning, whatever they are doing, remember to take pictures.

Things To Include:

*Class pictures - I put a family picture on one page along with our theme verse for the year. I also do a separate page for each child. Some years I take a posed picture of each of them, some years I just put in few pictures I have taken throughout the year. Some years we include their signature, hand prints, lists of favorites, things they've learned, reduced copies of art work. One year I pasted pictures of their heads onto bodies cut from magazines to make caricatures.

*Sports - if your child plays organized sports, make a page or two for that. Add team photos, pictures of games, or a picture of them hanging out with friends after the game. If your home school group has a field day, scrapbook that. Or take pictures of your kids riding bikes, playing tag, and shooting hoops in the driveway.

*Clubs - Our kids are in AWANA, so we always include a couple of pages with pictures of cowboy night, crazy hair night, grand prix, closing program, etc. If your children are in a church program or scouts or such, make pages for those.

*Extra curricular activities- co op classes, library or museum programs, music classes, their Sunday school class. Field trips, vacations, special occasions (weddings and holidays) The arrival or first birthday of a younger child.

*Academics - I do a page for each subject with pictures of the kids working or doing projects or holding their books or dressed in costumes (for history or geography). Sometimes I've also put reduced copies of notebook pages or added journaling about what we've studied. I also have done special pages for things like "________ learns the alphabet" and "We like to listen to stories" (with pictures of friends and family reading to them.)

*Friends - we always include a page with pictures of friends and family. The definition of "friend" can be as broad as you want to make it. The librarian, the mailman, the kids next door? If it is someone your kids may remember years from now, they would probably enjoy having a picture of them. And years from now when that person is no longer around you may be thankful for the pictures you have of those people you now take for granted. A signature page is also a fun way to collect remembrances.

The Benefits of a Homeschool Yearbook

While our school year books are primarily for my children's benefit, they also have some extra advantages. They are a great way to share our lives with our family and friends. They are a great way to show doubters what a wonderful education our children are receiving. They are a good way for me to exercise my creative talents. And looking through books from past years is wonderful encouragement for me as a teacher. It is also a nice review for my children.

I would encourage you to start this practice in your own home. Sure, it takes a little time, but it doesn't have to be overwhelming. I work on ours a little here and there as I have time. I don't try to make it perfect, so my cuts aren't always straight and I may have smudges here and there, but no one really notices. The important thing is just to have something, so put into it as much or as little as you are able.

Chore Charts For Large Families {free printable}

Since the chore chart I used as an illustration on my post about why kids need chores has been so popular, I thought it deserved a post of its own. My first attempts at coming up with a way for my children to keep track of their chores were a disaster. They consisted of separate lists for each child (worked for them, but hard for me if I needed to find who was responsible for a specific chore) and complicated lists with names scribbled all over them. Finally, through a lot of trial and error I came up with a simple system that used color coding. Because I had color coded everything else already (hangers, cups, etc.), my children had no trouble identifying which chores they were responsible for. And it allowed me to have different children doing the same chore on different days, without needing to clutter up the chart with a bunch of names. 



My color code, in order of age: 

• Blue (son)
• Red (son)
• Yellow (daughter)
• Green (son)
• Orange (son)
• Purple (daughter)
• Pink (daughter)
• Light Blue (son)
• Peach (daughter)
• Brown (all)

Some of the chores that have been on our list at different times, depending on what needed to be done and who was available to help:

• Make Papa’s breakfast & coffee/ pack lunch (Back when I was in the midst of raising toddlers and nursing babies, my husband started paying our oldest daughter to get up early and fix his breakfast so that I could sleep in. Our 2nd oldest daughter, age 9, now does it for him. It is the only job on the chore list that earns  pay. 
• Make bed/Straighten bedroom
• Get dressed/do devotions
• Help younger sibling dress
• Exercise
• Place bedding in the wash
• Set table for breakfast/ clean up after
• Make breakfast
• AM dishes
• Feed animals
• Sweep & mop
• Check garbage and compost- empty as needed
• Clean  bathroom (wipe counters, fresh towel, etc.)
• Clean bathroom (toilet and all)
• Vacuum
• Dust/wipe walls clean
• Wash & dry laundry
• Fold own laundry & put it away
• Make lunch
• Lunch clean up
• Lunch dishes
• Set table for supper
• Help with supper
• Make supper
• PM clean up
• PM dishes

Large Family Chore Chart {free printable}

The Uncle Eric Series {review}

The eleven volume Uncle Eric series provides a great, in-depth introduction to economic, history, and government as you've never seen them taught before. They are fascinating. I found them hard to put down!

These books are written by Richard Maybury aka "Uncle Eric" as a series of letters to his nephew Chris and deal with the topics of economics and government. But there is so much more you can learn from them. For instance, in the first volume Mr. Maybury also touches on educational theory, ethics, and history. Volume 2, Whatever Happened To Penny Candy, contains almost everything I learned in two college level economics classes plus a few things I didn't, explained in a simple and interesting way that even a younger child could understand.

In his first book, Personal, Career, and Financial Security, Mr. Maybury introduces the concept of models as "the way we think and understand the world." I really enjoyed what he said in chapter five about how to learn or teach models. I think it sums up pretty well the way I prefer to teach my children and why it works so well.

"Experience creates models automatically . . .This is why classroom instruction via lecture is the least effective way to teach and hands-on learning by doing is the most effective. We are made in such a way that we build models automatically by doing. Typically, classroom instruction is like teaching someone to play Monopoly just by making him memorize the rules and then giving him a test on those rules. . . Unfortunately, some models are impossible to learn using hands-on process, so one method humans use to substitute for real world experience is telling stories. Stories are used to demonstrate and illustrate ideas."

There is much more wisdom packed between the pages of these books, but I will leave that for you to discover. I can't quote the whole thing here.

There were a couple of things I disagreed with, but I see them as opportunities for additional discussion. For instance, at one point, Mr. Maybury states, "Beware of certainty. Certainty stops inquiry. " In another place he warns to always be open minded because we are humans who make mistakes and we can never be 100% certain of anything. While I understand what he is saying and agree UP TO A POINT, as a Christian I do believe that some things ARE 100% certain. I will be sure to point this out to the children.

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