Kindergarten Homeschool Check-In

Our oldest son "officially" started Kindergarten mid-January and so now with finishing week 10 I wanted to do a check - in with how he (we) are doing!  Our homeschool schedule has become a constant in our life, yet we also all enjoy that it allows us the flexibility and freedom when we need to change it up or take a little break!

Phonics:

Our son really enjoys the phonics program with Seton's Kindergarten curriculum.  With their syllabus they suggest doing one lesson 4 days per week and then having a review day the 5th day.  Our son went into this Kindergarten program already knowing all of his letters and letter sounds so this part of the curriculum is a lot easier for him.  Because of this, we go at his pace and have been usually doing 2 lessons per day (which equates to 4 workbook pages per day) and then he can choose if there is anything we need to review on the 5th day of the week or if he wants to continue.  Although we are finishing week 10 of our schooling for Kindergarten in the course week he is finishing week 18.  I love that homeschooling can easily adjust to the strengths and weaknesses of each child.

He is loving learning about rhyming words, and really has been increasing his vocabulary with the pictures that they have you match with what letter sounds they begin or end with.  He also has been learning how to write his lower case letters which he did not know how to do proficiently before starting this program.

 

 

Math:

 

The Math curriculum for Seton's Kindergarten program really started off as a basic review from the Pre-Kindergarten program going over numbers 1-10.  After the first few weeks though it quickly picked up to add things like Patterns, Tallying, Sequences, Graphs and Ordinals.  Finishing our week 10 our son is completing week 13 of Seton's curriculum and is doing math 5 days a week.  He really enjoys Math and has a lot of fun with it.  One of his favorite television shows lately is Odd Squad which includes a lot of Math; counting, shapes, patterns, measurements, etc so he likes to apply what he sees to what he is learning and vise versa.  He is also very excited that he will be learning more about money and telling time soon!

 

 

Handwriting:

 

Handwriting is our son's most difficult subject, but knowing that, I really enjoy that I can monitor where he is each day and can recognize his struggles right away.  Because of this we can slow down, work on little fine motor skills and even simply take breaks when we need to.  He is great with Seton's Handwriting pages that are just stroke lines but gets easily frustrated with copy work.  He has the ability to write all of his letters, but it takes time, and a little boy just has things to do!

 

Religion:

 

The entire first semester with Seton's Kindergarten Religion program is learning basic prayers, and an introduction into the 10 commandments and Mysteries of the Rosary.  Our son knew most of the prayers (Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be, Guardian Angel, Prayers Before and After Dinner) before starting the program but it was a good time to review and allow him to recite them by himself instead of in a family setting.  We then started working on him learning line by line prayers like the Morning Offering, the Angelus and the basics of the Act of Contrition.  (These prayers we are still working on).

 

The biggest thing that we have been working on over the past 10 weeks has been really making prayer a part of our daily lives.  We then jumped ahead to the next section of the Religion book which goes through Catechism questions about God, the Trinity, etc.  We have done 3 of these chapters and our son's understanding of the faith and God continues to simply amaze me.  I was just talking with my spiritual director about how I am so intrigued that concepts that cause much contemplation in prayer seem so basic and easy through the eyes of a child.  We continue to love Seton's religion curriculum, as it is truly the core to their curriculum.

 

 

Reading:

What I am most excited to announce is that our son has officially completed How to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons!!!  He started back in August when we were completing Seton's Pre-Kindergarten program.  We decided early on that when he got to Lesson 100 he and Mommy would go out on a date to celebrate.  He has been thumbing through the book to see how many pages he had to go to get to lesson 100 for weeks!  This program has worked so well for our son and is truly his favorite part of school time.  He commonly will ask to do his reading lessons even on the weekends and thinks that he stories are so funny!

Now we are moving on to more BOB books and also level one readers.  It has been so much fun for him to read to his little brothers during story time and I know that it helps his confidence so much!

 

 

So proud of our little guy for finishing this book!

Art/Music:

 

We love to learn about art in our Homeschool Theme Learning that we have been doing or also by studying the Art Masterpieces by CHC. 

 

March's Art Masterpiece - The Annunciation

We are loving Making Music Praying Twice and how it follows the Liturgical Year.  We used their Winter Ordinary Time CD, and then the Lent CD and are excited to start the Easter CD soon.  We usually have the CD playing in the background during school time every day and then usually do the lessons accompanying the CD's once a week.

 

Science/History:

 

The science book with Seton's Kindergarten curriculum is my least favorite book in the program.  It is not that it isn't a good book, but it is simply a book of listed experiments and I need to do a decent amount of planning to make sure I have everything I need ready to do each experiment.  Because of this we have been doing one experiment every 1-2 weeks.  At first I was feeling really bad about this, but then I realized how many other areas in his life he is being exposed to science and history.  Our son is a big reader and LOVES non-fiction books.  We read all of the time and he is always learning and asking questions.  We are exploring other options for Science for the future probably using either CHC or Apologia Science.

 

 

Also, this spring/summer he is wanting to plant a vegetable garden and I know how much experiences like those are such great opportunities for hands on learning!

 

Physical Education:

 

Some people worry about homeschooling children not having formalized physical education but let me tell you, I am so glad that our little guy has the time he does for running off his energy and playing sports/games.  He has continued to take Tae-Kwon-do at the Homeschool Learning Center in our town once a week and loves it so much.  He is starting soccer with our parish next month as well which he is very excited about.  Thankfully our weather has been getting nice and he spends hours a day outside playing basketball, baseball or riding his bike. 

Sometimes his little brother likes to join in as well!  We are not doing a formal curriculum with our 3 1/2 year old right now, but he commonly picks up one of Seton's Pre-Kindergarten workbooks on his own!  He also has started the lessons with How to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons and is doing great!  Simply by soaking in school time with his big brother he knew all of his letter sounds by age 3 and is now learning to blend them together!  He loves the Leap Frog videos the Letter Factory and The Talking Words Factory and will commonly go around the house and singing "put them all together" trying to blend words like from the Sticky-ick-torama!

 

We plan on taking a little break during Holy Week and then continuing on.  Our plan is to continue year round schooling with breaks as we need them or as we choose for some fun flexibility! 

 

How are you doing with your homeschool year?  I know a lot of people are wrapping it up for the year soon.  Any fun plans for the summer or brainstorming for the next year starting?