Kindergarten Clarifications

The holidays are over, and with it goes all my excuses for not finding the time to elaborate on what we actually do for Kindergarten.  If you've read the lesson plans, you'll find that they have lots of very interesting titles of activities with no explanation of what they are.  Thankfully...most of the time...they mean something to me, so allow me to clarify!

Wise Guide / SWR = Spell to Write and Read : I use this for both my kids as our phonics/spelling instruction.  If you purchase the Wise Guide book or the SWR kit, you can follow along with the sections and most of the activity titles that I've posted on my guides.  Some of the activities I made up myself or downloaded from www.teacherspayteachers.com.

                                           

       



Handwriting Workbook : I've found that determining proper handwriting is a very personal experience that prevents universal agreement.  I realize that this might be a shock, but I am not a fan of the newly updated instruction on print letter formation called single stroke. I believe that the original instruction on letter formation (a.k.a. the way we were taught to form letters when we were kids) is the best.  I have no fancy reasoning to support this, or any statistics to prove my point, but I just think a general return to the quality of the past is better for us all!  With that said, we use A Reason For Handwriting.  It's basic, cheap and we especially love to color the pictures for each letter!

Rod and Staff Workbook : I think I've mentioned this before, but I have really come to appreciate Rod and Staff for their stripped-down, no-fluff workbooks.  All the new tricks and convoluted processes that you find in modern education (have you taken a good look at common core?!?) do not exist in these workbooks!  It does require extra explanations for some of the pictures and words of obsolete items like a butter-churn or the name Dick.  We use the Grade 1 reading and phonics workbooks only (reading during our reading block and phonics during our handwriting/Wise Guide block).

Math = Saxon : While I usually don't promote the idea of pushing ahead grade levels in the Grammar Stage of the Trivium, Saxon is the exception.  Saxon K is a wonderful book to use with 4 yr. olds, and even Saxon 1 has been a little slow for a second born who's spent the last year joining in with her brother on Saxon 2.  Our lessons correlate with Saxon 1.

History/Reading (and sometimes Handwriting) = Phonics By the Book : This will probably bring the most clarity to the Kindergarten lesson plans!  As I mentioned above, I download a lot of free activities, clip art, and in this case, phonics curriculum from www.teacherspayteachers.com.  This is a wonderful website for homeschooling.  If you haven't been there before, prepare to have your mind blown!  If you type "phonics by the book" in the search bar, you'll find the different units with all the activities to download for free.  Each unit comes with it's own map, but I really only wanted to focus on the reading/phonics activities so I plugged in the activities I liked and dumped the rest.  You can also go to www.thisreadingmama.com to download all the units.  She hasn't completed all the units yet, so after Samuel I've had to create my own "little words", "cut and paste Bible verses", etc. which I will try to upload soon!

 

You'll also notice that the second semester maps will have Monday blanked out.  We've decided to adopt a 4 day school week so the kids can do some activities with the homeschool group in town.  So now our Mondays are full of P.E., music, art and science.  Not a bad trade!