This was my first year to officially “do school” with one of my kids. Now that summer is basically here, I thought it would be fun to look back at the school year and give a bit of an update on how things went.
As you know if you saw my plan for K5 at home I made the decision not to use a specific curriculum this year. I believe that 5 years olds still learn mostly through play and really don’t need to spend a ton of time every day doing school work. I mainly wanted to focus on the three “Rs”: reading, writing, and arithmetic.
I was also a bit unconventional in that I didn’t set a specific date for us to “finish” K5. We took multiple days off of school in the spring when the weather was nice, so I plan for us to continue doing some school here and there throughout at least part of the summer.
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Here’s what kindergarten-at-home looked like for us!
Reading
Caleb and I started working through the book Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons back at the beginning of the school year. I found it really easy to use and Caleb caught on very quickly.
After we got to around lesson 65 or so I decided it was time to take a break and switch things up a bit. We will come back to that book, but it was starting to move just a bit fast and Caleb was feeling discouraged.
What we started using instead was an old Amish reader that my mom used with me when I was little. It’s nice because it repeats things a lot – (“Come Rachel, come. Come and play. Come and play with me.”) The repetition is helpful and encouraging for early readers. (You can find the reader here if you’re interested.)
I should also add that we’ve used a few Bob books and I’ve also written a couple short stories for Caleb to read. (Very short, since he’s still in the beginning stages.) He especially enjoyed getting to illustrate one of my stories after he read it.
Doing things like that helps to keep reading fun and not a dreaded chore.
Math
For math Caleb has been using My Book of Simple Addition. I don’t have a ton to say about it other than it’s a great book for beginning math and has been working well for us.
Writing
Back in August my plan was for Caleb to be working through some sort of phonics workbook and to be doing some daily handwriting practice.
While we did do some phonics/letter work in a workbook I picked up from Target, I decided to set aside the regular handwriting practice for awhile. At 5 years old kids are still developing coordination and I realized it wasn’t helpful for me to push Caleb before he was ready.
However, in the last month he’s gotten really excited about copying words and short sentences out of some of his books, so we’ve been rolling with that. During the summer I plan to have him copy some short verses or phrases on a daily basis.
What’s been helpful
The beginning of this year I found it really helpful to stick to a basic morning schedule/routine. It helps Caleb (and the younger kids) when they know what to expect. (I’ll admit though that I haven’t been quite as good about keeping to our routine this last month or so.)
One part of our routine that we’ve kept up pretty faithfully is our morning circle time. The kids really enjoy it and it’s fun having a learning time with all three of the kids together. The kids have all become fascinated with planets this year so we’ve spent a lot of time learning about them during circle time (among other things.)
So, that’s a little update on how K5 at home went for us. Now it’s time for me to start thinking about the next school year. If you have any suggestions for a great curriculum for first grade let me know!