Our Curriculum Choices 2013-2014 Part 2

In this second part of Our Curriculum Choices, I'll be reviewing what we are going to use for Science, Social Studies, Handwriting, art/crafts, and calendar time.

Science-
We aren't using a curriculum for science this year. We will be studying science through fun activities and experiments. In my planning, we will be working on science one month then social studies one month for two days a week. Here is the schedule I have for our science learning-
August- Motion/Movement (including force, gravity, friction, ramps)
October- Plants & Seeds
December- We will be taking the whole month of December 'off' from anything other than reading, math, and Bible to focus on Christmas
February- Weather
April- Living/Non-living & Animal Classification

I will be blogging all our activities and experiments we do, so stay tuned!

Social Studies-
Again, with social studies, we aren't using a curriculum. We'll be using resources found at the library and online. So on the months we aren't working on science, here's what we'll be doing in social studies-
September- Maps/Landforms
November- Native Americans/Pilgrims
January- Working Together/ Community Helpers & Workers
March- Jobs/ Working for needs and wants
May- Different Cultures

Handwriting-

I purchased a primary writing journal at Walmart that we will be using for handwriting. Each day (or every other, I haven't decided yet) J will practice writing. She'll start off with writing her name and practicing the correct formation of all the letters. Then once, she moves through all the letters, we'll begin to copy sentences to practice letter spacing as well as word spacing, capitalization, and punctuation. And hopefully, by the end of the school year, she'll be writing sentences on her own. Here's an example of a handwriting page I made for her. She will write her name, each letter, copy each word, and then be able to draw a picture at the top of the page (she loves to draw so I wanted to incorporate this into her handwriting).

Calendar Time-

We will be using the calendar notebook found here by Homeschool Creations-

More than likely, we won't be using a few of the pages like writing the time, temperature, tally marks, etc. until later on in the year. She doesn't know how to do those things yet, but will be covered eventually so I'm not worrying about it right now. I grabbed a copy of page 4 from Mama's Learning Corner's preschool calendar notebook to add to ours for now.

Both are great options for calendar note-booking!

And lastly

Arts/Crafts-

This we are just 'playing by ear'. Lots of painting, creating, and playing. I'm sure I'll find tons of cute, fun crafts all over Pinterest to try with J. I'll be updating this also as we go.

And that wraps up our curriculum choices for J's kindergarten year!! Stay tuned, lots more fun to come!!

Our Curriculum Choices 2013-2014 Part 1

J will be starting kindergarten work this year!!! We are both so excited to began this new homeschool journey. I've spent many hours pouring over homeschool review websites trying to find the right fit for our family. After much prayer and consideration this is what we will be using this year-

Reading/Phonics-

All About Reading Level 1

All About Learning Press
I have read so many rave reviews about this program. While in the process of deciding curriculum, I had pretty much made up my mind on a different program. But I just happen to be looking at the sample pages that All About Learning Press offers on their website, when J climbed up on my lap to have a look. Just going through the sample pages, she was so excited. She said, "I love this, can we do some more?" So I reevaluated my choice for reading. And made the decision to go with All About Reading. Education should be some what 'child-led' anyway, right? And my child pretty much made up my mind for me about what we were going to use.
Going through Level 1 making lesson plans, I think it's going to be a great fit for J. The lessons are short, the company recommends somewhere around 15-20 minutes per day along with 20 minutes of parent read aloud time. It's very open-and-go program. Level 1 has a total of 49 lessons. Each lesson is meant to be spread out over several days. With my planning, I worked it to be about 3 days per lesson. Some lessons only require reviewing word cards and reading a story from the reader, which would only take one day to complete.
The Level 1 Materials included the Teacher's Manual, Student Activity book (packed full of fun games and activities), 3 readers (nice, hardback books), Phonogram & Word cards (used to review sounds/words), and a viewfinder book mark. Along with the materials, you'll need to choose a Interactive Kit. There is a Basic Kit and a Deluxe Kit. I went ahead and went with the Deluxe Kit, which included Letter Tiles with magnets, Phonogram CD-ROM, Divider Cards, Reading Review Box, Reading Tote Bag, and Star Stickers.
Their website has tons of great information including placement tests for each level and a forum that helped answer all of my questions about the program. I'm looking forward to getting started with this and will be reviewing further as we go.

Math-

McRuffy Press Kindergarten Math

McRuffy- Kindergarten Math

This math program is jam packed full of hands on learning! One of the other things that sold me on it, was the fact that the lessons were short and didn't include all the busy work that can be found in a lot of other math programs. Again, each lesson is designed to take 15-20 minutes. I just don't feel that my kindergartener should be spending an hour or more on math!

The Teacher's Manual is very well laid out and so easy to understand and use. Each lesson in the TM has listed the objectives, materials needed, and the teaching portion. Along with pictures of all workbook pages, cards, games, resource materials that are used in each lesson, which I find extremely helpful. 

The Student Book has full color (if you buy the color math, they also offer black & white) activity pages. The early part of the curriculum emphasizes counting and number writing, while the later part emphasizes addition and subtraction skills. But includes so much else along the way.

The Resource packet contains a ton of  extra resources. Some of which include cards sets, laminated game boards, laminated geoboards, number line strips, and posters. This is a necessary part of the program, because some lessons just call for the playing of a game (which are all included in the resource packet). We also decided to go ahead and purchase the manipulative kit that they offer. It's cheap and is used in so many of the lessons. It will more than likely be worth every penny.

This math program as a whole is, in my opinion, a real bargain for everything you get. I will definitely be looking into this program for the following years!

Bible study-

Positive Action Bible Curriculum- 

Kindergarten Learning About God

Positive Action- Kindergarten

This was a curriculum choice that I didn't take lightly. I wanted something that used or could use KJV, which we as a family use. I also wanted something that was most importantly, biblically sound. This curriculum in no way should take the place of spending time in God's Word, but works as a fun follow up to the Bible stories we read.

The Teacher's Manual is, to me, a must have. Each lesson in the manual gives vocabulary used in the lesson, Scripture Memory verse, Prayer Time Suggestions, Bible Story, Teaching Strategy, usually an extra fun story, and Character Trait Activities. They also suggest picking a hymn to learn and study each month. With each lesson is usually 2-3 workbook pages for the student, which include coloring pages, dot-to-dot, cut & paste, etc.

I hope you enjoyed going through a few of the things we will be using this year for kindergarten. Part 2 will explain what we will be doing for science, social studies, handwriting, and art/crafts. Coming Soon!!

I'm Back!

Ok, so I just went back and looked at my last blog post...November 2011!! It's been over a year and a half since my last post!! I'm trying to get back into the blogging groove, since J will be starting kindergarten this year. I want to be able to look back at all the things we did and have fond memories of her younger years. I'm in no disillusion that they will last forever.
So here's a quick update on what we've been up to the last year and a half-
J finished the Letter of the Week program from Confessionsofahomeschooler.com. We absolutely LOVED this program and I plan on using it with my little man E. Here's a picture of J beside her completed Chick Boom Tree (we added a letter to it each week).

Then for the last 'school year' we started with 'Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons'.

 

I recommend this book to any beginning reader. We got through about lesson 75 maybe, and J began to get overwhelmed with the length of the stories. She would take one look at how long it was and begin to cry. I knew that was when we needed a change. We began to check out easy reader books from the library that had a story spread out over the whole book, not all on one page. This made a huge difference! But again, Teach Your Child...was an excellent start to our reading journey. It gave her solid foundation.

Along with this book, I incorporated lots of 'Preschool Packs'. If you do a search for them on Pinterest, you can find TONS and TONS! Some of my favorite websites to find them are-
3 Dinosaurs
Over The Big Moon
1 + 1 + 1 = 1
Confessions of a Homeschooler
Homeschool Creations
Royal Baloo
Again, these are just a few. And all the ones we used were FREE! You can fit them to the interests of your child, seasons, holidays, etc. They usually involve reading, phonic, math, reasoning all into one specific theme.
Here's the first and last day of pre-k-
 

And that's how J finished up her pre-k year. I'll be updating later with our curriculum choices for this coming year. On to kindergarten!!!

A few pictures through the year ;)
          

HOW THEY'VE GROWN!!!!