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lamamaloca
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| Posted: Jan 16 2007 at 4:08pm | IP Logged
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We're looking ahead to next year when our oldest boy will be kindergarten age. He will turn 5 on July 31st, so he will still be quite young, but he's teaching himself to read simple words and does simple addition and subtraction. On the other hand, he seems to have poor small motor skills and only recently learned to hold crayons correctly. He does not draw pictures at all because he can't do it "right." I regularly tell him that it doesn't have to be perfect, but he doesn't seem to believe me. 
I'm just not sure what I want to do with him! I can see the good points with every homeschooling curriculum, and I tend to lean towards whatever I've read about most recently! My husband leans very definitely toward a classical philosophy of education (He loves Kolbe's philosophy) but I really want to incorporate the "living books" or "real books" idea. All the homeschoolers I know in real life are unschoolers or use Seton. I don't think I'm comfortable with either one of those options.
So, if you have specific suggestions for me that's terrific, but I'd also just like to know: what is your idea of a perfect kindergarten curriculum? Thanks for any ideas!
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cathhomeschool
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| Posted: Jan 17 2007 at 7:08am | IP Logged
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Well, I think that my *best* weeks "schooling" our K and pre-K boys are about perfect. Our curriculum consists of beautiful picture books, well written chapter books and audio books, coloring (they love Dover's Stained Glass books), craft projects, and some work in a variety of random letters/phonics/math books. We read math picture books from our library. We look up nature finds in field guides and might view them under a microscope.
When I want something more structured, I turn to Five in a Row. I think that their curriculum is about perfect for the kids too, though I always tweak and add books.
We did follow a more classical curriculum for a year, but it was with a 2nd grader and was still rather hands-on and artsy. Don't know if I've helped at all!
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Janette (4 boys - 22, 21, 15, 14)
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Paula in MN
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My 4yo sits with us and has *school* when we are working on my 7yo plans. He enjoys all the reading, and likes to color when we are working on maps or continents (we use CHC). He loves to narrate back everything! We use a lot of Catholic Mosaic, some Five in a Row, and Real Learning.
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 Paula
A Catholic Harvest
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Martha
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That's great! We like using either Handwriting Without Tears or Abekas K4 or K5 cursive. (My left-handed dc have really needed HWT.)
We like MCP A math. We use MCP K for pre-k here. I'm going to get the new Seton math books to see what they are like and to encourage Seton to keep making such wonderful products.
I like Little Stories for Little Folks most for early reading/phonics, but my current kindergartner is using Seton's K phonics books because they work better for her.
If you are wanted to hone his fine-motor skills, try crafts instead of drawings. I have 2 boys who have had trouble with fine-motor skills and expressed the same sentiments as your ds. (btw, boys often lag a bit behind girls in this area so don't sweat it too much!) K'nex is very creative and putting all those itty pieces together develops the skill. There's also legos and clay or play-doh. Anything with scissors is good too.
Science and history is all living books, FIAR, CM, and life in general.
In K, I don't push anything. Encouragement and their natural curiosity have led all of mine to WANT to do it. Sometimes several pages at a time, sometimes a half page a day. It doesn't matter as long as they are doing it with their full attention.
Also, those workbooks are requested here. Those are the basic books my older dc use (math, penmanship, and phonics) and the little ones want to imitate to feel like a real student. 
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Martha
mama to 7 boys & 4 girls
Yes, they're all ours!
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cathhomeschool
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| Posted: Jan 17 2007 at 7:52am | IP Logged
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Martha wrote:
| In K, I don't push anything. Encouragement and their natural curiosity have led all of mine to WANT to do it. |
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Exactly! I should have said that too.
And k'nex and legos are big learning tools here as well. 
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Janette (4 boys - 22, 21, 15, 14)
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Marybeth
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We are currently enjoying our kindergarten year. It helped for us (dh and I) to set goals for the year. This way it took the guess work for me out of the schooling day. We then tailored our goals to ds's learning style and his enjoyment. We have had to tweak here and there but for the most part it is all working out fine.
Ds (age 6) spends his days listening to great read alouds, time outside, doing science experiments, living the liturgical year and TONS of time spent playing.
Ds was reluctant to try drawing free hand for a long time. He would rip up the paper if the dinosaur didn't "look" quite right. I got him a huge box of stencils at the teacher store. He is now drawing free hand after months of tracing and coloring in with his stencils.
We have several Moms in our homeschooling group who have used Kolbe for kindergarten. I would be happy to ask them any specific questions regarding the K curriculum.
Mother of Divine Grace is also classical. The kindergarten is very gentle and leaves much time for real learning and living books.
Feel free to PM for an outline of MODG K if you would like or any Kolbe questions I can ask for you.
God bless,
Marybeth
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lamamaloca
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Thank you everyone for the suggestions! It sounds like FIAR is pretty popular for this age. That is something that I'll certainly look into.
He is more willing to do crafts, although he gets frustrated with those, too. Right now all we have are Duplos, but I'm sure that the regular sized legos would help more with his fine motor skills. I'm glad to hear that some other boys don't like to draw. It makes me worry a bit less.
Becky
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mellyrose
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We're having a good Kindergarten year I think ; )
We loosely follow the CHC curriculum for K. We used the MCP K math book (finished it a month or so ago, so we're doing real life time and money units currently), BOB books and Little Phonics Readers for reading, simple copy work for handwriting. For religion ed, we read about saints and talk about our faith.
On Tuesdays, we make an entry into our nature journals and on Thursdays we do a unit from a dvd art program I picked up. Mondays we usually take off bc it's DH's day off. Wednesdays my Kindergartener attends an enrichment program - so we school Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays with some Saturdays thrown in.
We listen to lots of music and have lots of free play. They have free access to art supplies and do lots of drawing, painting, clay play, cutting and gluing.
We make regular visits to the local botanical gardens, the zoo, and museums. We watch educational dvds from netflix.
Like I said, we're just having fun ;)
Melanie
Mom to Colin (6), Nate (4.5), and baby due 5/07
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ALmom
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string beads, sort small objects, trace and cut (cut and Create books have some neat things to do), fingerpaint, etc. Drive cars along pretend roadways and discuss right and left, play singing games where you put your right foot in...
If he struggles and is frustrated with fine motor type skills then I really would not even try to teach writing. Better to wait on that unless you just do it making letters in the sand, really large and work on art/craft type stuff that works on fine motor skills. Also look at gross motor skills - those come first so do things that develop those as well.
Play Simon says to develop listening skills, listen to music, walk along the curbs, throw balls back and forth, visit a fire station, police station, zoo, etc. , let him glue craft/scrap book pictures to tell about what he's done and dictate what he has been doing. Read aloud to him from very beautiful picture books, play find the small objects in other books.
That is just my 2 bits - but I wouldn't worry about "academics" at all. If he wants them badly enough, he'll pull it out of you and love it and you won't have stress and both will have fun and bond and learn to love school.
Janet
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lamamaloca
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| Posted: Jan 18 2007 at 1:26pm | IP Logged
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ALmom wrote:
| string beads, sort small objects, trace and cut (cut and Create books have some neat things to do), fingerpaint, etc. Drive cars along pretend roadways and discuss right and left, play singing games where you put your right foot in... |
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These are the kinds of things that I just don't think of doing on my own. Thanks for the reminder. I think my biggest concern is really my own lack of self-discipline. I find that I often put him off and say, "we'll do that later" then I never get around to it. Sometimes at the end of the day I'll realize that they haven't been read to, and not because they haven't asked but because of my selfishness.
I think this is why I feel that I need some kind of structure. I think I need some time set aside as "school" when I focus on the children instead of my work, or books, or internet forums. I've been trying to work on giving more of myself this week, and I've seen definite improvements in the children's behavior.
Pauly really is learning a great deal without me teaching him. Yesterday he was looking at one of his books title Philadelphia Chickens when he asked me, "How can this say Philadelphia when it starts with a 'P'?" This prompted a discussion about what P and H sound like when they are together. After that he told me, "This says /ch/ickens and not /k/ickens because C and H together say /ch/." But I think he's learned all that from Starfall.com and Leapfrog videos and not from me. . .
Becky
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ALmom
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But you were there to confirm that, yes, ch together does say that - and to answer his question about ph. Isn't it wonderful! And you were there to get excited for his discoveries!!!! That is more important than any number of curriculums. So - he learned it first from leap frog - but that was set up in the home somewhere so that was part of his learning too. Sounds like you are doing fine!
Could you schedule a certain time each day for the messier projects. (I hate finger paint and bead stringing and all that because it is so messy - but if I know we will do it 2 days per week after lunch (or after breakfast), it isn't quite as bad. Now I'm just finding myself forgetting to do all those things with my littles because I'm so into the academics with my highschoolers and forget that my little 4 yo needs these things too. I don't know how to play so I have to work on that part a little harder and remind myself too! (Also our vision therapist taught me some of them  so I had help along the way and still forget).
Janet
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4Real Forums : Living Learning
Topic: Suggestions for Kindergarten?
