Homeschool Kindergarten
In Canada the school year starts in September. But we have started some Kindergarten work early. We did this in order to figure out a good routine for us. And also in order to get used to formal homeschooling before having a new baby! Because we certainly did not want to try everything out for the first time with a one month old!
So now that we have set ourselves up for a successful home-school year, we are ready to share what resources we are using!
First of all, you should know that our priorities for Kindergarten are mathematics and reading. Math is a priority because number sense is a foundational skill for future studies. And reading has been a priority so that Little Fox can read some small books to Little Badger while I have a newborn baby. Even before Little Owl’s birth these reading lessons have led to the sisters sitting together with a book!
Other than math and reading, we want Kindergarten to be relaxed. Not that math and reading are super intensive compared to the other subjects… I just mean we will do math and reading every day, while other subjects may come up only once or twice a week.
Kindergarten Mathematics
I love mathematics. So a good portion of my personal Christmas and Birthday money goes towards getting math materials. We have a lot of Montessori math manipulatives. And these are really great for instilling number sense in young children.
Most kindergarten children are not going to be interested in sitting around with workbooks for any length of time. But these children will be interested in learning about shapes, patterns, and numbers in a more hands on format. So the Montessori math materials are great for providing enjoyable hands on activities for preschoolers and kindergartners. And as a bonus, many of these materials age up with the children. That is, we can use these materials again with new purpose in the elementary school years. Some math-like Montessori materials are considered sensory work for the 3-6 age range, but become a tool for learning about math around age 7, 8, and 9.
One problem with these Montessori materials is that they can be quite expensive. But there are some DIY options. As well as some smaller “homeschool” sized versions of the materials that are more cost effective for families. So let’s go into what materials I have invested in, and what I think of them.
Our Montessori Math Materials
- Number Rods
- Spindle Boxes
- Bead Stair/Addition Snake Game Beads
- Gold beads/Bank game (Base ten blocks may be a cheaper substitute)
- Stamp Game
- Complete Bead Material (Bead chains, squares, and cubes)
Our Sensorial Math Materials
- Geometric Solids
- Binomial Cube
- Trinomial Cube
- Constructive Triangles
Of these, the number rods (we got these in a smaller/homeschool size), and the gold beads are my favourite investments. However I can see how base 10 blocks are a much cheaper alternative to the gold beads! The number rods are great for learning to count to ten, as well as for learning to add numbers within 10. I used these number rods in addition to our core curriculum ten frame work in order to reinforce ideas about numbers.
The Stamp Game will be a birthday gift for Little Fox when she turns 5, and I know she will love it so much. She also really loved the Binomial cube. Little Fox and Little Badger both love the Geometric Solids, and each enjoy learning the names of 2D and 3D shapes. I also am so happy with the Montessori Complete Bead Material. This includes bead chains which help teach skip counting, as well as prepare children to understanding squaring and cubing numbers. Little Fox really enjoys the sense of accomplishment she gets from counting to 100 with the 10 bead chain, or completing another chain work.
I personally like the bead stair/addition snake game beads. However, I think that getting Unifix cubes or some other square version might be easier. Also, we haven’t pulled out the constructive triangles yet so I can’t comment on how helpful or worthwhile they are.
Finally, I don’t think we have gotten much use out of the spindle boxes.
Our Core Curriculum
Because we use so many Montessori math materials, Little Fox had a strong enough grounding in number sense to begin Kindergarten Math with Confidence at 4.5 years old – and to go through it in half a year rather than a full school year. So now we will be doing grade one math in her actual Kindergarten year. But I still want to talk about our actual Kindergarten Math program.
Kindergarten Math with Confidence is a relatively new math program, published in 2020. Grade Two math just came out this year (2022), and Third Grade Math with Confidence is set to come out in Spring 2023. This program is mastery based, but also builds in spiral review with each lesson. Also, the Math with Confidence series works on building conceptual mathematics understanding with procedural math skills. Be sure to check out my article on Homeschool Math for more about these math program vocabulary words.
Originally, I was only going to use our Montessori math materials and not use a formal curriculum for Kindergarten. But when I saw how beautifully put together this program was (and how low cost compared to most other math programs) I thought “we have to try it!”
And I am so glad we did!
The Workbook
Kindergarten Math with Confidence fits in well with my prioritization of hands on work over worksheets. The lessons are short (just 20 minutes if you do one a day!) and have a single colourful workbook page to go along with each lesson. The workbook is mainly there to help Kindergarteners practice their fine motor skills by tracing 5 numbers a day over the course of the year. It is amazing how Little Fox developed her ability to write numbers clearly grew through this slow but steady process. There is also some reinforcement of the lesson in the workbook, but the main learning comes from the lessons.
Little Fox really enjoyed the workbook. (Which is consumable, but very inexpensive)
Aside from the growth in number writing ability, the workbook provided Little Fox with sensory feedback on the progression of the math units. When she moved on from one unit to another, the main colour of the workbook pages changed. So she would say “Look Mama, I get to start green math tomorrow!”
The Teacher Textbook/Instructor Guide
While the workbook is colourful and a lot of fun, the Instructor Guide is what makes this program brilliant. Each week of the program contains an overview where parents can read about what their child will be covering in the next four lessons. There is a section of this overview which explains the reasoning behind these choices. It is so helpful to read about what you are trying to teach your child, and what you are sharing in order to build the foundation for later mathematical understanding.
The lessons in the Instructor Guide are scripted, although I don’t always follow the script. But on days where I don’t have much energy, or with topics I don’t feel confident with (like explaining the concept of hours in a day) it is so nice to have the script there. There is a short review aspect at the beginning of each lesson. If I felt Little Fox didn’t need a review in a particular concept, we substituted a different activity during the review part of the lesson. And our collection of Montessori materials were great for this. The next part of each lesson is a hands on activity to learn the material. This is where the meat of the learning takes place. All the games and hands on activities in this section were wonderful.
Although again, I didn’t feel bound to the curriculum and sometimes I replaced one game/activity with another. Sometimes we would draw pictures instead of use real objects if I didn’t have the energy to gather things from around the home. This program is so easy to customize for our families needs and how the day is going.
Bonus
Each week a math picture book is recommended as a fun supplemental activity. For families that love reading books together this is an amazing addition. And many of the books are available from the library or as read alouds on YouTube if you aren’t looking to buy.
We bought a few books based on which stories I thought our family would enjoy, but didn’t go for every book every week.
English Language Arts for Kindergarten
Reading
As mentioned above, our second main priority for homeschooling in Kindergarten is reading. Reading is a foundational skill for a lot of other learning. And also being able to read books is going to helpful for maintaining quiet time when Little Fox is ready to drop her nap. (Which we haven’t done yet and aren’t in any rush to do).
Core Program
Our core program for teaching reading is the Ordinary Parent’s Guide for Teaching Reading. This program focuses exclusively on reading skills. This means a child can learn to read even if the child cannot write letters. What I love about this program is that it is super easy to adjust the pace and see when my child is ready for letter learning. I brought this book out every few months after Little Fox could sing the alphabet and worked on the vowel lessons with her. But each time it was clear she wasn’t ready yet so I put the book aside. Then, we tried again in January of this past year and she was ready! But we still took the lessons slowly, and sometimes we split one lesson over two days. (Mostly because she enjoyed math way more than reading lessons)
After about six months of these lessons, Little Fox has gained so much confidence in reading. And because of this she really enjoys reading now.
We still have a long way to go with the Ordinary Parent’s Guide for Teaching Reading. This book is very thorough, and covers reading skills up the end of second grade reading level. I also appreciate that I don’t have to get many levels of a reading program, because this book does it all in one book.
Supplementing The Ordinary Parent’s Guide for Teaching Reading
One thing about the Ordinary Parent’s Guide for Teaching Reading is that it recommends reviewing two skills before doing each new lesson. But instead of going back through the text, I wanted to add some Catholic reading content to our reading program. So I have supplemented with the Little Angel Readers A, B, C and D. The Little Angel Readers come from a different program for teaching reading. However, I find it is the perfect supplement to the Ordinary Parent’s Guide for Teaching Reading.
To be clear, we do not have the workbooks or teacher’s manuals for the Little Angel Reader Phonics program. Just the Reader books.
After we reach the lessons with letter blends in Ordinary Parent’s Guide for Teaching Reading, I began adding the Red Little Angel Book as the review portion of Little Fox’s reading lessons. This also helped build her confidence as the words and letter sounds were reviewed. Sometimes a sight word would appear in the Little Angel Reader that Little Fox hadn’t come across since the Ordinary Parent’s Guide for Teaching Reading avoids sight words as much as possible. These words were bolded in the Angel Reader which helped me be ready to say the word for Little Fox. Also, this helped her learn or be exposed to some more letter sound rules so that they wouldn’t be as challenging when they came up in our core program.
The Little Angel Readers have also helped Little Fox gain confidence in reading longer stories. In the Red Reader, we would read 1-2 pages a lesson. But now that we are in the middle of the Yellow Angel Reader, some stories cover three pages, and Little Fox doesn’t mind the extended length! We often had to split the lessons in the Ordinary Parent’s Guide for Teaching Reading because the length would make Little Fox anxious. But these Angel readers have helped build up Little Fox’s reading confidence and stamina.
Additional Books
We also offer Little Fox some books that aren’t a part of her lessons so that she can practice reading for fun. We first started with Bobs Books. These are great because she could start reading them after only knowing 4 letters. Once we finish an Angel Reader in lessons, it is added to her for fun reading. She especially loves to read the poems about Jesus and stories about saying prayers from the Red Angel Reader, even now.
In the fall I want to purchase some of the All About Reading Readers to add to her for fun reading. We also have many of the National Geographic readers for this, but we need to continue our phonics instruction before she will be reader for the level one National Geographic readers.
Writing
Our writing work is divided into two skills: spelling words and printing letters.
Spelling
For Kindergarten, spelling is a hands on program using Montessori’s movable alphabet. Our spelling work follows where Little Fox is add in her reading program. Once she began learning about consonant blends in reading, we began looking at consonant vowel consonant words for spelling. I have some printables with pictures of these words from a Montessori provider. Then Little Fox looks at the picture and sounds out the word. We have a movable alphabet for her to form the words. For more on how to use a movable alphabet to teach writing, check out MontessoriAlbum.com.
Printing
In preparation for printing, we used Montessori’s sandpaper letters to practice letter sounds and shape tracing. I also printed letters and words for her to copy on top of, just like how she copied numbers in Kindergarten Math With Confidence. This has been a good start for us; however, I notice Little Fox still tries to start many letters from the bottom of the line rather than the top. So I decided to invest in a handwriting program after all.
The program I settled on for writing is Level One from The Good and the Beautiful Handwriting program. I was able to purchase the PDFs for Level One and Two (plus the purple doodles one for my purple-loving-3-year-old Little Badger) for a very decent price. What I like about this program is how it focuses on quality over quantity, just like the number writing practice in Kindergarten Math with Confidence. Also I like the simple aesthetic of the program. Each book is black and white with a single additional colour. There is also a little part of each page which provides the opportunity to colour. This encourages the child to slow down and also to work on fine motor skills during colouring.
Literature
Since Little Fox is just learning to read, literature is entirely read alouds for Kindergarten. Mainly we will enjoy some fairy tales from around the world together. I don’t have a specific plan, though I know that we will read Aesop’s Fables and from the Green Fairy Book.
History/Social Studies/Geography
This year our focus is on Geography as a preparation for learning history. We will be following the topics in my Montessori Scope and Sequence for 3-6. So we will start with land and water formations, and then move on to the continents. Each month we will look at one continent, although after North America we may take some extra time to focus on Canada.
Some of the Montessori Materials we have for this subject include continent maps, three part cards for the flags of each continent, animals for each continent, and landmarks for each continent. Some areas I have extra little items for, like coins from other countries or mini flags.
Science
We have no official program for Science for Kindergarten. However, I do have the Montessori Scope and Sequence for a guide. We are going to cover the various science topics and make little booklets about each topic. I do have some Montessori science materials including animal and plant puzzles, and a few life cycle figurines.
Science isn’t as big a priority in Kindergarten, as Little Fox will be able to engage more with this subject after she learns to read. (Most of the National Geographic readers we have are about animals and their habitats). However, using the Montessori Scope and Sequence we will teach her the basics of many fields of science and give her the opportunity to become interested in and explore these fields.
Other Electives in Kindergarten
There are many other elective topics we may explore as a part of Little Fox’s Kindergarten year. Art, music appreciation, dance, and sensory exploration are on the radar. Also, we want to work on Ukrainian vocabulary.
Although we may get some picture books for art and music appreciation, the only book I am purchasing for electives right now is Draw Write Now Book 1. The Draw Write Now book series includes simple how to draw instructions, as well as some optional copywork practice. A local TLM mom recommended this series to me. And having looked at the program, I think it will be a great start to art that is a manageable addition to our schedule even with a newborn in the house.
The Byzantine Life
Thank you for checking out this week’s article. For more of our articles on homeschooling, click here! Let me know if you have any great Kindergarten curriculum picks in the comments!
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