Desperate help needed- Kindergarten…getting started

I have used FAIR, HOD and Sonlight.  If your primary concern is teaching them to love God and a CM education, MFW Kindergarten and 1st grade is WONDERFUL!  The K program’s science/character section is exactly that.  I have used just that portion of it and love it!!!  I am using it again this year in full and again love it.  I like HOD in the older grades better (but MFW does Bible right the whole way through!).  However, in the older grades you can do your own thing using this great website (not that you can’t in the younger grades) but I love MFW K and 1st grade for the Bible/character in it.  

I am so sorry for the stressful situation you are in! You are a perfectionist, I can tell. Hey, it takes one to know one! 🙂 God bless you for wanting the best for your kids. If I can give you one piece of advice, it’s this: slow down and take your time figuring this out! I have a 5yo and a 2yo. I spent the spring/summer working out a plan for my son’s kindergarten year. It’s very gentle and easy, with LOTS of room for flexibility. Even at age 6, there’s no reason you can’t take a gentle approach either.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about CM, it’s that she did not advocate formal lessons until 6 years old! And even then, they are to be very short lessons. As the person above me suggested, go to the Curriculum Guide on this site for specific help. But if you are reading your kids good books, bible stories, and spending lots of time outside, you’re doing just fine! As you’re reading the FIAR books (and they are good books!), keep learning about the CM method and start incorporating the methods slowly.

I’ll share what I do with my K age son:

• bible story
• geography (which for us is looking at and enjoying maps, and learning little facts about the U.S.),
• reading good picture books & chapter books,
• nature study and free play time both inside and outside,
• music appreciation (simply listening to a classical composer during breakfast),
• art appreciation (looking at beautiful art together),
• language arts (playing alphabet Go Fish, making letters in the air or with marshmallows or with cornmeal in a pan, and copying letters because my son loves doing that), 
• singing hymns together at family prayer time
• scripture memory after dinner
• learning spanish words after dinner

It took me a while to pull together all the materials, but as you can see, it’s all simple stuff at this age.

Be gentle with yourself and don’t expect to get this all figured out in a day, week, or month! Your children are still young…take a deep breath and pray. Give this to God and ask Him to direct you!

Just wanted to add that if putting together your own curriculum is leaving you doubtful, Queen’s Homeschooling Supplies offers easy packs for each level.  I found that using their materials made the “theory” of CM into a reality for me.

http://www.queenhomeschool.com/productpages/Easy%20Paks/Easy%20Packs%20Frame.html

Good luck!

I can’t address all of your questions, but here’s a couple more ideas to think about:

I haven’t used the handwriting curriculum that you mentioned, but I think whether or not you need one will depends on how much help your daughter will need in actually learning to form the letters correctly.  We started out with a handwriting curriculum from Abeka (not that I recommend anything Abeka, but it’s what we had) and it was helpful with learning the letter formation (the teacher’s guide gave a little ‘story’ to help learn how to write each letter the right way which my daughter liked.)  But now that she knows all the basic letter formation and just needs to work on practicing them and becoming more ‘fluent’ and comfortable writing them, we’ve pretty much ditched the rest ofthe workbook pages since she was getting bored (and therefore silly/not trying) with them and have moved to simple copywork.  We pick a sentence from whatever story was the favorite from her library basket that week, and I’ve found that that is far more motivating for her.  Not an expert here by any means, but this is what is working for us!

As far as how much history/science/geography sort of stuff is necessary at this level: I don’t think it is totally necessary at all.  I don’t follow any set program or plan really for that kind of thing.  When I mentioned that we have ‘read alouds’ for those topics, it is very gentle and sort of interest led at this point (we will get started with a more formal ‘curriculum’ for these subjects in grade 1).  Like for science, we had found a HUGE spider outside and had recorded it in our nature journal, so we found a book that had some info about spiders in it and looked at it. She’s been asking lots of questions about the body, so we might find some books about that next. And so on.  History at this point usually coincides with holidays – like during the month of July we read some things about America and famous Americans.  At Thanksgiving, we’ll read book about Thanksgiving. And so on.  Geography I’m a little more intentional about simply because geographical literacy is really important to us (we are overseas missionaries so it is a big part of our normal life as well). Right now, we are working through a book about Bibleless peoples called from Akebu to Zapotec and each week as we read about the little story about the people group we will find that country on the map, and maybe read some other books/stories or look at pictures from the country on the computer or something.  And at this stage my only goal in these subjects is exposure to different ideas, which I think helps to round out the ‘basics’ (reading, handwriting, math).  If your daughter will be in a co-op that will cover those things, it’s probably not really necessary for you to plan to cover any of it unless it’s to follow up on things that may have been of particular interest to her during her co-op times.

As far as cooking goes, I just let my kids stand up on a chair and help with just about anything that doesn’t involve sharp knives or getting too close to the hot stove. =)  We have a book called Pretend Soup that is a cookbook for preschoolers with little pictorial recipes which my daughter loves.   It also gives lots of ideas for how young children can help with things in the kitchen – some of which were things I wouldn’t have thought about.  (Like letting my 4 year old crack eggs, I would have thought it would be too hard and a disaster waiting to happen, but she did it and loves it and thinks that anytime I do anything with eggs it should be her job to crack them….)  So, if you are looking for more ideas in that area, that may be a good book to check into!

Our schedule is pretty much in the order I described in my previous post.  We do the Bible/read-alouds/calendar time on the couch and then move to the table to do phonics (since we do a lot of things with letter tiles and such that’s just easier at the table), math (some writing, some manipulative work), and then handwriting.  We do that last since that is the subject that has been somewhat of a struggle for her and it can be helpful to know that snacktime is waiting for her when she gets it done. =)  Our literature read alouds happen after lunch and again at bedtime.  In between all of those things are time for chores, free play, and ALL of my kids have a rest time in the afternoon regardless of if they sleep or not.  But honestly, it comes down to what works for you.  We landed on this after lots of trial and error. =)

And yes, isn’t it amazing how much tag-along younger siblings pick up?  While my 2 year old hasn’t yet figured out how to read yet he LOVES to imitate everything big sister does and has pretty much figured out all his letters and many of the sounds just from hanging out with us while we do school….

Blessings on your journey!  We are still in the early stages ourselves, but it is a blessing to have a place to share ideas and ask questions, isn’t it!?

Hi Etresia,

You sound extremely organised to me it’s putting that plan into action that is the hard part, but when you get started it will flow beautifully. I expected too much when we started and thought I wasn’t doing enough but I have seen great results using SCM resources and guide.

When you make a timetable, do lessons when the suit you and then stick to it. Most people do math in the morning first thing but most of the time we do it in the middle of the day because that’s when my kids respond best to it (& include games)

We’ve been homeschooling for just over a year and learning to use CM methods for about 3terms (10wks ea, we’re in Australia) I am still always learning. I think it’s amazing how much children earn no matter what they are doing but I love the gentleness, character training, biblical world view and respecting the child as a person the most about Miss Mason’s philosopy. I think if you find that the children really don’t like something your using shorten the lessons dramatically or change resources. I’ve learnt quite alot this year about our childrens learning style and how to cater to their styles and this has made our day smoother and the children learn more (because they are interested) We have a ds8 (visual spatial learner) and a dd3 (auditory learner).

CM style works for all. FIAR is lovely too. We do literature unit studies now and again just for a change (but we dont drag them out) and we still use a CM style. 

We use:

Math 4x/wk – MEP (free online math curriculum) + Games for Learning by Peggy Kaye, The Three R’s by Ruth Beechick, A Collection Of Math Lessons by Marilyn Burns. We will probably continue doing our own thing and I have a sample of Horizons math on it’s way.

Language Arts 4x/wk – Primary Language Lessons by Emma Serl. Games like Bananagrams etc We did use Reading Made easy by V Bendt (wasn’t a great fit for my VS leaner so we taught phonics very simply (tanglewood school) and read alot) and also Making Books With children and have also read Unit Studies Made Easy.(a great read even if your not inot unit studies)

Copywork 4x/wk – Aesops Fables manuscript print (finished), Downunder Copywork Bk1 from Downunder Literature (nearly finished), Own copywork ZB fonts online & Horizons Penmanship.

Reading – lots of it, I read chp bks mostly to ds8  and younger stuff to dd3 and get my ds8 to read to his sister & I longer story/picture books.

Poetry 1x/wk – SCM Guide and do 1 per week

Science 3x/wk- Nature Study – The Wonderland OF Nature by Nuri Mass (AUS), bushwalking and 106 Days of Creation SCM

Bible /History/ Geo 4x/wk – Genesis Through Deuteronomy and ancient Egypt SCM Ancient Civilizations and the Bible (K-4) by Diana Waring

PDHP 2 x/wk- Horse Riding Lessons All terms, Swimming terms 1 & 4, Gymnastics term 2& 3 amongst other stuff  

Language 2x/wk- a little spanish starting sign

Art 2x/wk- Lots of crafts and occassional lesson in pottery and printmaking, Childrens Book of Art Usbourne, famous paiting prints. PLL helps you learn to do picture study. 

Music 1x/wk – Bach & Grieg lapbooks, listen to music and act out to it. Listen to a variety of style My ds8 enjoys swing!

Life Skills – everything, we cook and clean and fix and create……..

Character – Sing together read The Childrens Story Bible by Catherine Vos, Lightkeepers 10 Boys that change the world etc Laying Down the Rails for me…

We schedule 4 days per week and leave the 5th day to do revision or outings or whatever. It’s really easy to overschedule and fail so imho just ease into it, there’s plenty of time. We spend the morning setting a good atmosphere for the rest of the day with Bible/Hist/Geo/reading/LA/CW & Math just before or after lunch, then play and creative time after lunch.

You’ll be fine as long as you let God help you each day and don’t rush. Modern day life has taught us to rush everything.

Blessings,

Renelle

I have done the Singapore Earlybird math with one of my sons – you do not need the teacher’s editions (they are so pricey!) – there is enough instruction at the bottom of each page and it will tell you when to read what book in there as well. We liked those overall, but we did tend to skip some of the activities geared more for a classroom.

With Handwriting, we went through a Zaner-Bloser Kindergarten book of just the basic, how to form each letter properly (we started with HWT but it just wasn’t working with my son). Now I just make him copywork pages from our Bible memory verses – some he doesn’t finish all in one day, I usually have him do 1-2 lines a day. 

With Picture Study/Music-Composer Study/Poetry – I’d say to go back through the website and read some of the explanations of how to do that, it can be very simple and enjoyable. The SCM guide also gives suggestions of artists, etc. I try to remember that I am not trying to make them art/music/literature critics, I just want them to recognize, appreciate and enjoy. Also, we don’t do this every day – most of the time just 1-2 days a week. 

For picture study, we do one artist at a time (like the SCM guide suggests) and do a picture a week. I did buy some of the Dover coloring books to go along with the artist we were doing and my older son likes to color the coloring page of what painting we’re studying. I check out books from the library that have the big pictures in them and we check out or buy a biography (there are some in the bookfinder) for that artist. We leave the book out all week and talk about the painting in passing. 

For Music study we do pretty much the same thing. We’ve gotten the Opal Wheeler biography on Mozart and I print out the coloring pages from the CD and we read a little bit each week. 

Same for Poetry, we take a day a week and read poetry – a lot of times I get requests more often and I gladly oblige.

A book I have that seems like your daughter might like is “Discovering Great Artists” by MaryAnn Kohl and Kim Solga – it has art projects that are in the style of great artists, to learn about them by doing like them. 

Based on what you’ve said, I wouldn’t worry with starting one of the history/geog modules this year, especially if she is doing that at the co-op.

I don’t own this cookbook, but my sister-in-law and her two daughters have a Paula Deen cookbook for kids that they love. The girls have planned meals out of it before 🙂 I am sure there are other good kids cookbooks out there too – maybe let them take the reins for dinner one night?

And as far as foreign language goes, do you happen to speak Portuguese? You could have certain times of the day that you just speak that language, or just try to intersperse it as much as you can. All my boys are still very young and while I’ve looked at Rosetta Stone and some others, I think it may be too much for them right now. My husband is fluent in Spanish and I am not too bad – we try to speak to them in Spanish alot and I let them watch Spanish cartoons, listen to Spanish songs, etc. They pick up on quite a bit in that gentle way. 

Those are the things you mentioned that we do – hope some of that helps. One thing I have to remind myself every time I sit down to plan is that I don’t have to do everything every day – for some reason I constantly forget that concept! Another thing that is good to keep in mind is that you don’t have to start out doing everything at the same time. You could maybe give yourself a week or two to get in the routine just doing the basics and then add in the other things (picture study, music study, etc.) later on when you are more comfortable in your routine. Enjoy getting started and don’t forget to get some sleep too – a well rested mommy can be as important as a having good plan 🙂