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Is this typical to start?
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Ds5 has the week off from preschool and I thought I’d do a “dry run” of kindergarten-the schedule, but mostly a review of what I know he knows. I had the books on the kitchen table and decided to wait until he noticed them to start. He noticed them around 8:40 or so this a.m. I set the timer, he climbed on my lap, and we read from the Read and Learn Bible for 10 minutes. I reset the timer and used his math workbook for ten minutes. (He pointed and counted what was on the page. I knew better than to try to get him to write the numbers or whatever). We reset the timer and worked on phonics flashcards for about five minutes. He wanted a snack, so we took a twenty minute break. After the break I set the timer for ten minutes, got out the MagnaDoodle, and told him to make an “A”. He wouldn’t, even after I drew one for him to copy. I tried a few more letters; all he wanted to do was scribble. I expected that; he doesn’t like to make his letters. Then we read nursery rhymes for five minutes and I called it a day. All of this took about an hour. Is this typical for a CM kindergarten, or did I not do enough? (When we start “officially,” I’ll lead up to narration techniques, art, and music, so this would add another 30 minutes to an hour).
I will tell you what my 5 year old son is doing right now. Mind you we have 6 children and there for we do many things together. Turned 5 in February!
With mom:
Math (mathusee primer),
religion (which I read to him, and this is totally our catholic faith based),
copywork (from handwriting w/o tears)
Learn to read (learn to read in 100 easy lessons)
Art/Coloring (I rotate : one day he has to color a picture from a book the next he has to draw something which I usually give him a idea for)
Poetry (memorizing Psalm 23)
With siblings/family:
Picture study
Music study
Bible/History/Geo.
Literature
PE (Manditory LOL)
Learning to play w/ younger sibling (doing what they want)
That’s our days.. mind you the family time items are not the above everyday, some are daily others once a week. It usually is about 1 hour with just mom and 30 with family.
Good luck on starting out and don’t worry he’s only 5!
Misty
I have a DS5 also – but he is barely five. I think your schedule sounds great – if anything I would suggest remaining open to having an activity in between the sessions of bookwork, if necessary. You may have to assess this on a day to day basis LOL.
My son, too, is in the lap for all his work – we are at a table and he is in my lap, and I guide him over his shoulder.
Now as Misty said – if there are other older children there also working, he will likely be involved in that too. I wouldn’t be doing any bookwork at all with my son except that he wants to do the same thing as his older sister. He listens to all our read-alouds and picks up a surprising amount.
If anything, with your schedule, I might suggest more read aloud time – maybe this is just naturally incorporated into your day? My DS loves magic school bus ( this is the core of my 3rd grade science program LOL) – even though I question his understanding – it is a little over his head. But we take several days to get through a book. I will read a few pages and stop till tomorrow. This is how I stick to short lessons in this case.
I use a timer for lessons sometimes – I wish I had a silent timer, so that when it goes off if we need a few minutes to come to a logical conclusion of the lesson, it doesn’t feel like I am going over some arbitrary time limit. So I don’t use it as much as I wish I could – just to keep <me> on track.
I think you’ve got the idea! Your plan looks good.
We do have read aloud time throughout the day. Ds5 and Dd1 know that if they bring me a book, more than likely I’ll drop everything and read to them. Today during our practice session I had to take a longer break because he lost interest for awhile, so we just now finished. If only I could stay as focused on dd; we’ve just started potty training (she’s 19.5 months) and so far all I’ve done is change wet training pants and mop up accidents.
Have you ever had a chance to look over Ruth Beechick’s books for early learning? In my opinion they give many wonderful, gentle, common-sense ideas just made for teaching your little one at home, and are very CM friendly. They come as a set called The Three R’s which is quite inexpensive. The set is 3 bookets, A Home Start in Reading, An Easy Start in Arithmetic, and A Strong Start in Language. These ideas plus a strong read-aloud habit and lots of time outside seem to me to make a very happy and productive kindergarten. I hope the two of you have lots and lots of fun!!
Nancy G.
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