Starting K, panicking!

We have all been there. I have a 4th, 2nd, and K this year. We have homeschooled from the beginning. I bought a full scale curriculum for my oldest in K too. It was entirely unnecessary and burned him out on school. Now? I am doing phonics, a simple math checklist I created for K, and handwriting. It takes about a half hour. Other than that we read a lot. She can read so I let her get books at the library and I read aloud to all my kids everyday.

I would say to definitely go slow. Play a lot. You have so many years. I know the pressure is there but I promise you will be glad.

Tara

First of all, BREATHE! 🙂 I know how you feel.

A few thoughts I have:

1) as a mother of four, I wish I had worried less about the early years with my oldest, who is going into 6th grade. Those years are meant to be sweet and happy with lots of time outside, exploring, learning good habits, listening to good stories, drawing, painting, playing with Legos and sticks and play dough, etc. Academics come soon enough.

 2) Your son is nearly 6yo so are you wanting to keep things very simple with him (i.e. kindergarten type work and play) or step it up a bit to more formal work (i.e. reading lessons, writing lessons, basic math lessons, etc.)? It’s really just a choice you need to make based on your son’s maturity and his desire to learn these things. If he has no interest in learning letters or how to read, then maybe you could just keep it simple for now. But if he’s chomping at the bit, then go for it!

But please remember that he is still so very young and there’s no need to feel any pressure. I once read a quote by John Taylor Gatto (a former public schoolteacher and author) that everything the educational system takes 12 years to teach could be taught to a young adult without any formal learning in 50 days. I’m not sure exactly how true that timeline is, but the point is that when a child is cognitively ready to learn, they will pack in “grades” of work in very short periods of time. So don’t feel pressured!

I hope this is helpful. I would encourage you to keep things very simple and to find peace in that. Your son will pick up on your stress and it will turn something that’s supposed to be fun and exciting into stressful work. Just my opinions! 🙂

My plan for my 3rd child K year is… Practice reading (would start teaching if she didn’t already read), math, handwriting, and then reading stuff together. She will join in on things like picture study, nature study, etc. with olders. We won’t likely do everything each day either.

What about alternating history, your read aloud, & science?  You can even take two years on it and finish next year for 1st grade if you need to.  We have also become more relaxed for K with each additional child, but I think part of that is because we are busier teaching the older ones (and the younger ones get somewhat involved in their lessons as well).  While I don’t think you should force your K’er to sit for tons of lessons, I don’t see anything wrong with planning some materials to keep him busy.  Just keep watch that it isn’t becoming too much (and don’t be afraid to call off school for the day if they just want to play).  

I think adding the subjects in slowly sounds like a great idea.  We did this last year and had added quite a few by mid-year.  It also gave me time to research how i wanted to implement each additional subject.

HSMom03 ~ I’m so glad to see that you are feeling better now about starting out. I love the advice given to you. I think just about all of us can identify with your original sense of panic.

You also have lots of great ideas of your own such as easing into things. That’s one thing we do every Fall. We start with a few things and then layer in the rest.

You also mentioned focusing on the basics such as habits. That helps us when we practice good habits and thus the subjects tend to fall right into place.  

Please continue to make those teacher manuels work for you and NOT make you work for the manuels.

On the “nothing to do” ~ I’ve read where some moms will make a to-do list/chart in which chores, exercise, certain independent studies and so on are to be completed while the others are studying or meeting with their Mom.

Hope you continue to feel at peace about it all. And when you don’t – look at this great support you’ve recieved from the others already!