Even though the school year has already started, I wanted to share what Eleanor is doing for Kindergarten this year. She just turned five last week, so by public school standards, she’s doing Kinder a year early. It didn’t make any sense to me to put it off until next year since she was eager to move forward, and I could tell she was ready; so I made a few adjustments to the way I structured Kindergarten for Everett last year, and we were good to go!
Before this year…
Eleanor’s only structured learning prior to this year was the Pre-K Course from The Good and The Beautiful. She was familiar with the alphabet and most letter sounds but wasn’t reading yet. Although, she has watched Everett closely as he’s gone through the courses before her, and that’s made some things super easy—she knew all the vowels and was already practicing lowercase b and d recognition just from watching him.
Core Subjects
For our homeschool, we consider Language, Reading, Handwriting, Math, and Come, Follow Me to be our core subjects. These are the things we do daily, 4-5 times/week.
Language Arts
Because she was starting out as a much younger kindergartener, I wanted to make sure she had a really strong foundation and avoid overwhelming her or moving too quickly.
This year for Language Arts she’ll be working through (from The Good and The Beautiful)
In our first 2.5 months of the school year, Eleanor has finished both the Primer K Course as well as the Primer K Supplement, and she’s ready to jump into the Level K Course next week!
Reading
The Good and The Beautiful language courses are all I’ve ever used to teach the kids to read, and it’s been a fantastic experience both times. Everett and Eleanor have vastly different personalities, but The Good and The Beautiful has been a great fit for both of them.
I used to be so intimidated to teach the kids to read, but this curriculum has made it approachable, and it’s ended up being something we’ve loved doing together.
I have all of the Beginner Books Box Sets from The Good and The Beautiful on hand for her to work her way through; she’s currently reading daily from Box A.
Handwriting
We use the Handwriting books from The Good and The Beautiful. I felt like Eleanor needed a little extra practice with different formations before moving onto letters and words, so I started her on the Pre-Writing level. She does 4 pages/week, and on Fridays she does a tracing page that I make with a scripture verse on it.
I’ll probably have her start picking up the pace a little so she can get into the Level K Handwriting sooner than later.
Math
I decided to wait at least a semester on formal math lessons since she’s still so little; I think we’ll start Math K in January and see how things go.
Come, Follow Me
This is the course we use for our religious study. This year, 2020, we’re studying from the Book of Mormon.
Here’s what we use on a regular basis for Come, Follow Me:
- The Redheaded Hostess Weekly Subscription
- Drawn In (these videos are included with the Redheaded Hostess subscription, but it’s also available as a separate subscription here.)
- Book of Mormon Primary Edition from Line Upon Line
The Redheaded Hostess kits have a ton of activities and information in them, but we always, always, always use the Illustrated Stories and the Kids Marking Guides.
We try to make Fridays special and fun around here, so we always do Drawn In on Fridays. Do your kids a favor and go check out Drawn In immediately—they will love it. Your whole family will love it! David Bowman does an amazing job, and we’ve learned so much!
Unit Studies / Loop Subjects
I’ll do a post soon talking about how we do unit studies and how we schedule our loop for rotating subjects, so let me know if you have any questions about that!
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