Ok... I am a stay at home mom of 3 & I have decided to homeschool my girls. My 4 year old was going to go to Pre K in public school, but I figured sice they are anti-God in public schools, I'll just homeshcool her. Anyway, I have no clue where to start. She is a brilliant child & she shows signs of ADD (I have it too, but I manage my well enough to teach at a daycare) & I wanted to teach her how to manage it without meds. Can anyone give me some pointers or let me know of some really good websites? I just need to know what she is expected to learn at each grade level. I can make lesson plans, I use to do that when I worked.
"Expected to learn at each grade level" a lot of that depends on the teacher. lol The ED Hirsh books What your....needs to know are a good starting point. PreK...hummm counting, alphabet, matching, difference, etc...don't stress about PreK go to Sams Club or Walmart and get some little workbooks, do tons of crafts, read to her and HAVE FUN! Work on those fine motor skills. Here are a bunch of PreK/K links broken up by category http://www.hsiz.org/resources.asp?resourceCatID=283,361 Have fun!
You could do a google search on "diet controlled ADD". I know that there is a diet out there that is supposed to greatly reduce an ADD type behavior. Also, I find that sometimes ADD is given as a label to a kid who has a different approach to learning, so even finding abook on learning styles and how to determine what your child's is would be helpful too. For example, my eldest is a classic student. LOVES to do workbooks...she could sit for literally HOURS and work on workbooks...I used to have to stop her. My son? Oh my, you'd think you were killing him to make him sit still for a workbook page for more than 15 minutes - I have to bribe with sit ups and jumping jacks. Were he to go to public school they would label him ADD b/c he has a hard time sitting still - yet he's really smart and loves to read - reads all the time, even. I would imagine your daughter is just very hands on vs book learner....does that make sense?
that makes perfect sense. I just noticed her doing a lot of the same things I do and struggling with a lot of the same things I struggle with. I went thru tons of testing for ADD & so I figured she has it too. I learned to manage it without meds because my parents are very anti-medical treatment. Thanks for the info!!!!
Also work on letter sounds, either at the same time as letter identification, or after. Once she can identify a letter, you can point it out in a book, and ask her to tell you the sound it makes. Do this with just a few letters at a time (s, m, f, d are good ones to start with).
I have a daughter going into prek too as well as a 6th grader and we will be using www.letteroftheweek.com We are also going to story time and art class at the library as well as lapbooking. I am so looking forward to this year!
Read to her. Do you have a local library that does a morning group for this age? If you'd be interested check it out. Magnets on the frig are good for learning letters, colors, and numbers. "Little Kids Can Cut" is a good book. I got mine at a local learning shop.
Bob Jones has a K4 curriculum. I just did their K5 with both my 4 and 5 year olds. I slowed it down a lot, and they have done very well with it. What I like about the Bob Jones one is that they have all sorts of different ideas at the end of each lesson that reinforce it. The ideas are clearly designed to apply to different learning styles as they involve songs, games, crafts, etc. There's also a suggested Bible lesson that ties in with each section you do. I've really liked it, and my kids have, too.
We're using Letter of the Week mentioned above along with THIS free online preschool curriculum. This one as labelled as for threes, or threes and fours. It includes alphabet/phonics, letters, shapes, lots of poetry, lots of studying stories in the bible, math - numbers and other concepts, and some science, as well as just art and fun things thrown in here and there. It's EXCELLENT imho. There are also other curriculums there, for "two" and for "fours" - but this really looks like a great place to start to me. Here's a scope and sequence for preschool from World Book: WorldBook And if you want to check out the kindergarten list too (they have lists for ALL grades), there are links to the left. I just kind of use this as a "don't forget to teach this sometime soon" kind of guideline, and not a hard-and-fast must-do-this-year standard. Animals. Lots and lots of animals. What their babies look like, what their feet look like and what sorts of prints they produce, where they live both environmentally and geographically. We're doing some based on the letter of the week, and some based on the color, etc. We're stretching that curriculum I linked out further than it goes. (For instance, it does all of creation in two weeks. We're doing a week for each creation day. Also, they only study the senses for ONE DAY. We're doing those for two weeks at least.) To me, this is a go-with-the-flow age if there ever was one. If they are interested and like something, stick with it a while. If they don't care, don't get it, move on and get back to it later at some point. My kids are really loving reading Charlotte's Web now that they've seen the movie. Next, I'm going to aim for Stuart Little. I think E.B.White has a knack for keeping the attention of even little kids. We read a chapter at a time, and aim for at least that every day. (In addition, of course, to books with the letter of the week themes, animals, and the colors and numbers we're studying, and anything else they bring me from the shelf.) I'm all about making our preschool curriculum lately. PM me if I can help more!
DaLynn, I LOVE that hubbardscupboard site! I am totally post-stalking the ones who have pre-k kids! Ds is 3 and we will be using some letter of the week stuff along with some other ABC stuff I have pulled from different places. I think we are going to do nursery rhymes and fairy tales and also work on household skills. I bookmarked a neat ABC game site tonight I will have to go back and find. My eyes are still dilated from my appt. this afternoon, so I am slow!
Wow! Added that to my faves. Now if i can get my kiddos to go away again and let ME play, we'll be doing good. LOL thanks for the link! And you're welcome to stalk me if you like. :lol: I'm all about it lately. Today I picked up a book at the library called "20 Teachable Virtues" that I'm going to read and see about including. We're doing an animal diorama... did you catch that post? Wanna see my plans? LOL I'm all excited and working and putting stuff together lately. I'll be glad to gush if you're interested.
HA okay, PMing you! (And anyone else can PM me too. I'm not short and sweet with things though, and don't want to hijack the thread.)
