Hi, I just found this forum today and was hopeing for some help. I live in WI and I know the state requires Math, language arts, spelling, Science, social studies and health every year. My daughter is 4 1/2 and I want to start on kindergarden next year ( i'm having a baby in dec or I'd start this year! ) I was wondering what is important to teach a kindergardener in each subject and idea's or book suggestions to help! Thanks Tami
Hi Tami, Welcome! We use Abeka and have from the very start, 10 years ago. Below is a web site for abeka's scope and sequence which shows you what their curriculm covers. We like Abeka is wonderful! Good luck and enjoy! Staci http://www.abeka.com/Resources/PDFs/ScopeAndSequence.pdf
Tami, go to your school's website and see if you can locate curriculum and benchmarks for kindergarten. That's how I knew what to work on with my 4 yr old.
You may want to check your state's website for the Dept. of Education. In OK, the State Dept. of Education has all of the benchmarks on their website, listed by grade. Also, HSLDA may give you some ideas (http://www.hslda.org). Hope this helps! .....and welcome!
I have a few teacher friends that live in Green Bay. Small world. I have looked at our state website to see if I could find our state benchmarks and was not successful. If you find them can you please let me know?
Benchmarks can be helpful, but please don't get too concerned about them. They should be guidelines, only. It's like a Baby Book, where it tells you what your child "should" be doing by 4 months, 5 months, etc. Some kids will be right on, some way ahead, and others behind, yet they are all perfectly "normal". You shouldn't just ignore them, but don't put too much stock in them.
Thanks everyone for the welcome. So far this is what I'm considering.... I have bought alot of workbooks from the dollar store, tj maxx ( some really great ones there) and wal-mart. I have bought them in reading, spelling, english and math. I like them cause my daughter LOVES doing workbooks! However we are also going to get her a phonics kit made for her leappad they just came out with ( 3 different ones that build off each other) we found great writting and math wipe off flash cards ( again at the dollar store!) we have music cds and computer games as well. For social studies we will be doing our city and state next year which will be stories and feild trips and anything else I can do to make it fun! For science we are concentraiting on flowers ( going to let her grow one!) the earth sun and moon and parts of the body! I figure I will teach the science with what I think of! She also wants to learn Spanish so we are going to use the computer, movies and books to try to teach that! We also go for walks and I'm going to teach her more about strangers and saftey for the health requirement here! We are going this way cause we can't afford boxed curr or the individual things through companies! Oh...almost forgot tons of arts and crafts! :wink:
My 3 year old has a leap pad (the leap pad plus writing) and he LOVES it. I like it a lot because it is usable for so many years and he learns so well from it. He gained a lot of small motor control (including holding his pencil correctly) from his leap pad. I love ALL of their products.
Hi Tami.. Welcome here! Kindergarten is still very young and it looks like you have a lot of good material to get started with. Just remember, no matter how much they like workbooks, workbooks typically are not fun ) especially at this age. They end up not liking them if we give them too many. Workbooks can cause a resistant learner by grade 2 or 3 especially if it was started in the early years. Don't get me wrong, I love workbooks, but not too much at this age :0) You are starting at a good time, real young. So maybe do 1/2 as much workbook and more hands on learning. Take field trips with your local group, sign up for art, gymnastics, kindermusik or dance. Enjoy your spanish lessons. These things are so hard to do later when they have a full academic load. We have to cut back on extra curricular activities now to get compositions done. Enjoy the new baby and remember playing is learning. And we learn by doing. Cook simple meals together, growing the flower is an excellent idea, taste and experiment with ice cream, sort jellybeans (taste a few along the way), pop balloons, play games, play dress up and let her help mom with the baby. There is so much real life learning skills in all of those sort of *lesson plans*. HTH
I have to say my 3 year old loves workbooks. I don't ever 'make' him sit and do them though. He pretty much does them when he feels like it, but when he does, he likes them. Because I run a preschool out of my home he gets a lot of hands on learning and lessons in art, math, science, small motor, reading, etc., but when we have "mommy and me" time he likes to sit and cuddle up with mom and a workbook. He likes the one on one it give us together. I wouldn't push the workbook thing, but if she enjoys it then don't hold her back from doing them if she enjoys them. You never want to suppress something a child is interested in (within reason of course).
I am doing workbooks only cause she loves them. I too only do them cause she enjoys them so much and I never force them on her. She loves doing them with me and I feel no need to stop a good thing that she is learning from! I will be doing tons of hands on stuff as well but feel workbooks are good cause it helps with writting and puts learning on paper. I feel I will be giving my child a good education that consists of book work and hands on work. I feel both are important, that their are many ways to learn and ways to teach and that everyone needs to just do what works best for them and their child!
I have a pre-k checklist (age appropriate for 4-5 years) that I've used for alex, to help me keep track of what he can do/needs to work on. I can email it to you if you want... elissapeterson@yahoo.com
Tami, How is school going for you all? I hope good. Stick around and we will have ideas and things for you to use.
It's been good, really not doing a whole lot right now since I'm pregnant and she's only 4....kinda doing alot of preparing for next year. We have a workbook she's working on right now when she's in the mood, I got her some of that linded paper which we are using to make words and work on her penminship...she's doing really good at that and loves to write! We also have alot of first reader books that she has been flying through ( thinking of starting her on 2nd readers) and she also has been reading books from the library. She's been drawing alot of pictures and her biggest interest right now is the baby on the way so she's been asking alot of questions and I've been doing my best to answer them! Hope things are going good for all of you and thanks for the wonderful ideas and support!
Tami, did you get to look up our state standards at all? I'm going to try to find them and will let you know if I do. If you do, let me know. I'm curious. Right now I'm just quessing with help from other state standards.
