My little guy is in K this year. We are doing Horizons K math, LLATL blue set, and I had lots of other things planned but we never seem to get to them. He is burned out by the time we are done with Horizons math and the LLATL lesson each day. This usually takes us about 2+ hours. Am I covering enough for his age? Should I push something else? We are not even getting to craft activities or anything. Well the activities they have in the LLATL we get to. I don't want to short change him on anything. I have tried to add more in, but it ends up seeming like nothing is sinking in after he has spent his time on the other subjects. Now this is our break down on how it all goes in the day, well the school part. We start off with saying the month, day, year. Then we go say our Months of the year, days of the week, count to anything from 1-40 - 1-100, we go over our abc's to make sure he is still on top of them, we go over our address, phone number, date of birth, and stuff like that. This is our warm up for the day. I usually writing most on the board and we go over it. He takes a seat with his dry erase board. I go to my board and I introduce him to the new concepts in today's math work. Then we go over some of the previous stuff we have covered, since Horizons already does this it helps him get ready for what he is going to do today on his worksheet. We work out a few problems of each thing. Some days we break out the counters, and other things to make it a little more fun for review. Then I give him his page for the day. He usually finishes most of it on his own after we have gone over it together on the board. Now some things he does need help with. After that he takes a quick break to get a snack or something to drink. Usually this is so he can move around and get some energy out for a minute while I get the next thing ready. Now we start out LLATL lesson. We do the reading, activity, lesson page or whatever is asked that day. Then we have a discussion about what we are doing. Like about the story or the lesson. Now by the time we are done with this he is done. He wants nothing else to do with "school" that day. Are we covering enough? Or should I try to push more in there? Also the reason we hit these two things each day is I believe they are the most important subjects for us to cover right now. Thank you for any help.
Sounds like you're done to me! I am a big believer in movies, music, and art for the little ones. You could look into adding stuff like that - or an educational computer game. Or sign him up for a class in something. I know back when we were doing Kinder we spent the entire year just on language arts. A little bit of math, but not much. We did some science stuff becasue it was all activities and no writing or anything. Then in first grade I pushed the math hard and eased up on the language arts and it all evened out. You know better than anyone whether pushing him harder will work - what do you think?
If he's tired after all that then leave it alone and start coloring and watching educational videos - stuff like that. You don't want to push harder or he won't want to do even the little bit of school you are doing
I think if I push him to much he will buck up against me. He does this daily on little things, so I am afraid to push to hard on the school now and ruin it for later. Now he does watch things like his Leap frog dvds and does do his jumpstart activities on the computer through out the week. Now each of these covers what we are covering already. We are not covering science, history, arts, and all that. I know he is little and I should push this more next year probably. What movies do you do you recommend?
Now I have a 5 yr old who is not to hot on coloring. I cannot figure out why. He will quickly scribble in the pic and call it good. He just doesn't care for coloring in a pic. I think it is way strange.LOL
The only thing I would TRY to do is maybe some art once a week. I think he would enjoy it. Does he know how to use scissors? I bet if scissors are involved he will want to be too. My DD loves to cut things and I think it is really good for her motor skills. As for the rest I think you are doing fine. I hope your year goes well!
My girls have always loved coloring. The boys, not so much. Although now that my soon to be 12 year old is getting into drawing he has been coloring more to finish off his work..
He has free access to all the art supplies and is always cutting up something. I just cannot ever seem to fit in an "art project" through out our day.
Jo anna I would agree with those who said let him color, play playdoh too! Kids re never tired of that, even my teens would pick some up if I let them! lol Dot to dots and coloring are both fun and help them to create something... you are doing a great job with the math nd lang arts, thats what they need! science is a walk in the park ( literally) and history is going to the grocery store for community workers or helpers , so no worry about any of that stuff in K!
Try to combine maybe art & science. Like make a tree using his arm & hand paint it brown & then use other colors to make the leaves. While he is doing that maybe look around and talk about how some tree loose their leaves & some don't (evergreens). It would be something fun for him & learning a little about trees as science. If it is something fun, you'll probably both enjoy it more as well.
You could also try Brian Pop or Time 4 Learning if you really think you should do more -but honestly I think you're doing plenty.
Sounds like you are coving the most important things. I'm not sure if LLATL covers handwriting. If not, I might add some tracing of letters and some mazes to help with fine motor skills. Otherwise, you can add in the other subjects in your day to day life. For instance when he is taking a bath give him several things and he can experiment to see what floats best. For art give him access to lots of art supplies. For music put on different genres of music while he is in the house. There are a lot of great science videos. The Magic School Bus may be a good choice. If your son is into games there are lots of educational games that you can use and your son wouldn't know he was doing "school."
dont try to fit it in as alesson, just tell him he can cut or whatever, give him a glue stick and leave him go, not like a lesson
thank you for all the great advice. I don't feel so bad now. Well I decided to take a day and do some fun today. We are going to do some cooking for math, an art project of some sort, go to the library, and maybe fit in a a literature pocket from evan-moor today.
Hi JoAnna, We are in much the same situation here, and my K'er does the exact same thing on coloring, detests it. I was really hoping with some help with it all, so it was good to read responses you received. (I don't seem to get too many for some reason) It was great help for me to just read how you set up your K student's day. I was wondering if I could ask what the Horizons math is covering? I didn't go with any specific math curriculum. All the best
I guess he is not that strange after all. Gosh I am glad I said that also. Knowing he is not the only one is a comforting feeling.
I have not read the other posts so forgive me it this is repetitous. First for K I wouldn't do anything longer than 2 hours max. Second, the 3 R's are all you need at this age. So yes, they are the most important things at this age. Third, take Horizons Math and do the weekdays on one day, months the next day, counting the next day and so on. Do one of these per day, instead of doing all of them. Does he know them? Then review every few weeks or once a month. Daily isn't really necessary, but somewhat of an overkill. That'll take time off. Same with address and phone. If it makes you comfy, than do those twice a week. Do a fun activity with the days of the week or month by having him do a hands on calendar instead of reciting them. Take LLATL and break it up into two days. Do phonics on one day, stories on the next. We loved LLATL blue. Make up the extra time by reading a story for fun, or do an art activity which you can even relate to LLATL or Math so he can relate school to some fun as well. It's not a race.
PBS has a really cute cartoon called "sid the science kid" that my kids watch. I will let them watch the show, then we will do a project (usually the one off the show). Science can be really fun so I would try to incorporate it as much as possible. It can get really time consuming and you have to be creative, but it is my kids favorite subject.
