I have not been doing very much at all with my 5 y/o. He is an older Kinder. He will turn six in Jan. We are doing teach your child to read in 100 lessons and I play a sight word matching game. We practice writing letters for about 5 minutes and that is it. What do you do with your kinder? How does your day look. He is getting bored, and I feel like he is missing having friends to talk to in school.
I would recommend Five in a Row. We did Before Five in a Row (before K) and the boys and I loved, loved, loved it. Not a lot of pressure, lots of activities you can select from. I found many of the books through my local library. We had already decided to do OFE, so that's what we went with for K. Otherwise, I would have been doing FIAR.
Ambleside Online has a good program too - it's the year 0 I think My kids color while they listen to stories (and they are above K - LOL)
You might want to invest in a math program, too. I personally like Horizon at that age, but there's plenty of fine curriculums.
I have a 7 yo and an almost 6 yo (abt a month to go!). I essentially unschool them at a young age; we are just now "transiting" my oldest, very slowly, into a more formalized structure. I let them both pick out an experiment from one of the many "household experiment" books we have laying around the house. I read to him, and encourage him to read on his own. We visit the library almost every week and check out tons of books across a wide spectrum of reading ability to fit all four of our kids, and he is free to pick and choose. We play sound games and adding games. I have a binder of "worksheets" for him to do at will. And I let him play, a lot. SG
I think it really depends on your child. My ds will be 6 in Jan. and is in K also. We do more of a structered learning....we use hooked on phonics and different stories for reading, he practices handwriting and cursive (his idea not mine), we have spelling words--about 6 or 7 new words every two weeks---,math we do basic addition and subtraction as well as telling time and counting $$, science and social studies depend on what is going on around us, and he does karate 2x's a week. Oh and arts and crafts. It sounds like a lot but it is really only a couple hours a day maybe a little bit more if he is really interested in a topic. He does play educational computer games and has lots of time to play on his own (or with lil'sis) as well. If you think he is getting bored then add something to his day. The days of the week or the names of the months, if he doesn't know them. Learn about winter or something that maybe he wants to know about. My ds loves everything dinosaurs right now so we watch videos, read books and look up pics of them online. You can turn just about anything into a learning experience! Like I said though, it depends on your child.....and I can already tell that my dd is going to be an entirely different story! LOL!
My dd is 5 and will be 6 at the end of January. She does school work very randomly - sometimes every day and sometimes three times a week. We use hooked on phonics, math u see primer and she practices her lower case letters for handwriting (she has mastered upper case). I give her tons of free play time. She likes to draw and play with playdough and blocks and polly pockets, roller blading and riding her bike. She also takes ballet, tap and jazz twice a week. I am considering begining her on Year 1 at www.amblesideonline.org begining in February if I can get all the books together by then. It will be a bit of a challenge though to have two kids on different schedules. My oldest began Year 7 in September and will end in May.
My son did K last year....he was 5 all year long for K and turned 6 in July. We used Horizons Math K, Hooked on Phonics Learn to Read, Explode the Code phonics workbooks to reinforce his HOP reading lessons, A Reason for Handwriting K, and he sporadically did history or science with his sisters....his "seatwork" took him all of about 30 mins...maybe 45 if we were reading a HOP chapter book versus a regular lesson.
I am very relaxed about kinder. To me it should be fun. But the most important thing is to meet that child's needs. I waited until my son was 6 to do any organized "school" with him and even then it was mostly the workbooks you can buy at places like Walmart and hands on manipulatives. It worked since my goal was mostly for him to know his letters (shapes and sounds) and numbers. I also did some mini unit studies on animals, seasons, holidays, etc... We read (me reading to him) ALOT. I did decide part way through the year to use Horizons Math and I am glad I did because it is a good fit for my son. I am not sure it would have been a good fit at the start of K since it moves very fast. He is using the K book 2 still in 1st grade and I think it is as hard, or harder, than other 1st grade math books I have looked at. Now with my second son I may start things a little earlier. He is 4 1/2 and I haven't really started "teaching" him, but since he is involved in our daily school he is picking things up and he likes to do workbooks somedays (I let him choose each day if he wants to or not), just easy which one is different type pages. He does love the books we read for our Themes and he knows more about many animals than lots of older people I know, LOL. He is my little scientist. I think for kinder with him I will use The Explode the Code Primers since my oldest is enjoying book 1. I will also use Horizon's math K. I think he will be ready for that at the start of K since he has more exposure to numbers than the older boy did. And we will keep doing themes. Unit studies may be a good fit for your son too. For my boys they make things more interesting and they are learning without really realizing they are Here are a couple sites I use regularly to get ideas. http://www.learningpage.com/ (you have to register, but it is free) My kids like the seasonal and theme worksheets there. http://www.homeschoolshare.com/ I saw that someone suggested Five In a Row, I haven't used it but have heard good things about it and this site has similar ideas based on books, and the best part to me is that it is free We aren't really that excited about reading the same book five days in a row, but we do enjoy finding several books about the same theme and reading one each day and using some activities that go along with them. Recently we found 8 different versions of Stone Soup at our library and read them and talked about how they were the same and different. We have done 1 lapbook and my kids weren't that excited about it, but I think we will try it again soon. Good luck and have fun
I have been pretty laid back about Kindergarten. With my oldest we did 100 easy lessons, a few worksheets (I got one of those big workbooks) and mostly just did fun learning stuff. There are a ton of Kindergarten printables on the web. I tell people all the time that other than buying craft materials you can pretty much teach kindergarten for free! My mom always says to start out easy, you don't want to burn your kids out by 2nd grade.
My DD is also K-5. She turns 6 end of Jan. She was in K-5 at PS until Nov. She is very intense on learning and I follow her lead to a extent. I use enchantedlearning.com for her worksheets and my 3 yr old who just wants to do his "schoolwork" because his sister does. We are doing phonics, Math, science, word scrambles, some online math and spelling, arts and crafts about twice a week and we are a part of a HS co op that runs classes for 10 weeks at a time every Thursday for a few hours. They offer everything from dance to science and gives her the interaction with her peers. I think it depends on your child but I did run across a page that said what a kindergarten student should know...it also lists other grade levels as well. I can't post the site on here because I am new lol
New here but since we are just starting K I thought I would post what we are doing. My daughter LOVES doing paper work. That said I only allow for about an hour a day of seat work since I think that playing is still the most important learning tool right now (she is on the younger side of K) We are doing Explode the Code primers Get Ready for the Code. They are a bit below her but not enough to bore her and its good review and reinforcement of her letter sounds. If your daughter is not needing that then I totally recommend checking out the ETC series. We are supplimenting this with a sight word work book and games. We are doing Horizon math. Again my daughter LOVES doing this or I would not be worried about actual workbooks.
