I know summer is in full swing! We school year round but definitely slow down on curriculum book work in the summer time and focus more on small unit studies and extra-curricular activities the girls are interested in.
I LOVE to shop for the curriculum we plan on using throughout the school year! There are so many great curriculums and choices now, and so many homeschool mama’s that write homeschool curriculum, it can be tough for me to narrow down what we are actually going to use! I tend to over buy on the curriculum and we may not make it through everything and that is okay! I like to be over prepared and use what works best for us! I like to purchase all of my curriculum by May-June so that I can give myself a bit of time to look through it all a bit more in depth and get a game plan together of how and when we will complete each study. I will be sharing a break down of all the curriculum that we will be using this year! If you haven’t checked out my posts on preschool curriculum or family studies for next year, hop over and give them a read! I’m super excited to work through these with my girls!
This coming school year I will have a preschooler, kindergartener, and second grader. Next year will be our fifth year homeschooling! That’s so wild to think! I started schooling my oldest when she was preschool age and we never looked back. We are finally getting our rhythm established with her and I and now incorporating younger siblings. We also have a one year old under foot and needing attention through school time. Watch for future posts on how I organize our day to get school work accomplished with little melt downs and what our daily routines look like ☺️.
So, let’s dive into KINDERGARTEN! I love working through and teaching kindergarten. It was one of my favorite grades I taught when I was in public education! I’m so grateful that I get to teach my girls. I love to keep our curriculum pretty simple and incorporate a lot of playtime. Playtime is so essential to learning at this level! Please don’t feel like your child needs to be doing bookwork for hours everyday because they are school age. This is the beauty of homeschooling!
At this level, I focus on building a strong foundation in phonemic awareness and phonics to become good readers. We also focus on math. Then I like to sprinkle in some science, social studies, and Bible in our family studies. My kindergartener will not complete everything in my family studies but I really love that these studies offer so many activities that I can reach multiple kids at multiple levels.
I don’t like to pile on too much and make learning seem overwhelming. I am trying to cultivate a love of learning, so if she shows interest in specific topics, we will definitely be exploring those more in depth.
Here is all the curriculum my kindergartener will be using or the 2024-2025 school year!
Morning Time
Morning Menu by Arrows and Applesauce
We love to start our lessons out with a little calendar time to start learning dates, days of the week, months of the year, weather, etc. This morning menu is so colorful and inviting while also having everything we could need in one spot. I slip the pages into restaurant menus with a dry erase marker so that they can easily be used daily and hold up well. I’m excited to try these with my girls this year!
Along with the menu, we like to use several fun songs on YouTube to help us remember days or the week/months of the year. Here are a few of our favorite that my girls like to listen to through breakfast time.
Language Arts
The Good and Beautiful Level K Prep and Kindergarten Curriculum
We have been using The Good and the Beautiful curriculum since my oldest started preschool. I love their curriculum because the lessons are not long and drawn out, the books are very inviting, and the lessons require little to no prep. This curriculum has built such a strong foundation for my oldest daughter, I am excited to use this again. We used the preschool book last year and really loved it. There is a big jump between the preschool book and the kindergarten book, so it is important to incorporate the kindergarten prep book to make sure your child has mastered letter names and sounds. It is a shorter book that you can get through easily doing a lesson a day.
Phonics
My older daughter loved the Explode the Code books so we are adding them in again. They are short and simple but add in a little extra daily practice to help boost reading, decoding and spelling skills. We usually just do one page a day unless my girl wants to complete more.
We are also going to add in the 180 Days of Spelling book.
180 Days of Spelling and Word Study Kindergarten
Reading
I taught my oldest to read with these books. Each set focuses on different skills.
Set 1: Beginner Reader
Set 2: Advancing Reading
Set 3: Word Families
Set 4: Complex Words
Set 5: Long Vowels
Along with these books, she will get story skills from reading time with my preschooler during our thematic units. Check out more on thematic units in my preschool curriculum post.
Math
The Good and the Beautiful Level K
We are big fans of The Good and the Beautiful Math courses. They are so colorful and inviting offering fun games to help teach the lessons. The course comes with a box of supplies and manipulative that you will need to complete the course so prep work is very minimal. The lessons are usually very short and my daughter becomes very independent working through them. As we move through the year, I will have her start with the independent page for the lesson and then go back and complete the new skills for that days’ lesson.
Handwriting
When it comes to handwriting, I like to keep it really simple to work on good penmanship and letter/number formation. We are using The Good and Beautiful handwriting books. She will be working through the kindergarten level and if she finishes that one will work through the level 1 book. I typically have the girls complete a page a day during their independent time but they love these books so much they usually end up doing more and working their way pretty quickly through the books. These books are quick and simple. They trace through letters or sentences and there is usually a small activity like dot to dot, mazes, or coloring. My girls really enjoy them!
Science
For science, we will be working through Family Unit Studies. I go more in depth with these studies in our family unit study guide for the next year.
However, we love The Little Hearts and Hands guides from The Good and Beautiful that work wonderful as science guides on their own. I bought the Fields and Flowers and the Winds and Waves guides to go along with our Nature Study and Weather Unit we will be working through as a family!
These guides are perfect for preschool-2nd grade. These guides use videos, stories and hands-on learning activities to introduce science topics to young learners. The stories are videos have done a great job at keeping my girls’ attention. After the lesson, there are follow-up questions and activities recommended to complete with the lesson.
Social Studies
Again, we will be completing more of this subject in our Family Unit Studies. I go into more detail with our units in that blog post. For kindergarten, I always complete Little School of Smith’s Me on a Map unit. I love all of the units we have tried from Little School of Smiths. This unit is an introduction to social studies on teaching the child how they fit into the larger world. It breaks it down into 8 units to learn about their home, street, city, state, country, continent and planet. There are book lists and activities in each unit to help make planning and executing the lessons seamless.
A few extra items we enjoy using along our curriculum!
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Final Thoughts
Kindergarten is still a time where your child is learning so much through play and everyday situations. It’s important to follow their lead to have a smooth successful year. The beauty of homeschooling is that you can absolutely slow down or speed up the curriculum where your child is showing their progress. Treat homeschool as a blessing that you are able to have this time with your child. It does not have to look like a public school setting and in all honestly probably shouldn’t. Have fun, give you and your child grace and you are bound to have a successful year! ❤️