We are starting school a month later than I had anticipated. Last month we ended up having 15 medical appointments, then our baby threw up blood, (thankfully it was just gastritis. She is fine now) had strep throat, and a bad fall off the step stool in the bathroom. We have been doing school for a couple of weeks, so I wanted to let you know what our plan is for school this year.

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Pre-K Curriculum

Background

B can technically be in Kindergarten since he turned 5 this summer, but we decided to let him do the pre-k program at his preschool. It is three mornings a week, so we will do homeschool at least two days a week.

T is 3 so he is still in the preschool program. Through a weird quirk of preschool class planning, I was unable to put my kids in on the same days at the same time. This means that every day one of the kids will be at preschool/pre-k.

At first, I was a little annoyed by this unplanned schedule change. I wasn’t looking forward to driving to preschool 5 days a week. But now I am really excited about it. I am finding that it is easier to homeschool each child if I have some mostly one-on-one time (plus baby) with them. I also hope that I will be able to develop a closer relationship with each child since we will have lots more one-on-one time.

Last year when T (3) started being interested in doing school it was somewhat difficult to do activities with both kids at the same time. They didn’t want to do it separately, and when T would decide he was done B would have a big fit about still having work to do, even though it seriously only took about 30-40 minutes to get through everything.

Last Year

For B’s preschool last year we just worked on reading, writing, and math. In The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer, she talks about the importance of teaching reading and writing first. Every other subject requires reading and writing skills. If your child struggles with either one of those, they will struggle with every other subject.

This Year

For pre-k this year we will be continuing with reading, writing, and math. We took a break from school in August (and most of September) so I expect that we will need to have a bit of a review, especially in reading. We are also going to be doing music, and possibly French, although I haven’t added that in yet.

Writing

For writing last year B used the Kumon book My First Book of Uppercase Letters. This year we started the Kumon book My First Book of Lowercase Letters. I like these books because they are a very easy introduction to letters. Letters are grouped by similarity instead of alphabetical order.

The uppercase book starts by having the child trace lines that are used in making upcoming letters. So it starts out making straight vertical and horizontal lines. Then you learn how to make capital L, T, H, I, F & E.

The lowercase book groups letters by shape families as well. After you learn to make each letter you then practice writing it by tracing the first letter of words that start with that letter. So for l, you would trace the l in lion, lemon, leg, and lamp. Each word is on the page twice, along with a picture of that word.

Music

Recorder

B really wants to learn the recorder. At first, I was going to look for online lessons, but I didn’t see anything that looked like it would work really well right off the bat. I picked up the Complete Children’s Recorder Method book Complete Children’s Recorder Method and so far we are all loving it.

I also bought a couple of inexpensive recorders. Mine and B’s are opaque, while T’s is transparent. Just something to keep in mind, transparent recorders show a lot of spit. It’s kind of gross. Definitely get an opaque one.

The Complete Children’s Recorder Method has a link inside where you can listen to each song and play along with the music. Instead of starting out playing songs, you learn one note and play a couple of songs using just one note. You do the same thing with the next note, and then you play some songs with the notes together in the same song. The whole book is like this, and compared to learning Twinkle Twinkle Little Star or Hot Cross Buns first, I think it is a much more effective way to learn an instrument.

Piano

I started teaching B to play the piano. I am not going to start piano with T yet, mostly because his hands aren’t big enough. However, I may change my mind on that depending on how the program goes with B. We are using the Music for Little Mozarts program Music for Little Mozarts. 

Math

For math, we are finishing our addition workbook from the dollar store. I added a number line to show him how to count on (if the problem is 2 +3, instead of counting 1,2,3,4,5, you start at 2 and then count 3, 4, 5 on the number line) when he does addition and it has been a huge hit!

I also purchased the complete set of Miquon Math. It is a three-year program, but it is intended as a supplement, not as a complete program. The program also has a First Grade Diary that has ideas and games that were used in the test classroom by Lore Rasmussen. Miquon Math also has a Notes to Teachers book on the philosophy behind the Miquon Math. A must-have is for the Miquon Math program is the Miquon Lab Sheet Annotations which has all of the worksheets in reduced size, and instructions for using each worksheet. We haven’t started using this yet, but I plan on starting it in the next few weeks.

Reading

For reading, we will continue to use our Hooked On Phonics program, along with Bob Books.

Other

We are also using a Brain Quest First Grade Workbook. We usually do 1 or 2 pages a day. I really like this workbook because it has a wide variety of subjects to go through. About 1/3 is above B’s level, so we are going to go through those parts slowly.

I hope you enjoyed seeing what we have planned for this year. I will keep you updated about how our homeschooling is going throughout the year.