Kindergarten Days

I can't believe it. I have been looking forward to the day we would "officially" homeschool our children for years. That day is almost here. We have been counting down, with much excitement, on a white board I bought for our school corner. This morning it says, "1 day until school begins." 1 day! How did we get here? How could it have come so soon? I know. It has come with day after day of living, loving and lots of "unofficial" homeschooling.

As Monday approaches, we all look forward to this new beginning. I am excited all on my own (Brian has always teased me that I was so excited to homeschool that I was just going to rip some child off the school bus one afternoon and start homeschooling THEM). But I am also excited because Jacob is excited. He knows, too, there is a lovely globe hiding somewhere in this house - the globe he so ardently requested for his first day of school. Honestly, I can't wait to break it out, either.

As for our plans for Kindergarten, we are the choices we have made will work well for Jacob, but then that is the beauty of homeschooling - we can change it if it isn't. We plan to do school at home 4 days a week (M-Th) and then we will attend a wonderful co-op on Fridays from 9-12. Hopefully we will be able to complete most of our school work in the mornings before lunch, but I know that will have to be flexible at times. If anything I can work with Jacob in the afternoons while the other 2 are napping/resting. Of course that just so happens to be my rest time too. :) As for errands (hopefully not many) and extracurricular activities, I have tried to schedule most of these for after 3:30 or so in the afternoons. We have been doing that for a while now anyway and it seems to work really well. Things like minor shopping, weekly library visit, ballet and, soon, horseback riding for Jacob. We also have a weekly park day with our local Catholic homeschool support group. I do grocery shopping Monday nights after the kids are in bed (with my best buddy) and that is both an outing for mommy and a help to limiting our need to shop during the day. I have come up with a basic daily structure, which we already kind of do, but hopefully this will aid me in keeping on task. One thing I will have to do is turn off the computer during the day (after an early morning check) so that I will not be distracted. I hope all this works - again, we can always adjust if need be.

As for curriculum, we have made the following choices.

* I am using as a base the Kindergarten Syllabus from Laura Berquist's Designing Your Own Classical Curriculum. I really love this as the grades progress and will probably use more of her suggestions each year. This year I have taken only the parts on poetry memorization, art appreciation (using Child Size Masterpieces), and Religion (mostly Bible reading and narration/illustration). My philosophy thus far, I believe, tends toward a mix of Charlotte Mason and Classical. I love them both and I do believe they can both be combined.

*Math: The suggestions in the above-mentioned syllabus were a bit too basic for Jacob and we had already completed the workbooks she suggested. We went ahead and chose a complete Math curriculum for Kindergarten. There are many out there that homschoolers love, but in the end we decided on Horizons Math by Alpha Omega Publishers. I really like how it is put together and look forward to using it.

*Phonics/Reading: I began teaching Jacob to read back in January. He so wanted to learn and we began, knowing that if he really wasn't ready we would stop and wait. He was ready. I began using the Alphaphonics book and he took off. I am not sure at what level he is reading, but let me just say I am pleased with his progress. We will finish Alphaphonics, while at the same time working through some phonics workbooks (MCP Plaid phonics and Explode the Code). He can get lots of practice reading out loud from some Catholic readers I bought and some from the library. And lots of mom reading aloud to them, as usual.

*Handwriting: Pure and simple – D'Nealian Manuscript. I learned it. I like it. I am using it. For copy work Jacob is going to slowly work on copying some Litanies.

*Science: I wasn't sure what to do with science. I didn't want to get too over our heads in curriculum, but I also felt like I couldn't count on myself to come up with occasional science lessons that were meaningful and fun. Jacob (and Nicole) love science and nature, so I chose some premade science lesson plans for us to work from. I bought the Kindergarten Sonlight Science Teacher Guide on ebay for cheap and we will work our way through that. We know it is not the end of the world if we don't do it perfectly everyday, all year long. I just like the idea of having something to go off of and it seems to build in lots of reading and experiments. Springboard I hope.

*Religion: As I said above we will be doing narration from the Golden's Children's Bible daily. We will also do a couple of other things weekly. One resource we hope to make great use of is Cay Gibson's book Catholic Mosaic. It is a lovely resource using picture books to celebrate feasts, etc. throughout the Church Year. It is a must have! The other thing we would like to do weekly is the Who Am I? Catechism program. Nicole can work on this too with her age level workbook. I much prefer the Faith and Life series, but they don't have a Kindergarten book. So we'll just switch next year.

Well, I think that is it. It seems like so much all written out, but each daily bit is so little. I think one thing I like about homeschooling is that if something does not work for any one child, we can change it and pick up somewhere else. I hope and pray that I will be an attuned teacher and mom so that I can quickly pinpoint trouble areas if there are any.

Keep us all in your prayers. Tomorrow morning we begin another facet of this “Great Adventure.” Jacob is so excited. And me? Well, I am excited too, but also a little nervous. I know this is only Kindergarten and that thankfully we get to take off slowly, but it is a weighty thought to know that it is for rel now! I will provide pictures and updates on our first day as soon as I can.