Our Relaxed Kindergarten Homeschool Curriculum

This year, I’m charting some new territory in our homeschool. Ms. Bookworm will be starting high school, Ms. Manners will be starting middle school and Mr. Bear will begin kindergarten. These days that seem so long are flying by me faster than I can keep up with!

But we aren’t here to talk about kids growing up. Instead, I wanted to share our kindergarten homeschool curriculum with you.

First of all, Bear has spent the last 2 years attending Head Start. If there’s a Head Start near you, I highly, highly, highly recommend it! They don’t focus on academics nearly as much as they do life skills. Imagine my surprise when my rowdy boy set the table all by himself while saying the Pledge of Allegiance! If all public schools were like Head Start, my kids would probably attend through high school!

I’m a huge believer in childhood play. I believe we’ve rushed kids to grow up too quickly and removed the vital parts of whimsy to childhood. Instead of playing with sticks, kids play with iPads. Instead of pretending, they are forced into organized play-dates. The young years are so important for kids to just enjoy a relaxed childhood.

With that being said, I’m actually going to be starting Bear out with more structure than I would like. Why? Well, because with the structure of Head Start, he has really flourished. He enjoys learning as they do, through play, stories and games.

I’m going to be the first to admit that I have absolutely no idea what the heck I’m going to do this year. I’ve never homeschooled kindergarten and I’ve never homeschooled a boy, let alone, a wild, rambunctious ball of energy like Bear. It is going to be a huge adjustment for the whole family, but I think we’ll survive. (I’m hopeful, at least.) 😉

Our Kindergarten Homeschool Curriculum Choices

Speech Therapy:

Bear has some pretty severe speech issues. He’s been attending speech therapy through our local school district since he was 3 and is still working hard to get his pronunciations right. We recently discovered that he has negative pressure behind his eardrums, causing him to hear like his head is underwater. Now that we {finally} have a better idea of why his speech is slurred, we will spend most of the year working hard to help him improve his speech.

While we will continue speech therapy through our local school district, we will also be working hard at home. The biggest thing we plan to do is utilize Rapid Speech Therapy. It’s a program designed to work WITH parents to help kiddos improve their speech abilities. One of my biggest complaints about speech therapy is that there is not much I can do to help him, as the speech therapists don’t want me to undo any of their progress. Rapid Speech Therapy is done from the comfort of your home and allows parents to learn the best ways to work with their child. They understand that kids spend most of their time with their families and it takes both a licensed speech-language pathologist and the family, working together, to see results quickly.

General Learning:

I spent a lot of time debating whether or not I should invest in a full curriculum for my kindergartner. After all, I don’t plan to sit down with him and “do school” daily. But I know that he loves to join his big sisters around the table while they are learning, so I’d like to have something around, to let him actually learn, instead of just pester everyone. I narrowed it down to 2 choices: Kindergarten Complete or The Good and The Beautiful. I knew he would love both. Kindergarten Complete uses unit studies to introduce each topic, while The Good and The Beautiful has gorgeous pages upon pages of relaxed learning. I ultimately decided on The Good and The Beautiful, strictly because it is likely the curriculum we will use with him for years to come and it’s much more affordable.

The Good and The Beautiful covers a variety of subjects, including:

Phonics & Reading
Grammar & Punctuation
Literature
Spelling
Spelling

He will also likely hang out during his sisters’ history and science lessons, as well.

Reinforce Reading:

We will spend a lot of time reading books, following along with our fingers to help Bear with his reading. There are a few other programs we’ll have on-hand, ready for him to learn when he wishes:

Reading Eggs: Technology isn’t always bad. We will be enforcing a “Tech-free” zone during the day but Bear will be allowed to explore and “play” on Reading Eggs, as much as he wants. (Don’t tell him it’s educational, though!) 😉
Explode the Code: We used these with Miss Manners and I truly believe they were the reason she learned to read so quickly. They are old-school, but really help kids learn the rules to reading, as well as sounds.
Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons: This book is a bit more rigorous than I would normally suggest for kindergarten but I picked it up for super cheap and after flipping through it, decided it would be beneficial to keep around, just in case we need it.

Math:

I’ve decided to forgo The Good and The Beatiful math and just use Math Seeds. It’s a computer-based learning site that is included with our Reading Eggs subscription. It will pair perfectly with the real-life math we’ll be doing, without a curriculum.

Educational Play:

I’m a huge lover of educational play. Over the years, we’ve stocked our home with fun and educational toys and games for our kids to play with. Now, we have so many, we forget to use many of them! To help with this, I’ve created a master list of toys that will inspire Bear when he gets bored. If you’re a boy-mom, you know that boys can turn into tornados quickly, when allowed to get too bored. Some of our favorite activities to keep him easy-going include:

Legos
Play-Doh
Stamps
Sticker Books
Magnets
Do-Dot
Zoob
Pattern Blocks
K’nex
Felt Story Boards
Tub of Water with spoons, cups and whisks
Marble Run
Magnetic Blocks
Musical Instruments

Each day, I will encourage Bear to play outdoors in his rock garden, his clubhouse and on his bike. With 5 acres to roam around, he will continue to spend a LOT of time outdoors. If (and when) he gets bored and wants to join in on school work with the rest of the family, we’ll pull out some of the kindergarten homeschool curriculum and let him work until he loses interest.