Last year, my son came home from preschool at the age of 4 begging me to teach him to read. He’s always been a smart kid and has always LOVED books but something had flipped in him and he was ready….I was not. I wasn’t prepared for him to be ready, we were getting ready to have baby #3 and I wasn’t in the mindset, however he was eager, so I began my search for the best place to start.
During this search, I came across numerous homeschoolers and homeschool curriculum and at the same time, God started showing my husband and I that Homeschooling was going to be the best option for us.
Fast forward to the summer and we had tried a reading program but it wasn’t clicking in his young brain. When I look back at it now, he just wasn’t quiet ready for the program I selected but it gave us a good start. We slowly worked our way through All About Reading and started Horizons Math. He looked forward to doing school but I was preoccupied with a newborn and had postpartum depression so my focus just wasn’t there. We had decided at the end of the school year that it was best to send our Hippo to his preschool for one more year, and while looking back I’m not sure I would make that decision again, it was what we needed to do in our season. During that time, we continued our reading practice with him, dropped the All About Reading program for the most part and switched to Bob Books and the All About Reading 1 Readers as our source of reading practice. We continued with Horizons Math K here and there and by the end of his Junior Kindergarten year, we are at about a half-way through Kindergarten level. He has most of the kinder skills but needs some work on a few things.
Our goal for this year, is to go back and make sure that concepts are solidly there before we jump ahead to 1st grade material. There are the programs we are using to do just that.
Language Arts:
We have decided to go with IEW PAL: Primary Arts of Language for our Kindergarten Language Arts program. It is an all encompassing program that works on the 4 areas of LA: Reading, Writing (and Penmanship), Spelling and Speaking/memory. The program is a K-2 program and can be used with kids in all areas of this age level. The beginning stages of the program will be easy and will be review for the Hippo, however, we want to make sure concepts are solidly in place before we move ahead. We also, want to start from the beginning with this so he learns the concepts in the order they do it. You can watch my Unboxing here:
Math:
For Math this year, we have decided to go with RightStart Math Level A. This program teaches Math in a different method and is a manipulative and game based program. It is teacher intensive but we are really looking forward to it.
We have also decided to use Math Lessons for a Living Education 1 as a supplemental application based program. This isn’t something we will spend lots of time on but something that is just a little different or to use during our breaks.
Additional Stuff:
For some independent work time, we have picked up a variety of things for him to do.
