Tag Archives: how to homeschool a kindergartner

Homeschool

A wooden duck, a weepy Mommy and some pachyderm communication

3 Comments

Our “Five in a Row” book this week was “Daniel’s Duck” by Clyde Robert Bulla. It’s a nice little story about a little boy who lives in the mountains and wants to learn woodcarving. It ends sort of abruptly, and Poppy wasn’t thrilled about that. She wanted to know what happened next, so we spent a little time on Monday imagining what might have happened after the book’s end.home/school In other “FIAR” news, we talked about how artists do what they do and about why the days are shorter in winter.

Poppy finished her handwriting book before Thanksgiving, so we’ve started doing copywork. I made several sheets for her to work on at the Zaner-Bloser web site. This week, I used lines from “Autumn Fires,” a list of our family members’ names, a quote from “Toy Story” and a line from one of her favorite songs. So far, she’s been excited in the mornings to see what the copywork sheet will be. She also memorized “Eletelphony” by Laura E. Richards this week (it’s a silly little poem), and we started reading “Betsy-Tacy” by Maud Hart Lovelace. I’d never read it before — in fact, I hadn’t ever heard of it until I was looking for chapter books for Poppy and I to read together. We read Chapter 8 on Friday, and I don’t want to hand out any spoilers here, but: I cried. On the bright side, I’ve now steeled myself against any more surprises in Lovelace’s cruel world.

What to know what other homeschoolers are doing? Here’s the Weekly Wrap-Up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. I’m linking up there, and lots of other homeschoolers have, too.

Homeschool

Our three Rs are a bit unbalanced

4 Comments

home/schoolWhen we were first planning our kindergarten year, I suspected that I’d need some kind of curriculum to keep me on task on science and math. That has most definitely proved to be the case. We’ve been heavy on the reading, writing and arts lately, but we haven’t done much formal study on math or science at all. That’s not to say we’re not doing anything, but it’s definitely been more casual and kind of “Hey look! It’s a math application!” than I’d hoped to do.

So that’s what we haven’t been doing. Here’s what we have done lately. (As in this week.)

Our “Five in a Row” book this week was “The Finest Horse in Town.” It’s about a pair of sisters at the turn of the century who own (you guessed it) a really fabulous horse. The narrator is the great-niece of the sisters, and the story is a combination of the memories of someone who knew the sisters and the narrator’s imaginings of what might have happened. We talked a bit about life at the turn of the century, watercolor paintings and how the leaves change color in autumn. We’re also working on writing and illustrating a similar story based on a story Rockford’s grandfather has told us of his childhood.

In Health, we’ve finally gotten to the interior. Poppy learned about the circulation system and the heart this week, and we also talked a little bit about the lungs. This is the stuff she wanted to learn about, so she was pretty excited. She’s been talking about her veins all week.

We’ve been reading “The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter” for the last few weeks, and we’ll finally finish it this afternoon. Poppy also finished her first BookIt challenge last week; she read “Mercy Watson: Princess in Disguise” out loud to me. I was surprised by how easily she got through it, but I’m thinking she may have memorized part of it. She’s listened to the story on CD before, and she memorizes things really easily. Next month’s book will be something she hasn’t heard before, so that’ll give me a better idea of how well she’s reading.

Speaking of memorization: Poppy has been memorizing poems like nobody’s business. I started with some pretty short poems so she wouldn’t get discouraged and want to quit if she had a hard time with it. But I think she could memorize “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” with little problem. This week was the first one she didn’t have down cold after the first day, and it still only took her until Wednesday to recite it without help. I’m so glad she inherited Rockford’s memory instead of mine! Here’s what she’s memorized thus far:

  • “Fly Away, Fly Away Over the Sea” by Christina Rosetti
  • “The Purple Cow” by Gellett Burgess
  • “There Was a Little Girl” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
  • “A Leaf” by Aileen Fisher
  • “Autumn Fires” by Robert Louis Stevenson

    About that science/math thing: I’m looking at Nancy Larson for science and RightStart for math. They’re both pricey, though, so it’ll be January at the very earliest before we can get either one. Have you used either program? Or is there another math/science curriculum you’ve loved?