Homeschool Kindergarten {Curriculum Choices}

In many ways, my current kindergartener had an “old fashioned kindergarten.” Although he wasn’t forced to take a nap on a mat, he did spend endless hours in open ended, imaginative play, listening to picture books, and painting. I’m proud of the year we had– how much fun we had, how much we explored together, and how much he grew, in ways not easily measured.

I wanted to document the main components of our formal curriculum and outline our rhythm. For so many new homeschoolers, kindergarten feels intimidating, to put it lightly. Homeschooling my first for his kindergarten year felt intense with worry. Was I doing enough? Would this turn out okay? That kindergartener is finishing up his second grade year and can read just about anything you put in front of him, do real-world math in his head, write a formal letter in cursive, and provide you with a brief history of humankind if you have approximately 10 minutes to hear him rattle off a timeline. I say that as encouragement that a slow start grounded in a rich environment of learning WILL bear fruit. This year was my second go-around at kindergarten with a very different child. Many of these elements, however, were the same. Oh, and before we get going: my homeschool should not look like your homeschool 🙂 I do hope this roundup encourages and inspires you on your journey to finding the right mix for your kindergarten year!

This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon affiliate, I earn a small commission from eligible purchases (at no extra cost to you). 

Kindergarten Components

Read read read.

I know you’re not surprised that the librarian lists reading as the primary component of the school year. I just can’t emphasize it enough. If the only thing you do is read, your child will be exposed to literally the world, and you’ll bond in the process. Read widely. Read short, fun books, but also grow your learner’s stamina for longer picture books, then short chapter books, then longer chapter books. But never give up picture books (I used to read them to my middle schoolers!). Rely on audiobooks when you’re in the car and for quiet time. I try to give you the best recommendations through the blog and on my Instagram page. If you need more encouragement about the power of reading, I recommend reading The Read Aloud Family or The Enchanted Hour. You’ll be inspired and have science to back you up! 😉

Learning To Read

Aside from reading widely for pleasure, we followed my learner’s lead regarding learning letters and beginning to read. We read lots of alphabet books and looked for letters around us in the world (here’s a list of Alphabet Books for Older Kids that we enjoyed this year!).

Once I saw he was noticing and attempting to make sense of the letters and sounds, we started a curriculum. (We began a formal curriculum approximately two years later with my second than my first, FYI.) We began with the All About Reading Prereading Program to teach letters and letter sounds. I love their mult-sensory, research based approach, and he enjoyed the games and activities! You can read about our experience with All About Reading here.

After he had a firm foundation, I began All About Reading Level 1, to find that he was stalling out after a few months. He put up so much resistance and the material was not sticking. I pivoted, and we picked up the Dash Into Reading program. It has been a great fit! You can read my full review here. It’s a very simple program– simple to teach and not intimidating for my learner! It’s made up of the sweetest little stories (10 pages each), with each level consisting of 10 books. That’s it! The whole program is tidy and teaches phonics and a progression of sight words. There are optional activity packs to go along with each story. (If you choose to purchase Dash into Reading, be sure to use my coupon code to get 20% off: librarianinthehouse20)

After we gather our confidence in the Dash program, we will circle back to the All About Reading curriculum. I’ve completed all of its levels with my older son and really love how thorough the program is, with all the components of reading and comprehension!

Handwriting

I learned the foundation of teaching letter formation through the Handwriting Without Tears Program with my first. (I was surprised by how much I needed to learn about teaching basic handwriting! I learned a lot from their teacher’s guide, and although they do have different teacher guides at each level I didn’t see a lot of added value beyond the first book personally, once I understood the basics, since I’m not teaching a whole classroom full of kids. Check the homeschool classifieds for used editions of the teacher books. Although editions have changed recently, you should still be able to understand the basics of pedagogy from an older edition.) Pro tip: don’t use fat pencils– a shorter, golf pencil is best! I love their flip crayons and short pencils with erasers! The HWT method of using a small chalkboard with a “wet-dry-try” system is brilliant!

We went through the first two workbooks of their program and then switched to the handwriting book through Dash Into Learning. What drew me to this book was that they’re writing the words they are learning to read in the program, and there are drawing activities to draw the book characters. We keep this to a page a day. Easy peasy. Before my son was ready for a workbook we spent a lot of time strengthening the hands for writing– play dough, playing in the dirt, tracing in a salt tray (salt tray= a little shallow dish, like the wooden boxes Melissa & Doug toys come in, with a layer of salt poured in. They trace letters in the salt with pointer finger).

Math

We adore Right Start Math! My kindergartener has a love of math, and this curriculum has challenged him and given him an amazing foundation. I am consistently impressed by the mental math skills it develops, and how it has helped him understand how numbers work. It’s NOT worksheet based but instead manipulative based, with tons of games. Read my full and super thorough review here which includes a typical lesson overview and lots of links to research.

Nature Study = Science

For as long as my kindergartener can remember, we’ve been following the Exploring Nature With Children curriculum (this is my 4th year!). It’s a year-long curriculum that allows you to dip in and out, as deep or as shallow as you’d like. We’ve done exactly that… in intense/challenging seasons we’ve put it aside and just kept up our lowkey weekly nature walks. In other seasons, we do a deep dive into the weekly topic, reading books and poetry about the topic and completing activities as well. You can read my full review here. It’s a wonderful way to add some gentle structure to your kindergarten science year.

Geography/History

If my kindergartener were my oldest/only, we wouldn’t be formal about these areas. Instead, we would…. you guessed it! Read lots of books. Give Your Child The World is a wonderful resource to guide you in reading books from around the globe, and many titles cover the history of the region.

However, this kindergartener has an older brother and he’s curious, so he’s part of basically everything we do, either officially or eavesdropping in. For geography we study regions following the songs/maps in Kathy Troxel’s geography program. I’ll layer in books and folktales from the region. If there’s an On Mission magazine we pull that in as well (these are faith based, beautiful explorations of a focus country, in magazine format). This is usually as simple as listening to the geography song once a day, and every few weeks I’ll give a quiz (point to the country Pakistan, etc.); once a week or so we’ll read some picture books from the region. I wrote a whole post about how we study geography here.

For history, we’ve been following The Good and the Beautiful and adding in African American History for Kids and Heart and Soul. While the latter picture books are wonderful, I’m not in love with The Good & Beautiful for history. My kids really enjoy their audio component and it gives a decent overview. I’m on the hunt for something new.

Beauty

It’s important to me that we encourage our kids to see beauty in the world around them– whether that’s art appreciation, creation/handicrafts, music, language, or even food. To this end, we enjoy a weekly Poetry Teatime (you can read about how we got started with Poetry Teatime here– my now-kindergartener has been part of Teatime since he was 3) with music layered in the “background” to tune their ears to different styles.

 

We pull components from Rooted Childhood for handicrafts (I love that it’s focused on skills, not just “throw away crafts” that you complete and then don’t know what to do with!); we also enjoy the simple, accessible recipes.

We also layer a lot of beauty into our weekly sabbath mealtime. Each Saturday night through Sunday we shut out all social media, chores, and shopping and focus on family time (the book The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry was hugely influential in our family’s implementing of this practice). The highlight of our sabbath is our meal on Saturday. We make it special by eating with a tablecloth at the dining room table. (I know, fancy, right?) We recite a scripture (the same passage for a month at a time, which ends up being memorized by month’s end); view/discuss an art piece (currently following The Highlands of Galilee from Schoolhouse Grace); and learn a new hymn each month (we follow Happy Hymnody’s Hymn of the Month and simply play it periodically through YouTube). Afterward, we enjoy a family show (we’ve been enjoying the Rock the Park show on YouTube, about the national parks). It’s been so life giving! I count it as part of our homeschool because these are the elements that I value as foundational to our lives.

Free Play and Socialization

My kids enjoy hours upon hours of imaginative play. I value it as the work as childhood. They learn countless skills as they work together to make their play worlds and build ramps and forts. After reading Balanced and Barefoot, I came to guard their time in free, unscheduled play in nature. (That’s in my top 3 of most influential books in my family’s life!) They’re also wildly social, especially for a family of introverts. Our co-ops are hugely important as well. I don’t care as much about what we do at co-op as the relationships we build. They’re vital for kids and for me!

This post is so long, and I fear it looks intimidating…. when it’s all typed out, it just gets lengthy! Rest assured, our formal lessons only last about an hour for the morning (math/reading/writing combined), and an hour in the afternoon for family style lessons. So many parts of our “homeschool day” don’t feel like “school” to my kindergartener. I don’t think he would list eating treats while listening to poetry as SCHOOL 😉

Reminder: My homeschool isn’t your homeschool 🙂 

I’d like to close with a reminder that my homeschool shouldn’t look like your homeschool. These elements have been great fits for my home, and for my particular 5-6 year old boy. The beauty of homeschooling is the FREEDOM we have to design a schooling experience that matches our learners and our teaching styles as well. I hope this post has served as an inspiration and starting point if you’re searching for ideas. Feel free to reach out to me if I can help you in any way!