When my oldest son was four, he was quite bored with the preschool workbooks we were doing, so I decided it was time to start kindergarten work. I decided to design my own curriculum with the help of the book “Home Learning Year by Year: How to Design a Homeschool Curriculum from Preschool Through High School” by Rebecca Rupp to help me know a common scope and sequence for kindergarten. The only thing I purchased was a pack of kindergarten lined paper (the type with the red line on the top, blue line on the bottom, and dotted line in the middle). I called my curriculum “Letter a Week”. Here’s how I did it.
Reading
Monday of every week, I read to my son the corresponding letter book in the “Sound box books” series by Jane Belk Moncure (I don’t own these, I borrowed them from the library). This was a great introduction to the letter sound. We also read throughout the week, books on a minimum of two other topics (usually involving an animal and a sport because these were of interest to my son) for the corresponding letter of the week, such as apples, archery, alligators, and army for “A” week. We often read multiple books on each topic. As he progressed in his phonics skills, I started introducing simple phonics books such as “The Bob Books” series by Bobby Lynn Maslen and “Easy Words to Read” series by Phil Roxbee.
Writing
Every week, I made three handwriting worksheets for my son. I tried both printing them from the computer and making them by hand with kindergarten lined paper and a highlighter. I preferred making them by hand. Each worksheet contained practice for my son’s name (this progressed from just his first name initially to his full name after a few weeks), the lowercase letter of the week (a few to trace and a few to write on his own), the capital letter of the week (again a few to trace and a few to write on his own), either a few simple words that started with the letter of the week or a sight word or review (depending on which day of the week it was), the number of the week (which eventually progressed into writing things like his phone number and address).
Math
I read the corresponding number book of the week in the “My Numbers Books” series by Jane Belk Moncure (also called “My First Steps to Math” series). This was a great way to solidify the concept of each individual number. Of course we did lots of practical application practice as well, like “How many socks are in the laundry basket today?” or “Lets see how high we can count while we wait in the line at the grocery store.” Eventually this progressed into a math concepts such as time, addition, or counting by 2s.
Science
We also related anatomy to our weekly letter. I taught my son every body part I could think of that started with that week’s corresponding letter. For “A” week, I taught him: arm, arm pit, arch (of his foot), abdomen, Adam’s apple, and ankle. Obviously some weeks I just couldn’t come up with anything. I also had a list of science concepts such as the Five Senses, and How a Plant Grows, that I wanted my son to learn throughout the year. I tried to match these up to the letter or in some case, like the Five Senses, to the number of the week. They didn’t all match up perfectly, so I just fit different concepts in on different weeks where I didn’t have a match.
Religion
We also read about a person or more from the Bible that corresponded to the letter of the week. Some weeks like “J” week there were lots of people like Jesus, and John, and Jesse, and so on, other weeks like “F” week, there really weren’t many. I used a good Bible concordance on these weeks.
Multi-sensory learning
My children love pancakes and I make them every week, so each week I made the corresponding letter shaped pancakes and often with a corresponding fruit such as apple “A” shaped pancakes for “A” week. This became their favorite part of the week! I also tried to incorporate into each week an activity or field trip such as making apple pie during “A” week or playing baseball during “B” week. Some weeks we included things like a genre of music that started with the letter of the week, such as Jazz during “J” week. Of course most children love art, so I included weekly art projects (I got ideas from books at the library). Most of these did not line up with the letter of the week, but not everything had to. Each week when we went to the grocery store for our regular grocery trip, I would point out foods that begin with the corresponding letter of the week, such as bananas, beets, and Brussels sprouts for “B” week. I would make sure to have some of these foods on the meal plan during that week. It was an easy way for us to have more variety in our diets and for the kids to get excited about trying new foods. We also did ethnic nights about once a month that corresponded with the letter of the week to teach about other cultures. My favorite was “J” week when we did Japanese night. Our whole family sat at a low table (kids table) on cushions in the living room and I prepared some Japanese cuisine complete with tea and chopsticks. My kids still talk about that night years later.
I repeated this curriculum with my second son when he was three, but did it with less intensity and used it as a preschool curriculum. With my oldest son, I taught the letters out-of-order so they would correspond to holidays or themes I wanted like “T” week during Thanksgiving and “L” week when the leaves were falling and we could do leaf projects. With my second son, I did the letters in order, because it took less planning, though sometimes it was less fun. Both ways worked great and they both learned all their letters and sounds with ease. I had a lot of fun with the curriculum and can’t wait till my younger children are old enough to do it again with them.
Severe Weather Awareness Week caught me a little off guard this year. I didn’t know that it was tornado safety day until I heard the sirens in the middle of nap time. Typically on this day each year I practice a tornado drill with my children and discuss other severe weather situations in detail with each child at his level. This year, three of my four children were sound asleep, so I decided to postpone our drill.
For science this year, we are using Apologia’s “
I don’t know how to teach your child to read. Every child and parent is different. You as the parent know best how to teach your individual child how to read. I will tell you how I taught my son to read at four (I’ve used this same method with my oldest two sons) and hopefully that will give you some ideas how to start teaching your child to read (though not necessarily at four). Don’t worry about doing it the wrong way, there are many different methods of teaching your child to read, some may work better for one person or another, but as far as I know, they all do work. I learned how to read phonetically, whereas my husband learned how to read whole words. You can’t get much more opposite approaches, yet as adults we both know how to read well.
I simple used flat brown cardboard (non-corrugated stuff that I had around the house). I cut out the shapes that I wanted. The first time I did it, I kept it really simple and cut out a big rectangle and a cross. Then I used a paper hole-punch to punch holes, about every inch, around the edges of the cardboard shapes. I considered using yarn, with tape around the ends, for the laces. I decided to use spare shoe strings that I had around the house instead of the yarn, because I felt that the shoe strings would hold up better.
One of the Bible verses my children know is Romans 12:10 “Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another” (NKJV). The words “brotherly love” were nagging at me. I hadn’t been seeing much “brotherly love” in my oldest two boys lately. I was frustrated with their attitudes towards each other. They were fighting and competing with each other a lot. They were even rejoicing in each other’s sufferings. They would try to be first to finish chores in the morning so they could taunt the other one. I know that some of this is male competition, and I don’t mind some competition. It can encourage them to go faster or work harder, but this had gotten out of hand. It was causing fighting and problems. I felt like it was pulling my boys apart. It seemed more like “brotherly war” would have been a better description of their behavior.
So last week, I tried something new, I told them they had to work together to fold the basket of laundry I had just dumped on the bed. And then told them, “Oh yeah, and if I catch either of you not working together, such as not participating in the folding or whining about how the other one isn’t participating, then the boy not working together is going to finish the whole chore by himself.” I then told them that supper was in 30 minutes and that they were not allowed to come out until the laundry was folded and put away. I closed the door and walked away.