My son, Beau, will be starting kindergarten this fall. He went to preschool two days a week last year, made some great friends, and experienced some of the structure and systems of a mainstream classroom. I liked having input about his growth and development from a “third party-” his preschool teacher. Especially if you plan to homeschool, it’s nice to get objective feedback, if only for preschool! I am excited to homeschool him this upcoming fall, along with my older son and daughter, who will be in 5th grade and 3rd grade, respectively.

Kindergarten Homeschool Curriculum

Here is what I am using for kindergarten homeschool this school year:

Kindergarten Reading & Writing

All About Reading, Level 1: I actually did a “soft start” with this last spring. Beau knew his letter names and sounds, and was doing basic blending and some writing. Since the interest was there, we went through the first book together and many of the games. For the book, we traded off pages to read.

This fall, we will start fresh from the beginning. I am excited; I really love this program! We call it “Spidey Reading” because Beau loves Spiderman, so I made a little personalized chart with spiderwebs on it, and he uses stickers to cover up the webs as we complete the lessons.

Five In A Row, Volumes 1-3: This year, I will repeat some favorites from Five In A Row, and also select some new picture books to “row” with my kids. Five In A Row was an impulse purchase for me on Facebook Marketplace, years ago. I saw volume 1 for sale for $7, quickly googled it, and took a chance. It has become a foundational part of our homeschool.

(You may have seen my last blogpost, about how repeating themes and lessons in my homeschool is the ultimate hack–if you missed it, you can read more, here.)

Simple writing prompts with word bank: I bought this leveled set of writing prompts from Teachers Pay Teachers, and have used them with multiple kids! There are so many prompts, with cute illustrations, a variety of “line options,” and a word bank! Beau does this a few times a week, and his goal is five sentences. I love the reminders on the bottom to use a period, capital letter, and finger spacing. These are the best!

If you’re not familiar, Five In A Row is a Charlotte-Mason style curriculum that takes high-quality picture books, and has you read them five days in a row (hence the name). Each day, you glean new tidbits from the book, and do activities based on what you are learning. There are discussion questions, crafts, cooking projects, drawing projects, and other activities. Each book study incorporates themes of math, science, geography, history, art, music, or whatever else may be applicable to that story.

Because of our use of Five In A Row in recent years, even when Beau was small, he listened to me read these stories to his older siblings! When he was three, he often talked about “China and the Yangtze River,” because those places are mentioned The Story About Ping (one of our favorite Five In A Row selections).

Kindergarten Routines & Handwriting

I am excited to dive into kindergarten curriculum with Beau this fall, partially because, I used to teach kindergarten! I have a few vintage favorites I’ll do with him, including this Sing-Spell-Read & Write Song I actually learned as a kindergartener, myself!

The song is definitely vintage–it isn’t on Spotify, but I did find a YouTube listing with the audio! It’s a catchy rhyming song for the letter sounds. I have a feeling even my two-year-old will be trying to sing along this year!

I love making my own Spotify playlists and SafeShare playlists, with songs and videos I curate. Music is such a powerful learning tool, that I try to incorporate it however I can. I make a playlist each school year for our family, and also make playlist for the Co-Op classes I teach.

When I think back to my kindergarten classroom, music was a huge part of it! I also had morning routines like calendar, weather, and simple tasks with the group all together.

I plan on implementing the “Morning Meeting” with my own kids, this year. This is common in homeschool families (also called “Morning Basket,” as many of you know). I’m hoping to do a morning message, calendar, a few songs, and read aloud from Scripture or a theology-related kids book. I think a morning routine will really help set the tone for our homeschool day. I haven’t successfully implemented this before, so we’ll see how it goes! 🙂

For Kindergarten Handwriting, I will be using this Handwriting Without Tears book. He is pretty young, and his hands are still pudgy and little 🙂 but this curriculum is gentle. I don’t know that a lot of the concepts will stick this year, but he loves to write, so I figured I would at least try to enforce a few basic postural and grip concepts since he writes almost daily, anyway!

Kindergarten Math Curriculum

For Beau’s Kindergarten Math this year, I will use Singapore! I started with Singapore Math when we began homeschooling four years ago, and we have been with happy with it. When my kids are little, I try to include as many manipulatives, movement, games and even songs, as possible with math. I also try to include as much real-world experience as possible. This includes things like:

• Getting change (quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies if available) from the bank, to be able to touch and feel and use for simple addition and subtraction
• Getting one of these clocks (large or small versions) so that Beau can manipulate the large and small hands himself, to make different times when we cover that!
• Counting teddies are so cute, colorful and multi-purpose. I love using them for sorting, patterning, colors, addition and subtraction! If you don’t want to invest in these, I also have those gem jar-fillers from the Dollar Tree (they look like this).

Kindergarten Math Spotify Playlist

Last year, I taught a Mini Mathematicians Class for PK-K kids at our Co-Op. I made a Spotify playlist to share with parents, so that the kids could listen to our fun math songs, at home during the week. Here are some of my favorites:

• Numbers 1-20 Song, by The Singing Walrus
• Count to 100 Song, by The Singing Walrus
• Count by 10’s, by Jack Hartmann
• Days of the Week, by Dr. Jean Feldman
• Months of the Year, by Dr. Jean Feldman
• The Ants Go Marching, By Lah-Lah
• Skip Counting by 2’s, by The Kimboomers
• The Party Freeze Song, by The Kiboombers (great listening activity for full group!)
• Five Little Speckled Frogs, by Super Simple Songs
• Follow me Around the Clock, by The Kiboomers
• Match my Clock, by Jack Hartmann
• One Plus One, by The Melobies

I plan to do these songs with Beau (and my two-year old daughter, too!) during a little Morning Meeting each day. We will see how long they last, but I hope to build their stamina up to about 20 minutes. It’s great way to start out the day. I make sure to do all the actions with songs, too!

Kindergarten Spanish Curriculum

So, I used to teaching Spanish Immersion kindergarten. I still have binders and binders filled with Spanish Kindergarten materials. I don’t run my homeschool in Spanish immersion (though I wish I could!) and with so many subjects and grade levels going on, the Spanish instruction has been much less than I had planned to do with my kids (you can read about my Spanish background, here).

I am looking at Llamitas Preschool Binder, for Beau. I will definitely order Level 1 and Level 3 for my older two kids, but I am hemming and hawing about the preshcool binder for Beau. With my youngest, Violet, being only two, I know that her spunkiness is going to impede a lot of our school day! I need to be strategic about what types of subjects I plan, when. Even if I don’t do a formal Spanish curriculum with him this year, I will speak as much Spanish as I can with him at home, use our Spanish playlists, and read aloud to him in Spanish.

Other Kindergarten Homeschool Curriculum

Besides the core subjects of reading, writing and math for Beau, he will pick up a lot from sitting in on my History and Science lessons with his older siblings. We are doing Apologia’s Zoology this year, and I know he will absolutely love studying animals of all types.

He also loves the Art for Kids Hub drawing videos, which I love to preload and prepare ahead of time using SafeShare. That way I can set him up at the kitchen table while I make dinner, and not worry about weird ads popping up. I love being able to look up any animal, and be able to find a drawing video for him! This will be a fun supplemental activity especially in winter months, when we cannot observe as many animals outside, and/or enjoy the zoo quite as much.

A big part of the kindergarten experience is just that–experiential! I am working on a spreadsheet now of fun field trips we can do this year. I am hoping to go on many with our co-op, and also invest in a park pass for our home state.

It’s so hard to fit everything in! With homeschool, there is certainly never a dull moment. Stay tuned next week for a curriculum post for my third grader, Emmaline, and my fifth grader, Graham!

With love,

Cait