Dear Sis,

I start aggressively researching and buying curriculum in January. I usually finish up by April or May, so that we are ready to begin using the next years of school as soon as we complete the previous year. We school all year round, to allow for a more relaxed schedule and better information retention. Much of my inspiration came from Timberdoodle again this year, but I’ve included source information beside specific each item.

Kindergarten

Art

1. Animal Postcards painting set by Aquarellum (Timberdoodle)
2. Art Lab for Little Kids by Susan Schwake (Torchlight)
3. Bug Scratch Boards art kit by Deco (Timberdoodle)
4. Preschool Paper Crafts by Stefania Luca
5. Paper Crafts for Kids by Stefania Luca

We find that art is an easy subject to accomplish with very little actual curriculum. We use a lot of craft kits form Dollar Tree and Michaels! Also, many of the projects form our Kiwi Crates also falls into the category of art.

William enjoys looking at Timberdoodle’s curriculum catalogue as much as I do. He was excited about the painting and scratch art kit, so we added them to our order.

When we feel like having a formal art class we use Art Lab for Little Kids. We finished about a quarter of the 52 projects in our Pre-K year, so there is still plenty of use left in the book for our Kindergarten year!

Although William’s cutting, pasting, and folding have greatly improved over the past two year, I still feel that continued practice is needed. The two paper craft books listed above, contain 25 projects each! 

Bible Study

It took me three attempts during our Pre-K year to find the perfect study bible. I still haven’t found the perfect one for our Kindergarten year. Honestly, I might just reuse the one from last year: Read and Learn Bible: Stories form the Old and New Testaments by Scholastic.

Character and Emotional Development

1. The Adventures of Mali & Keela: A Virtues Book for Children by Jonathan Collins (Torchlight)
2. Chicken Soup for the Child’s Soul: Character-Building Stories to Read with Kids Ages 5-8 by Jack Canfield and Mark & Patty Hansen
3. Happy Sad Feeling Mad by Yasmeen Ismail (Timberdoodle)
4. What Should Danny Do? by Ganit & Adir Levy

The past two school years we focused on learning about different kinds of emotions and how to manage them appropriately. This year, I would like our “emotional intelligence” to take on exploration of character as well. All of these books are new to myself and William, we’ll see how it goes:)

We enjoyed What’s Going On Here? conversation cards by eeboo so much, we may order a different set, for Kindergarten too.

Foreign Language

1. Mis Primeras 1000 Palabras by Betty Root and Kate Naylor

April 22nd update: Today we stopped at Half Price Books. We found this book of Spanish vocabulary. The way things are trending, I expect that by the time William is grown, Spanish will be as common place as English in the United States, so I plan to learn it with him over the years. With any luck we will all be bilingual in the end:)

Geography

1. A Year Full of Stories: 52 Folktales and Legends from Around the World by Angela McAllister (Build Your Library)
2. Cooking Class: Global Feast by Deanna F. Cook (Build Your Library)
3. Greetings from Somewhere ten book series by Paris Harper (Torchlight)
4. Flags Around the World Ultimate Sticker Book by DK (Build Your Library)
5. World Atlas by National Geographic Kids

These books are scheduled in a compilation call Global Greeting Geography. I put many weeks into developing a solid geography curriculum for the early years, since every curriculum we’ve tried so far falls short. Even little ones need geography, so they can learn to love it! 

If you are looking for a less rigorous, but equally indepth geography program for young children, check out our Geography for Little People which we are currently using in our Pre-K year.

Health and Fitness

1. Learning About My Body, K-1 by Evan-Moor (Activity Book)
2. The Human Body, K-2 24 Full-Color Picture Cards by Evan-Moor (Text Book)
3. Weekly Swim Lessons

William is so interested in science! Health falls into that umbrella for him, so I wanted an in-depth look at different body systems with a lot of hands-on activities. These books are designed for a classroom, but I think they will work nicely in our home school as well. I’m not sure if we will finish it this year, or if we will do half this year, and half in first grade. Time will tell.

We started weekly swim lessons during our Pre-K year, and we will keep using them until he can actually swim independently. We may also add a homeschool gym class offered through our YMCA, still waiting to hear back about that:)

History

1. A Child Through Time: The Book of Children’s History by DK
2. Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osborne

History is another hard subject in the early years. The second half of this year we began reading the Magic Tree House series starting back at book one, Dinosaurs Before Dark. We use the fun piece of fiction as a spring board for research. William selects three pieces of non-fiction from the local library, and I throw in a hands-on project to go with it. There are so many Magic Tree House books we are at no risk of running out of material before the completion of Kindergarten!

Language

We loved the ShillerLearning Math 1 by Shiller Learning so much in Pre-K, we also purchased their language program, ShillerLearning Language Arts A. We like it, but it too repetitive to call it love in the long term!

I also purchased Foundations A by Logic of English last year, so we could use components of it our Pre-K year, and the main curriculum in Kindergarten. I’m not sure I love the idea now, but I feel like we have to try it before we move onto something else…

The second half of our Pre-K year we started Get Ready for the Code from the Explode the Code series. It has really added to our language lessons, since we were getting board with our Shiller Language A routine. I plan to get him the next workbooks in the series when we finish!

I will probably also purchase some of the items from this earlier post for another homeschooling mama: Teaching Reading at Home.

Math

1. Clumsy Thief Jr. card game by Melon Rind for practicing adding to ten (Timberdoodle, last year)
2. Jump 1 card game by Melon Rind for practicing addition and subtraction (Timberdoodle)
3. Mathematical Reasoning A by Critical Thinking Co.
4. ShillerLearning Math 1 by ShillerLearning

We love game schooling as much as possible, so we snatched up these two game suggestions from Timberdoodle. 

We love ShillerMath 1 so much! I can’t say enough good things about now this Montessori program takes abstract math concepts and find creative concrete ways for me to introduce them to William.

We also love the Mathematical Reasoning series. We’ve used it for the past two school years. It’s a marvelous workbook that we use as practice work!

I also have a stash of things saved for learning to tell time and counting money, but I’m not sure it we will get to that this year or next:

1. My Book of Easy Telling Time by Kumon, for learning hours and half-hours (Timberdoodle)
2. My First Book of Money: Counting Coins by Kumon (Timberdoodle)
3. Play Money Set by Melissa and Doug
4. Time Activity Set by Learning Resources

Music

1. Piano Lessons
2. The Story of the Orchestra by Robert Levine

Last year I created Music Appreciation for at home music study. This spring we also added weekly piano lessons, which we plan to stick with for our Kindergarten year.

April 22nd update: Today we stopped at Half Price Books. We found this book that includes a CD with 37 listening samples that go with the text portions!

Science

1. Learning About Animals by Evan-Moor
2. Learning About the Earth by Evan-Moor
3. Learning About Plants by Evan-Moor
4. Learning About Weather by Evan-Moor 
5. The Usborne Big Book of Experiments by Alastair Smith

Science is William’s favorite subject! These books are designed for a classroom, but I think they will work nicely in our home school as well. I’m not sure if we will finish it this year, or if we will do half this year, and half in first grade. Time will tell.

Additionally, we have a Kiwi Crate subscription that supplements this subject nicely! If you haven’t tried them yet… you should:)

Sewing

We started hand sewing pre-punched felt projects in our Pre-K year and we will continue to do so in Kindergarten. Most of our kits are from Michaels. 

Sewing is one of my many hobbies that the kids see me working on all the time, so they are naturally curious and eager to try it themselves. We find that it has really helped built patience and fine motor skills too!

Thinking Skills

1. Apple Twist logic game by Smart Games (Timberdoodle)
2. Can You Find Me? K-1 by Critical Thinking Co.
3. Gobblet Gobblers game, tic tack toe with a twist by Blue Orange Games (Timberdoodle)
4. Mind Benders, Level 1 by Critical Thinking Co.
5. Smart Farmer logic game by Smart Games (Timberdoodle)
6. Story Time Chess (Timberdoodle)
7. ThinkPlay STEM Jr. Xtra by Morphun (Timberdoodle)
8. Thinking Skills K by Kumon (Timberdoodle)

William absolutely loves logic games! He usually finishes them early and we purchase an extra one so we can do some all year long. He is very excited about Apple Twist and Smart Farmer:)

Gobblet Gobblers and Story Time Chess are games we will play together. My husband has been giving William chess lessons off and on for the last several months. I think William will really excel once we start Story Time Chess. We’ll bring it to his fun loving level!

The ThinkPlay building set is from our Pre-K year. We were supposed to build two-three models each week, but we cut it back to one, so we have plenty of models to continue building in our Kindergarten year.

Happy Homeschooling!

Love,

b

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Other Curriculum Inspiration by Grade:

Preschool

Pre-Kindergarten