Our Kindergarten Homeschool Plans
This week we kicked off our first-ever year of kindergarten! As we begin our year, I wanted share what our kindergarten homeschool plans are and some initial thoughts on how this year might go. We are all very excited around here to start learning to read, and I think it’s going to be such a fun year full of good books, time outdoors, and learning lots of new things.
Some Background
We decided just a couple weeks ago to have my oldest son start his kindergarten curriculum, and we’re diving in full steam ahead! He is 4.5 years old, which is on the younger side for kindergarten, but we were going through a pre-k curriculum with him and it had just gotten way too easy.
My son seems to be a little advanced academically. He knows all of his letter names and sounds, can add and subtract up to 20, and is beginning to put sounds together to form words. His little brain is constantly trying to figure out new things and he loves the challenge of learning. Because of all this, I started to notice a couple months ago that his pre-k curriculum wasn’t challenging him as much as he really would have liked.
So, when the kindergarten curriculum we’ve been planning on using was on sale, we made the jump and decided to go ahead and start kindergarten with him.
Our Main Curriculum
What kindergarten curriculum are we using? I’m glad you asked. We will be using My Father’s World’s kindergarten curriculum, God’s Creation from A to Z.
This is really an all-in-one curriculum for a complete kindergarten year. It includes everything you need to cover at this age. With that being said, we’ve decided to add a couple of things, but we’ll chat about that in a minute.
What really drew me to God’s Creation from A to Z is the way that it centers around faith. Each unit includes an important character lesson rooted in biblical truth. For example, when learning about zebras, the lesson is “I can’t hide anything from God.”
I also love how straight-forward and comprehensive the reading plan is. I’ve heard really wonderful things about how well this curriculum teaches reading, introducing a new letter each week and slowly building up to reading full words and sentences. I feel fully confident in being able to teach my son how to read because it’s all laid out for me.
And, lastly, I’m a big fan of unit studies. I was homeschooled through 7th grade and the unit studies were my absolute favorite way to learn. So an entire year of unit studies is right up my alley and so much fun!
Math
Now that I’ve shared our primary curriculum, let’s talk about what we’re adding. My Father’s World (MFW) includes math in their kindergarten curriculum; however, I’ve heard that it’s very light. So, for my little math whiz kid, I wanted to add in a math curriculum that I knew would challenge him a little more.
We actually started using Math With Confidence Level K when my son was going through his pre-k curriculum, so the plan is to continue with that. My son loves this curriculum, and he begs to do math because it’s so fun for him.
Math With Confidence is another curriculum we’ve heard really wonderful things about, and so far we’re loving it!
Nature Study
The only other addition to our school year is the nature study curriculum, Exploring Nature with Children (ENWC). Again, this isn’t necessary because MFW includes plenty of outdoor and nature study prompts. But really this is for me.
I made it a goal this year to spend more time outdoors and to begin keeping a nature journal, but I’m really a newbie when it comes to nature. I find the prompts in ENWC to be very helpful in figuring out what to observe on our nature walks together.
One Last Note
If you use My Father’s World or are interested in seeing snippets from our year, go ahead and join my email list. The plan is to share a recap of each unit throughout the year with info on what we like and don’t like, what we add, and which books we really enjoy.
I am really so very excited for this year and our kindergarten homeschool plans. It’s going to be a great year!
