Mr. Yellow Starts Kindergarten

Mr. Yellow is 5 now. I don't know where the time went, but here we are starting Kindergarten. I love that I don't have to follow a traditional time to start school with each child. He wasn't ready for Kindergarten at the start of the traditional school year, but he is now. We are following his lead and really letting him choose which days to do school and what to do when, totally different than I did with Miss Green her kindergarten year. I'm still paying dearly for my control issues those first years homeschooling. The only thing I "make" him do, is review is OPGTTR poems. He doesn't mind too much, but I like to review them at least 3 times per day. It distracts him from the important work of playing, which no 5 year old enjoys.

We base our Kindergarten work on the traditional 3 Rs, Reading, Writing, and Math, but I've found he's a science buff. He sits beside Miss Green while she does biology, and at the end of every page asks her what it was about. So, he is doing science with Miss Purple and Miss Pink and thoroughly enjoying it. He does get frustrated when he can't remember things that they do, but we are working on that. I try to make sure I ask questions of him first that he's able to answer.

Without further ado, here's his list for Kindergarten.

The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading
Explode the Code: Books A, B, and C
Math Made Easy
Miquon Math
Developmental Math
Writing Fundamentals
Apologia Zoology 2

More finds from the barn

Today one of the boxes we went through was full of binders. Some of them were Story of the World activity books, but others were the kids history and science binders. It was so fun to see their handwriting from 3 years ago.

Another box had a lot of printer supplies, i.e. labels, greeting cards, photo paper, and tri-fold brochure paper. I see some printing in my future!

Mr. Yellow is showing many, many signs of reading readiness, so I guess I need to get fired up in that department. We started learning the Short Vowel poem from the Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading. Now if I could only find the magnets to go with it. I think may still be in the barn somewhere. Hmm...

I've made a lot of printable math activities for him. I am loving Confessions of a Homeschooler right now. She's got great stuff like a Number Word Match-Up that he has great fun with. We put the laminated print out on a cookie sheet, and then he matches up his magnetic letters to the paper. Then he counts the items and "reads" the word and points to the number and says it. He also likes the Number Dots Worksheet to use with pompoms from Dollar Tree. I got him some little tongs, so he uses tho

se to pick up the pompoms and put them on the print out. He likes to count while he's doing them and then he says the final number. I've also let him play with the Cuisenaire Rods a bit after Miss Purple is done with them and he uses them with the fabulous Cuisenaire Activity and Exploration Book. We haven't played any of the games yet, but he has done the pictures. He's getting the hang of them for sure. I have the Cuisenaire letter book, but it may be another one that's in the barn. Are you seeing a pattern here? Speaking of patterns, I've also got pattern block work planned for him. We have the Melissa and Doug set, but I want to get a magnetic foam set to use with the Patternables book we have on hand, in page protectors no less!

I tore up the Capital Letter Stories workbook and put it in page protectors, so he can do it over and over again with dry erase markers. I recently saw the same system at Wal-Mart, but in a dry erase form. I prefer the page protectors though, as I can choose which letters to put in his binder for the week. This system reminds me of Handwriting Without Tears, but its a little more colorful/kid friendly. We have the wooden letter pieces for that program too and need to pull them out in the coming weeks.