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2004-2005: My plan for our Kindergarten year is a lot!!! Boy am I ambitious with a new little one due right smack dab in the middle of our school year. Below is a list of things I have ordered -- we will see how far I get, what gets moved to 1st Grade and what gets thrown out all together. I will let you know as we go along and I find time to update you all!! Core K Core 1 Readers Bob
Jones K5 Bible Truths
We used this for 2 weeks and hated it. It is
structured for a classroom and not a homeschool environment. On top of
that, Kris complained because we weren't using a Bible for our daily Bible
story. The only good thing I found from using this -- is that he truly did
learn a lot more than I thought about the Bible using SL's Preschool Bible
Program. From now on -- we will only be using SL for Bible studies. ![]() Singapore Earlybird 2A & 2B with Saxon K In hindsight I would have done Saxon K with Earlybird 1A & 1B last year and Saxon 1 this year with Earlybird 2A & 2B but that plan will wait until the next child. Saxon K is a preschool not a kindergarten program in my opinion. It could even be used prior to beginning the Singapore Earlybird Series. It is all manipulative based, no writing, no workbooks. Singapore Primary 1A/1B We finished up the Earlybird series early and decided to keep going. About half way through 1A, I realized that Kris was able to do the work but was not learning or memorizing facts. He was still having to count on his fingers to know the answer to what 5+3 equals. So, we are yet again on a hunt for the perfect math program. We haven't found one but are now using a Scott Foresman Exploring Mathematics Series (which is out of print but still available through Academic Book Services or Ebay ... just make sure you get the right ones or you'll be disappointed!) and a Singapore Combo. This seems to work really well for us. He still needs help with memorization though. Saxon Math 1 We ended up skipping Saxon K. It was simply to easy. Everything that was covered there is reviewed in depth in Saxon 1. My suggestion would be to save your money and skip K if Saxon is your math program of choice. We also ended up ditching Saxon math. It is just not a good fit for us and I could never make it work no matter how hard I tried. It is too boring, too repetitive. We tried doing parts of it and tailoring it to fit our needs but still nothing works. We have to force ourselves to try and it simply isn't worth it. Rainbow Rock Cd-Rom Okay this is now back on my want list since we are doing Singapore again and Kris is begging for it. So we will see what it is like when it arrives. I pray that it is worth the money! Don't you all wish I would make up my mind? Update: I never purchased this item as I switched math programs but I have seen it and had Singapore Math worked for my child -- I would have used it! Quarter Mile Math Cd-Rom for K-3 My son loves the horses and race cars in this program. It is really helping him build up the math facts that he so badly needed to learn. This is much more than simply learning basic facts it covers all kinds of math concepts. Unfortunately my kids just aren't big on computers at this time in their life so it doesn't get used very often. Calculadder This is another program that teaches basic math facts. This is a drill program. I recommend the CD version of this as in the long run it is cheaper than the books. However, this takes time and dedication to implement and I was not so good at this. If I had been more consistent it probably would have worked better for me. Subtraction and Addition Songs My sons loved this and the 1 yr old started counting to 3 after the first day of listening to the addition songs CD.SL Math Manipulatives Activities & Games I have still yet to use this. Maybe if it was scheduled in someplace but alas it still collects dust on my shelf. Maybe some rainy day I will pull it out and discover what is inside. SL
Science K This was a great introduction to life sciences and how
some things work. The things though are out of date. Consider getting the
DK book The NEW way things work to supplement with. Makes a great addition
and comes with an interactive CD-ROM. We rarely got to the science
experiments except for once a month on family science day but the DVD was
great as the kids could watch it over and over again and learned a lot of
the terminology just from this. Startwrite Software We use this to supplement our handwriting program. I also use for dictation or when my son wants to write a story or song. He tells me what he wants to write, I type it in this program and then have him trace it. This has worked great and has even improved his spelling since he is tracing words that he knows. Now he is trying to write these things on his own in his journal!
Saxon
Phonics K
Saxon Phonics 1 We finished K in less than 3 months and are moving onto Saxon Phonics 1. I cannot say enough good things about this program. It is easy to adapt to fit to the needs of your child, if it is too repetitive (which it often is) you can easily skip that part but it is there if you need it and, as an added bonus, the way they present the phonics rules is superb! Thanks to these my son’s spelling lessons are a breeze. As he tries to figure it out, I hear him repeating out loud to himself the various rules to fit his needs. We have had so much success using the first 2 Saxon phonics programs that I do not feel that we will need the third as he is already reading chapter books easily. So we will skip it and move onto other things. Wordly
Wise A SL LA 1 Parts of it. We are skipping the vocabulary, phonics, and spelling portions of this program. I ended up ditching this whole program with the exception of the optional workbooks and readers. Sonlight Language Arts is another program that no matter how hard I try to make it fit and work for our family -- it simply does not.
![]() Joseph The Canada Goose Way to complicated for a 4-5 yr old. My hubby even thinks a part of this is too difficult for him -- we are shelving it for another year. Like Core 2? Update: We tried this again a few years later and it still was just not a good fit for my kids with average art abilities and knowledge ... so we got rid of it. I have heard good things from others about this but as with all things, different things work for different families. Start Smart Art Series We replaced the above item with this -- much more age appropriate and fun! The crayons are very soft and after a few uses have started to curve to form against my sons hand. The also break easily. Well... to update you on this. We are now 6 months into the program. Save yourself some money and pick up a couple of color by number books at the grocery store. You will get the same results that we got here. The only thing Kris got out of this series was about shadows under objects and how to color in the lines. Color The Classics Godly Composers & Hymn Writers My son loves this series and both of us have learned a great deal from it. At first he thought the coloring pages were a bit much but after awhile he began to look forward to them. I gave him 2-3 days to complete one page. He loved the ones where it asked him to draw in a part of the picture and was very upset when we had completed our 2 books for the year. He keeps asking me when I am going to order the ones for next year so we can start now! Music
Master CDs The
Story of Me Visual
Perception Skill Building 2 Can
You Find Me? K Dr.
DooRiddles Dale Seymour Critical Thinking for K-3 I started off the year wiht the intention of only doing the level 1 (ie first triangle pages) but as we progressed through the book and year I found he could easily move onto the next level after completing the first, so we did so.
McGraw-Hill Animals Workbook We used this as an introduction to animals and purchased several plastic animal kits so we could play with the animals we learned about. These pages can also correlate nicely with GTG if you plan to use it with Core K as I did. Singapore Start-Up Science books Much like the Earlybird Math series. Written at the same level in similar format. We went with these and dropped SL Science K for awhile because I was to pregnant to keep up with all the experiments. These books seem to be missing a textbook or something that would better help explain the topic prior to doing the worksheet.
And we will see what all else I add to this long list as well... Remember this is what we are planning on accomplishing in a year. Not a day! Please note that some of the items we dropped because they simply did not work for our family -- the reasons why are listed above. If something doesn't get done this year --- we will simply add it onto the next. A lot of the extras are done on fun days when I simply don't want to do LA, Math, Science, etc. so I let my son find something educational to do on his own. Or we do music or art or something else that is normally forgotten about
Usborne Books: You can purchase these from you local consultant, retailer, or me! ![]()
Teacher Resources I used
for the year are: These are the books that I purchased for me this year. To help me learn more about homeschooling and to become a better teacher.
Managers Of Their Homes Usborne
Supplements: ![]()
Egermeier's Story Book Bible
Worksheets include:
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