We started Sam's Kindergarten year last July and are winding down to the end. Her last day is tomorrow! We are through all of the books now and can give a decent review. For context, Sam is a very hands on learner and good with memorization. She doesn't really like sitting and doing worksheets, probably the case with most 5 year olds:)
Math
This was Sam and I's favorite subject! We used The Good and the Beautiful Level K math curriculum. It has 117 lessons with 3 assessments throughout and one Final assessment. It also came with an activity box that came with a ton of manipulative that we used throughout the course. Some of my favorite things were the use of manipulative's, the multiple ways that it presented different "skills", and the daily dose portion of each lesson. We finished this subject first and Sam has mastered what is needed to move on to the next level.
 |
| Each section would start with a story that continued throughout the section. |
 |
| The activity box. |
Language Arts
We used The Good and the Beautiful Level K for her language arts curriculum. This definitely wasn't Sam's favorite subject and to be honest it wasn't mine either. I probably rushed her into it and that didn't help. The course itself was good, I was being cheap when I ordered and didn't buy the book box sets they recommend to go with it. They really helped give her some confidence in reading once she started them. Some of the lesson's felt too long and some seemed really short which could occasionally be a challenge. She's just now finishing up this book (120 Lessons) since we took a break until she was more ready. She did Reading Eggs for about a month in place of the language arts and that helped a lot.
Handwriting
We used The Good and The Beautiful Level K handwriting and moved onto Level 1 when she finished Level K. It's a very basic book, I thought she would like it more because there's a little picture you can color when you finish the page. She does not like practicing her handwriting because it is a worksheet and that's not her learning style.
Bible
We used a Bible activity book for Bible time. It was a bible story and then 2 pages of different activities which she loved. She finished that book and we moved onto something new, not sure if she's a little too young for it.
 |
| I got this at Ollie's for $4. |
 |
| This is the new one we just started. |
Science
For Science we've been using a very basic 180 days of Science book. It usually takes 2 minutes to complete. I like it because a lot of it is me reading to her and her answering questions, helps her work on listening comprehension.
Classical Conversation Co-op
We just finished our last week for our Co-op and have done better this year of working on what we learned at home. I even bought a white board to write all the info each week onto like they do in class. Next year I plan to buy the book and the geography map so we can do more at home as she gets older.
Overall I'm really happy with her Kindergarten year. I already have her 1st grade curriculum but won't be starting until July. She's really excited for a nice long break. We didn't really take any long breaks, we took a week off at Christmas then a few days here and there. When I originally planned out the year I had a lot more breaks scheduled and was going to go year round. However, she had a better attitude when we didn't take breaks and I liked the groove we got into so not taking breaks worked well this year.
Another interesting part of this year was that Howie took over for about the last month since his clinicals were cancelled and all his classes moved online. I started working more and he's been home with the kids, he has done a really good job teaching her.
