So, I have been mulling over and looking up ways on how to best prepare for our kindergarten year since it is right around the corner! As I was looking over Pinterest for ideas I came across it spelled “Kindergarden” as if it was a kind of garden. I love love love gardening so that really got me thinking in a way, it sort of is like a garden. You have to prepare ahead with your seeds and little starter plants so that you have a successful year and harvest, just as you would with a garden. In this case though, the seeds and starter plants are the supplies, and the harvest is being able to see your child grow and learn over the year.
Kindergarten is such a big year! They learn the basics of reading, counting to 100 and basic addition and subtraction! These are the foundations to life long learning so there is so much pressure not to screw them up. After I made the garden analogy in my head I really wanted to prepare for the year with all the “extras” so we would have the very best experience possible. I don’t want my daughter and I to dread getting out of bead every single day!
So, let me introduce you to my seeds, or starter plants for our “Kindergarden”.
Book Reading Pillow!
We created the book reading pillow so that we could go on fun reading adventures! It is a big fluffy pillow we made out out of three fat quarters. It is reversible so the front and back are coordinating but different colors. The pockets also go with the theme. There is a large pocket on each side of the pillow, and it has a handle.
I know there are 10 reading books to work through for the Abeka Academy program, plus all of our home books we care read. For our reading adventures we will just tuck some of the books in a pocket and go for a drive. Since we are still “social distancing” and not going out, we will park some place and read a book in the car and do some people watching from a distance! People are quite comical these days.
Reading wand:
This is a fun way that I saw on Pinterest to get kinds involved and enjoying reading! I got a dole rod and wrapped it in different color washi tapes, and added ribbon to it. I also out clear tape over it to keep it clean! This will be for pointing to words in our books and we tucked it in one of the pockets of our reading pillow! If you don’t do a reading pillow and still want to do a reading wand thought, you could always keep it in the school supplies box!
School supplies!
I love school supplies, I always have! Much more than my daughter does! But I went ahead and ordered all of our school supplies three week early online! They are all matching and we are ready to go for the year!
Kindergarten Desk Mat:
When I was growing up I went to a public elementary school. In the younger grades I always had a desk mat that went across the top of my desk. Typically bit was laminate and would have anything we really needed for that year. So through elementary school it had things like letters, numbers, cursive letters, multiplication table, jus all kinds of stuff. I tried early in the summer (like in may when I signed my daughter up for the online academy) to purchase a desk mat. But I guess that’s not a thing anymore!
You can buy a few on Etsy, but you have to print them out yourself, and we don’t have a printer! So that wouldn’t work. I decided to go ahead and make one! We have just pages glued to poster board so nothing real fancy. I did do her hand prints for left and right in paint though! Desk mats were so helpful when I was growing up, it probably why I remember them because I used it all the time! I looked for any of my old desk mats but I couldn’t find them! I thought I could just cover up my name and write hers! Oh well, this works too!
Kindergarten Store!
So, one of the ladies I follow on Instagram made a monthly shop for her boys where they got tickets for doing chores. When I saw this I thought it would be a great translation for our kindergarten! I really wanted an incentive and originally I was just going to do a treasure box. Then, I go to thinking that one single prize at the end of the school day may not be enough to get us through. I remember back to my daughter hiding and screaming under the table because she didn’t want to do preschool after hers closed back in March.
Ticket system:
So, I knew that a store would be perfect because then throughout the day I could hand out tickets like “candy”. Then at the very end of the school day she could visit the school store and spend her tickets on fun items! I put a 1 ticket item so she is almost guaranteed to gett a prize every day if she wants one. It has some candy, some teeth cleaning suckers (yest that is a thing check them out) and a stencil! Then I made a 5 ticket box, which I am going to try not to go over 5 tickets a day. That way, she can get a bigger prize one day if she wants or out some of the tickets back for later.
I did the last box of prizes each worth 25 tickets so that it would take no more than 2 weeks to save up tickets to get a big prize! Or at least that’s the hope, a bigger prize every two weeks seems fun! I think that will keep her attention but won’t make it too easy!
Routine:
The last thing I have been trying to do is get out life in a routine for everything! So we now have a laundry day, a stuffy cleaning day ( we dust the stuffed animals) a vacuum and dust day, a bathroom cleaning day, etc. All of the chores have a day to stream line things. The next thing I want to do is come up with a school day routine. I probably won’t get this one down pat until after we have tried out a few days to see how long it really busy and how much work each day hold.
I know that daily we will have 4 subjects, and each video for the subject is about 20 minutes. Then there is work to go along with each video. So, basically an hour and a half worth of videos. Then I am still trying to figure out if I want to do extra subjects and how I want to go about those. Like music, gym class, art, etc. We have now done like 3 weeks of piano lessons so we might continue those once a week for music class, but to be honest they really aren’t my daughter favorite!
We could also mix in an extra science course as well. Then I am also trying to figure out how much like regular school I want it to be, so do we want to say the pledge of allegiance every week or day? There are so many options that we could do, or don’t have to do with homeschool and things are so flexible. I’m still trying to figure these parts out. I don’t want her to miss out on anything, but then I also don’t want to take away from the core lessons either.
Anyway, thank you for stopping by today to learn all about our little seeds that we are planting bin our “kindergarden”.
Brie
