NO ROUTINE??? I can see the classic homeschool Mama’s now, all running for the hills clicking right back off of this post. Rolling over in their proverbial graves.
Lessons from the first week:
The first week of home school week of home school we stuck to the videos that abeka academy has to offer, we watched each and every one of them in the order that they were provided. We sat through the pain staking repetitiveness of counting to three…even though my daughter could count to 50. In the first week, I thought we would miss something. Their would be some surprise…BOO. Something that differed from the step by step teachers guide that gives the daily lesson plans.
Stemming off what we already know:
The secret, their wasn’t….it went exactly as the guide said to a T. And it was boring as all get out. ‘
- In math, my daughter knows basic addition and subtraction concepts. She can roughly count to 50.
- She knows her letters and her sounds.
- Coloring
- Cuting things out!
- Even how to properly hold a crayon and pencil.
Trust me…when she gets a pair of scissors she turns into a regular Edward scissors hands…it is like a paper ream was massacred on our floor as she proudly raises from the “ashes” with her master piece. So in all of those areas…it was just long.
How we work ahead on our own:
So, for week two, I decided to start having her work ahead. We don’t watch all the videos…but we can’t skip them. Not even in parents mode. So, while they play, we focus on other things.
During the math portion, some days we just sit around working through the work book…which is a real breeze for her…it is counting small objects right now like anything below 10. It is writing numbers in your very best hand writing. It is counting pennies. Whenever she gets tired we stop. At the end of week two, we were to the end of September curriculum wise! I’d call it a success.
Other days, I like to challenge her a bit more because what is school if everything is mundane and super easy? I have a dry erase board where we work on math statements in preschool last spring I had started briefly with addition. This week we were reviewing addition two of the days, and then I introduced subtraction to mix things up. I thought what the heck. She caught on really fast! I’ll have to do a whole post on how I teach subtraction. It wasn’t how I was taught in public school, but I had a spur of the moment idea and just decided to go with it…and it worked really well for a kindergartner!
We do a few have a few of the other craft like books that we work ahead on as well. There is a “think and learn book with puzzles, patterns, shapes, colors, and such. We are over half way finished with this book. This second week we just sat around on the couch and did pages from it and I handed out tickets!
Lessons we do with the class:
- Each day we do the Bible lesson with the class which takes about 30 minutes a day. These are like little church service for kids! So cute! My daughter now likes to sing the songs because she is catching on to most of them unlike the first day where she was in tears! So, this has become an enjoyable time! Kinda like a bonus music class. We even made our own posters to match the ones they hold up in class!
- Whenever they introduce a new hand writing letter to the class we do that video, but we typically don’t do 3 videos on how to write the same letter…after one video we practice on our own. With writing everything is very regimented. They have to hold their arm a certain way, lower it to the paper at a certain time, etc etc. I don’t know, it it a little much I feel like. Too structured and she was kinda hating it. But, one or two introduction videos for a letter a week to make sure it is written properly then us doing the rest on our own is fine.
- I pick and choose the activities! So we do music with the class because she loves it and thins it is a blast. But we do social studies on our own, because it is not that great… I’ll leave it at that. It’s not what you would think traditional social studies to be. With Art, we have been doing the crafts on our own without the video because that is more fun! Though, as I was prepping for week 3, I am considering going with the video because it is story art. So we will see.
- For other things like extra learning development, I just see what the topic is and see if it is something worth our time. Like for an entire week the class talked about their families…we skipped a lot of that. We tuned in for a lesson on turning things on and off. Kinda sounded amusing because we got out a bunch of flash lights and lanterns. For this Lessons not is really just pick and choose.
- We do EVERY SINGLE phonics lesson and Phonics review because this is not the strong suit. That takes about 45 minutes a day.
- If we “choose” not to do a lesson we do something else in it’s place while the video plays through.
Anyway, thanks for stopping by to see how we are using our home school curriculum for kindergarten!
Brie
