We are now in week three of our homeschool for kindergarten during a pandemic! Yay! Wow, honestly time is really flying.
Getting a Solid Start:
Our main curriculum so far has been the Abeka Academy K5 course work. In the K5 Program they really don’t do science of any kind. With an engineering degree, and working 3 years in a research lab setting I’m not super worried about supplementing this. I definitely think it is something I can handle.
Before I started adding too many things in and rocking the boat too much though I wanted to really get a solid feel for what our strengths and weaknesses would be learning wise for kindergarten. I wanted to get a feel for the curriculum and how to best assist in teaching it. My daughter is a very hands on person. While in some things she learns really well from a video, it has be be a very captivating video!
I’ll admit, some of the videos are not that captivating. You can check out my week two update to see what we are doing to get around the boredom factor so she doesn’t permanently hate learning! (See post here).
Instagram Inspiration!
So, one of the ladies I follow on Instagram Sarah from (modernfarmhousefamily) has homeschooled her boys for awhile now. I think this is year 2 or 3 of homeschooling for her if I’m not mistaken. She has six boys with her oldest being 8 and youngest cutie being a bit less than one. She literally has like my dream house and the cutest little family every! Her posts and stories are so sweet and fun to follow! (So go follow her if you don’t!)
Anyway, she is so inspirational with everything she does in life from projects she does with the boys (she is actually where I got our school store idea from), to food they fix. She has prayer mornings on Mondays! Just a really positive God centered, and family oriented woman!
As she is gearing up to start homeschool this year she was going through her school room, curriculum (which I didn’t know, but she used alot of abeka curriculum as well), and supplies. She was giving tips that she has learned over the years on how to successfully homeschool. Things that were just so helpful.
- One tip she gave was putting up signs that are useful for the kiddos, like the vowel sounds, the abeka numbers chart, etc. While we don’t have a room set up for homeschool I am considering setting our little posters up around the room. I had started laying them out on the floor as well. So, I guess that’s something.
- Other tip she had was a draw filled with all the stuff the abeka lessons prompts you to make! And I had just been slipping them in my daughters art supplies box which was full after week 2 of all of out little learning papers! She had them separated into individual ziplock bags in a drawer. So I did the bag system…and out them in a little bag!
- She had a book she recommended from Amazon called: Indescribable: 100 Devotionals about God and Science for kids. (FREE with KINDLE UNLIMITED!!!! YAY!!!)
More on Indescribable:
This peaked my interest to see how an author would integrate the two for kids.
I know going through a science and engineering college, the two were not equated for me. It was a mostly athiest institution. Flat out acepting that no God existed and that we all evolved from single cell organisms similar to that of bacteria or something. After the big bang. I didn’t put much stock into this theory, so therefore mostly ignored these lessons, but it was wide spread on campus.
So, I got the Kindle free sample version on my phone since I enjoy reading the free amazon reading books anyway.
The free sample offered several of the lessons. They are about a page and would work great as little mini kindergarten science lessons! Little mini hands on concepts can easily be made around each devotional! After ready a few I thought how exciting! Adding in one of these small like maybe 15 minute lessons a week would be a perfect science addition for our school each week! IF you want to buy the ebook it is only $9.99 or it is free with the kindle unlimited program! We went the ebook just became available to kindle unlimited, so that is the option I’m going with!
How to plan a lesson around One of the Devotions:
I’ll go ahead and inserts a screenshot from the book here because you can get this part from the Kindle free sample download.
At the end of each Devotions they have a Be amazed section. The first science lesson is really simple! Grab a ruler and teach the kids how to measure feet with it! Measure 6 and a half feet with it! Make sure to mark off at each end. Then set a one minute timer!
Have them see if they can go as slow as a sloth! if you have a stuffed slot, they can carry it with them as well!
There you have it, our mini science lesson for week three! Later in the semester I’m going to be introducing more in-depth hands on science experiments! I’ll be sure to come out with an update on this!
Brie!
More Virtual Learning Kindergarten Blogs:
- Week 1 of Virtual learning: Learning the ropes!
- First day of Kindergarten (at home)
- Fun Kindergarten Extras! (resources to prep for a successful year)
- How to sign up for the Abeka Academy (K5 Guide)
