Here at Mommy Daughter Love we don’t just home school we homeschool with an objective statement and long term goals in mind.
I began talking last Monday about the goals we set forth for this year and the objective statement I came up with for our homeschool kindergarten program:
As I teach kindergarten the goal is to make learning fun; to inspire a life long learner and give a good foundation for math and reading.
Refer Back:
Don’t just make the objective. With every assignment I do I mentally refer back to this goal. Is that lesson, class, or assignment helping me attain the overall kindergarten goal for this year? Now, this can be a quick check like…
Is it fun, ok good then it’s probably a go regardless. If it’s not fun how can I make it fun because it should probably be kicked bout if it doesn’t meet this initial first goal. I’m trying to inspire a happy life long learner who loves learning and actively seeks it out so she is a critical thinker and is able to express her creativity. Forcing un-fun, dampens creativity.
If she is a critical thinker hopefully she won’t fall prey to all the horrible things this world has to offer. She will be able to think for herself but the first step towards that is to create a learner, and someone who enjoys learning. While also teaching good, positive morals, and values. Anyway, another thought this is all about math class!
Math class:
The goal to check is here!
Is it fun, and is it giving her a good math foundation! We are leaps ahead of the abeka video program for the math portion so I’ve kinda been flying by the seat of my pants here. That’s ok because I have a pretty solid math foundation. I mean engineers are good with numbers right? We will say good enough for kindergarten math and move on!
Half Sheets:
We do really fun half sheets. First I taught the basics of addition now each week we are running through addition tables. 1+ something then 2+ something, etc. On the back, I have taken to doing fun ways to write the teen family because that’s the series of numbers we are working on right now! Repetition helps little kids remember things. Check for the good foundation. Fun cute worksheet side that’s kinda like a game adds in the cherry on top for the fun. Bam bam. It goes right along with the missing system. Having bit on a small piece big paper and calling bit a half sheet helps.
Digging out Legos, pom poms, shapes, or any little counting thing to help with the addition also helps to make it fun and meaningful! It puts connections together in the brain like oh yea! I remember, those silly little blue pom poms and red pom poms that fell of my desks and I had to catch all added up to 6… It’s stuff like that! It sticks!
Example Numbers Reinforcement:
If you want to teach numbers but in a really fun way bring in a writing component, a hands on component, and a creative component! I’ll give you the number 11 unite we did as an example of this to show you! It gives a solid math foundation and makes it fun and easier to remember the number because the child has something to relate it to.
Also there is a ton of repitition involved.
Start out by looking at the worksheet which has the logic puzzle at the top. I have her fill in the missing number to review all the numbers that come before the focus number! Then, writing them is super important. She can write with a fun pencil or even a fun marker if she likes. After that we have some creativity. So, dots and counting and coloring the 11. For the Legos section she colors 11 Legos AND we build cool things with only 11 Legos. She made the Eagle off King Julian. Just saying…
Then we bake 11 play-dough cookies for our hands on experience for this Lessons…we even cook them in a play oven which she got so excited about. This was all thought but on the fly by the way. I made the worksheets knowing I’d want a fun hands on component and a lego component at the beginning of the week. And we ended up here! Fun times! It made for a fun hands on math experience! We have been also counting to 75 each day while reviewing the numbers! Just as an added yay, we use a fun pointer…
Disclaimer:
Yes, this style of the moving classroom and constant hand on “fun” activities is both emotional and physically exhausting. We have no down pat routine as I have mentioned before. So, we do the classes completely as we feel like it and in whatever order she wants to that day. It requires so much just coming up with new fun ways all the time to do things. And my fit-bit clocks over 13,000 steps on a school day (and we never leave try house because of covid-19 high risk social shielding). It’s kinda like being in a constant state of wired all the time no mater what because you know you have to be at that level pretty much 5 days a week. And you have to do it happy…happy happy happy. Never in a bad mood. So it’s always a mood check as well. No mater what else is going on. But I will tell you it is worth it. She has already come so far in these first few weeks!
Brie
