School Days: Planning, Part 2

I've been spending a lot of time lately reading and researching trying to figure out how we are going to do pre-k 4 this year (my earlier thoughts can be found here). I've looked into several curriculums. Nothing seemed 100% right. I looked back at what we did last year and there were a lot of things last year that didn't work right. I also had it in my mind that we wouldn't start up school again until September, like the public schools. Well...that was going to change...

During last week's trip to the library we brought home a book (well many but you know). In the story, a boy in his class are learning about outer space. I was reading it to Sean and could barely read any of it to him. His interest was peaked and he had so many questions. I decided that we'd do a mini lesson this summer on outer space. I really shouldn't say mini because I can see this lasting weeks! We went back to the library to get books on the solar system and to the store to get supplies to make a model of the solar system. Sean is beyond excited! He's just about leading the lesson.


Concentrating hard while painting the sun.


Earlier this week I was reading through my blog list and found this post:
Tailoring an Education. I also had a visit with my cousin who's homeschooling her daughter. I'm coming to a realization that somehow I got sidetracked. I'm not trying to do public school at home! One of the biggest benefits of homeschooling is being able to follow the child's lead. This is one of the reasons I decided to homeschool. I need to remember this!

The plan...and who knows, it could change!
We're going to do year round schooling with breaks through out the year. One of which will be when little jellybean is born. We're going to do unit studies. It'll be similar to what we did last year but I'm going to try harder to listen to what Sean wants to learn about, like outer space. Along with the unit studies, we'll supplement with phonics, writing and math. I may try to find curriculums for these but I'm not sure yet. There will be no set time to finish a unit study. It can take a week, a couple weeks or a week and a half. We'll just go with it. Once we're done with a unit study, we'll take a little time off. During that time we'll check out books on a variety of subjects at the library to see what peaks Sean's interest and I'll do lesson planning. Then we'll start it all over again.

School Days: Planning

It's summer so I'm going to try to get ahead of the game this year and do school planning now. Sean will be 4 in November. The birthday cut off here is September 30 so technically he won't be a kindergartener until September 2013. However, we're looking at pre-k 4 this year. It just doesn't make sense to hold him back if he doesn't need to. I started my planning by looking up what a child needs to know before starting kindergarten.

Here is a portion of a list I found:

• Hold conversations, listen, ask and answer questions
• Use imagination to create own stories
• Use complete sentences
• Follow simple one step directions
• Name some familiar letters
• Count to 10 or higher
• Count five objects by touching each one in turn
• Recognize some numbers
• Name the colors in a box of eight crayons
• Name the basic shapes: circle, triangle, square and rectangle
• Match and sort by size, shape and color

I did quite a bit of googling and didn't find much different. Either Sean is advanced or there's a low expectation of kids because according to what I found, Sean is almost ready to start kindergarten! I'm throwing out going by his "grade" and going with just building on what he does know.

Some of what he does know:

• A lot of the alphabet including some phonics. He'll pick up a "P" and say "P.. puh puh puh.. popcorn!"
• For the most part, the numbers 0-9.. He will confuse 2 with 5 and 6 with 9 at times.
• Colors
• Basic shapes and some not so basic shapes such as an octagon

And he has a love for learning. He's always asking questions wanting to know how and why. He loves being read to. He loves figuring things out.

This isn't a complete list but some of what we'll be working on this coming year:

• Recognizing all the letters.
• Phonics and beginning to read
• Writing
• Recognizing more numbers
• Addition and subtractions
• Telling time
• Understanding money
• Address
• Phone number