Kindergarten Curriculum

With Sofie having a just a few weeks left of kindergarten penmanship and having started first grade in all other subjects, this seems like a good time to write about what worked and didn't work for us for kindergarten. Our main foci in kindergarten are reading, penmanship and early math, balanced by a picture book tour of ancient history, lots of projects, and playtime. The goblins took very different amounts of time to do kindergarten due to starting at different ages, which I'll discuss in another post. I'll do a set of curriculum review posts soon, as well, with more details and descriptions of how we used the materials, if our methods differed from the recommended ones.

For letter recognition, Oscar used Sesame Street's Alphabet Jungle Game DVD*, but Leapfrog's Letter Factory was more appealing to Sofie and also taught the letter sounds so it's the one I recommend. For reading instruction, we used The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading, which I can't recommend highly enough. The scripted approach was essential for me, because I learned to read via the whole language approach and, though I can't honestly say that I'd suffered any for it, didn't know any phonics at all and could never have taught the subject without the explicit guidance the book provides. We also had the first set of BOB books, which Ozzy found to be simultaneously condescending and bewildering in their utter plot-lessness, but that was no deterrent for Sofie, probably because she was younger when she was reading them. Modern Curriculum Press' Phonics Practice Readers were the perfect beginning readers-- phonetically controlled, nicely illustrated (at least when compared to the BOB books), and a comfortable length.

For penmanship, I'd bought and planned to use Handwriting Without Tears, but found the script ugly and the workbooks to be less engaging for the goblins than the much cheaper Kumon lettering books. I had Oscar finish the Kumon while I looked around, and found an ideal curriculum in the Getty-Dubay Italic Handwriting series. The italic script is easy to learn, very attractive, and best of all, is absorbed directly into the cursive script instead of becoming redundant. I did, however, find the Handwriting Without Tears chalkboards and chalk bits (which can be purchased apart from the workbooks) to be the best way to form good implement grip habits, and would recommend them for use prior to any letter-formation curriculum. Sofie used them as well, and also practiced her fine-motor skills with the Kumon workbooks before beginning the Getty-Dubay series.

For number recognition, Sofie used Leapfrog's Numbers Ahoy DVD; Oscar acquired his number recognition through osmosis. Once solid on recognition, we used RightStart Math to begin math instruction. Oscar was older when he started (5.5), and he started with the first grade level, of which the first twenty or so lessons are review of the kindergarten material anyway. Sofie started at four, and she used the kindergarten level, which covers less material at a slower pace. The Rightstart method is a combination of the Japanese and Montessori methods of teaching math, and provides a rock-solid understanding of mathematical concepts. The emphasis is on true, deep understanding rather than drilling, the ability to derive rather than the speed with which math facts can be retrieved. I think this is an ideal approach to the earliest level of math instruction, but I've started supplementing with Math Rider, a downloadable game, because there does come a point when derivation of a math fact every time one is required becomes inefficient. I consider drilling to be appropriate only after a concept has been fully and completely understood and the derivation is intuitive. 

We made extensive use of the library for our ancient history study, and the Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History as a spine (there are newer editions, however). We spent the most time on the eras of greatest interest to the goblins, namely ancient Egypt and the Greek myths, and less on the time periods they were less enthralled with. I wouldn't be quite so relaxed with older students, but with very young children I place the highest value on making the assumption that history is exciting and interesting the default.

Beyond these, most of the goblins' kindergarten time was spent in play. We're fairly selective about our toys, and mostly choose toys that require the kids to use their imaginations rather than batteries. Our toys are almost exclusively wooden blocks, puzzles and manipulatives, as well as dress-up clothes and other make-believe accoutrements. And of course, we read and read and read some more, guided by the goblins' own interests, resources such as Jim Trelease's Read-Aloud Handbook, the Caldecott awards list and philosophies such as Charlotte Mason's.

*A note on the DVDs and the math computer game: I'm generally not a proponent of screen time for children, but I find that it works well for passive forms of learning, and the rote memorization of letters and numbers, while essential, is certainly a passive form of learning. Likewise, the Math Rider drilling game is a way to make rote memorization of math facts fun instead of tedious.