Inside: Tips I learned from Homeschooling Kindergarten with multiple kids.
When trying to decide if you should send your child to public school or homeschool them there are so many things to consider.
Kindergarten is the first time many of us have to think about what choice we are going to make will we send our kids to school or will we homeschool kindergarten?
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For our family, I have known I wanted to homeschool my kids since before they were even born. The fact that I was homeschooled is just one of the reasons I wanted to homeschool my kids.
Why We Decided to Homeschool Kindergarten
As I mentioned above I was homeschooled growing up and I loved it. Which is one of the reasons homeschooling was a natural thought for me once I had kids.
But my familiarity with homeschooling isn’t the only reason my husband and I decided to homeschool.
Reasons We Decided to Homeschool Our Kids
Some of our reasons for homeschooling might appeal to you and other’s might not even be things you have considered, but these are some of the reasons we were drawn to homeschooling.
It Gives us Freedom
The freedom to travel and to decide when and where we do school held a lot of appeal for our family. Jared is self-employed and has some flexibility with his work schedule.
We didn’t want to be stuck waiting for the bus if he got home from work early one day or have to worry about missed school work if we decided to take a trip.
We Have a Choice in Curriculum
Another big draw to homeschooling is being able to choose what curriculum we use to teach our kids. We are able to choose curriculum that we believe in, that shares our view and helps us give our kids a broad view of the world.
Able to Be Hands On
With young kids especially we feel that hands on learning is one of the best ways to teach our kids. In a public school setting hands on learning is more difficult simply because of the number of kids.
With homeschooling we are able to learn about something and then go experience it. We are able to do hands on activities at home as well as use travel as a way to help our kids expand there learning.
We Can Pursue Interest
Homeschooling allows us to help our kids pursue their interests. While there are some subjects that are required there are many areas that our kids interests can help direct what we learn about.
Being able to pursue the kids interests also means we are able to let them advance as rapidly as they want in the subjects they love.
While there are countless other reasons we are choosing to homeschool the ones I mentioned above are some of the big reasons we choose to homeschool.
How to Homeschool Kindergarten
Getting started with homeschooling kindergarten is really simple. The best part? You can do it in whatever way works best for your family!
There are just a few simple things you need to do before getting started with your homeschool year.
Before You Start
First, find out if Kindergarten is mandatory in your state. If it is required you will need to figure out how to register your child to homeschool. A great resource for this information is hslda.org and local homeschool Facebook groups.
After finding out and registering your child to homeschool, if you need to, the next step is to check what requirements your state has for homeschooling. Do they require a specific number of school days, do they require a portfolio review and are there specific subjects they require to be taught.
Once you have all that information it’s as simple as figuring out what curriculum you want to use, finding easy ways to track the information you need to give to the school board, and picking what things you want to study.
Homeschool Kindergarten Schedule
Each homeschooling family is going to have a different schedule and each homeschool day is going to look a little bit different.
Your homeschool kindergarten schedule will depend a lot on you and your preferences as well as what is required in your state.
How many hours a day to homeschool kindergarten
Each state has different requirements for homeschoolers, some don’t require much while others have a whole list of requirements.
In the state of Maryland, there isn’t a set number of school days or hours that homeschoolers have to do each year. Typically our school calendar follows similar months as the typical school year, but with different breaks throughout it.
A typical day of homeschool kindergarten at our house includes about 20-30 minutes of book work and reading and then an hour or two of fun activities (my kids have no idea its school!). These activities are spread throughout the day not always all done together.
But honestly, my kids are learning all day as we do life together, talk, play, and read.
Our Daily Homeschool Kindergarten Schedule
First off let me just say if you’re looking for a schedule that shares specific times that things get done, you won’t find it here. I don’t do well with set time schedules so we don’t do them.
Instead, we try to have a routine sometimes it gets mixed up but usually, we do things in a specific order just without set times.
We start our mornings doing a simple Fabulous 5 routine after which the kids are ready for the day and school.
Our school day starts at a different time every day but usually we try to start by about 10 so we can be done with school stuff by lunch time. Some days though we end up doing school in the afternoon.
Our typical school day schedule looks something like this, but keep in mind that we aren’t doing worksheets for most of these subjects.
Devotional and Morning Binders
We use our mornings by doing a devotional or circle time as some like to call it and a couple of pages in the kid’s Morning Binders.
Our devotional time typically consists of a morning prayer, singing a song or two, working on something the kids are memorizing, the pledge and reading a couple stories.
Then we do a couple of pages in the kids morning binders. The first page we do is the date, then we do the weather and then we write in journals. This is also a great time to work on writing their name with these fun name craft ideas.
Daily Goals
After morning time we have daily goals that we do the order of these changes almost every day. These daily goals are things I want the kids to do each day – not always is it a worksheet, many times it’s a hands-on activity.
Our daily goals include:
- Reading
- Writing
- Math
- Language Arts
- Exercise / Health
- Creative Time
- Social Studies or Science
We usually do Language Arts and Math first then Social Studies or Science and the order for the rest of the goals changes every day.
What Subjects to Teach in Homeschool Kindergarten
Personally I think the most important things to teach your kids in kindergarten are beginning reading and math skills and play.
But as you might have noticed our daily schedule includes a lot more than just math and reading. That is because Maryland state law requires that Math, Language Arts, Science, Health, Social Studies, Music, Art and P.E. be taught from kindergarten through grade 12.
So while we do include these subjects in our daily schedule we combined many of them and do them in a fun and hands on way. We also cover some of these subjects in the books we choose to use read.
Homeschool Kindergarten Curriculum
If you’re just getting started with homeschooling let me wish you luck. There are tons of homeschooling curriculum options and tons of opinions about each option.
Honestly the best way to figure out what curriculum you want to use is to do some research and see if the curriculum fits with your vision of homeschooling.
Also don’t be afraid to change, just because you used one curriculum one year doesn’t mean you need to the same curriculum the next year.
Curriculum Options
I’m not going to go into detail about each different curriculum that would take way to much time. But I do want to give you an overview of some of the options that are out there.
Online Curriculum
There are a few online homeschool programs where all of your child’s school is done online. These programs typically follow more of a public school curriculum base and cover all the subjects required by your state.
One of the most popular online public/ homeschool curriculum options is the K-12 program.
Keep in mind that with this option you have very little control over what is taught for each subject and what the daily lesson requirements are.
All in One Curriculum
All in once curriculum is where you can get all of the curricula for all of the subjects from the same company. This makes it really easy since you just pick one company and order everything. Easy Peasy All-in-One Homeschool is an option I hear about frequently from other homeschoolers.
Piece it Together (Eclectic Homeschooling)
Okay so piece it together isn’t necessarily a type of curriculum, it’s more of a method of putting your homeschool program together.
Piecing together your own curriculum means you can use a variety of different programs depending on the subject. This is a great way to incorporate online classes or tutoring for some subjects, while using christian or secular programs for other subjects.
What Curriculum We are Using
I tend to use a piece it together myself method for homeschooling and it works great for us. Sometime I even change what I’m using mid-school year depending on our interests.
Our Kindergarten Curriculum Picks
For the last several months I have been putting together what curriculum I will be using with my Kindergartner and I’m really excited about it.
Learning together is so much fun especially when you have a good curriculum and activities to enjoy together.
Math
Our main math curriculum will be The Good and The Beautiful Math K. I always hated math so I’m really excited about this hands on curriculum and I have heard amazing things about it.
We will also use some fun math activity sheets for holidays and just for fun that we find on Pinterest. Like this Feed the Shark Math Activity.
Language Arts
For language arts, we will be using The Good and The Beautiful Level K Primer as well as Level K.
We will also be reading aloud together everyday and using the Pizza Hut Book IT! program to keep reading exciting.
This Level K handwriting book as well as keeping a journal is how we work on writing.
Social Studies
We won’t be doing social studies each day but doing a few lessons each month depending on the kids interest.
For Social Studies I decided that I wanted to focus on having the kids learn about the different states. So we will be using Road Trip USA – Geography and History to study and learn about different states and then we will be going on trips to visit those states.
We will be taking this slow and we will not study all 50 states this year, I’m planning on using this curriculum for a couple of years and then possible again when the kids are a little older.
Science
For science this year we will be using Cornerstone Confessions Free Magic School Bus Lesson Plans as a basis for our science. I’m not planning on doing a lot of worksheets instead we will watch the episode and do an experiment or activity to go along with it.
We will also read books that go along with the different subjects.
Music
For music I won’t be using a specific curriculum, I will be using Little Einsteins episodes as part of our program and we will be learning about different composers as while as different instruments and rhythm.
Art
As with music I won’t be using a specific program for art instead we will be doing different projects depending on the season and holidays.
We will also use the youtube channel Art for Kids Hub for learning how to draw different things.
Health
For health, we will be learning about different foods, the human body, and the basics of taking care of ourselves.
I don’t have a curriculum for these subjects we will just use picture books and activities we find on Pinterest. The kids will also be involved in grocery shopping and cooking helping them to learn healthy habits.
P.E
An easy P.E. activity we will incorporate frequently is this Roll the Dice Workout for kids. They can get the wiggles out and practice math! Winning!
We will also be using Cosmic Kids Yoga and hopefully taking some swimming lessons part way through the year.
We will also be doing family hikes and walks as part of our PE program.
I’m sure as we go through this school year additional things will be added to our curriculum and I’ll be sure to come back and add these as resources for those of you looking.
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