Our Schooling Philosophy:
When we decided to homeschool, I devoured everything I could find on developing a philosophy of home education. I fell in love with Charlotte-Mason-inspired visions of our kids spending time in nature and being immersed in an atmosphere of education. I drank in the wisdom of Elizabeth’s Foss’s Real Learning Revisited and Sarah Mackenzie’s Teaching From Rest. I binged on the Commonplace podcast, determined to introduce my children to the good, true, and beautiful and so help them acquire a life-long taste for them. We also joined a classical co-op (one of my husband’s many requirements for homeschooling was that I not do it alone, but in community with other moms) that was heavily focused on memory work.
There’s vision, and then there’s reality. My daughter was constantly asking for worksheets and begging to “do more school.” What a problem to have, I know. Despite everyone’s assurances that “it’s just kindergarten” and “it only takes 45 minutes at this stage,” that was just not enough for our girl. On top of that, and although I loved all this theory, I needed something concrete to sink my teeth into. I craved a practical how-to with a checklist. As much as I love the idea of getting lost in learning, it just makes me anxious to spend our whole day covered in acrylic paint or building a replica of an Egyptian pyramid. My daughter and I both need more structure than that.
So what did we end up doing? What follows is our year-in-review, an assessment of what we did this past year that will serve as the jumping off point for the next. One piece of advice in Mackenzie’s book that I heard moms echo all year was to do a mini-assessment like this every six weeks. That was an indispensably helpful piece of advice, and the reflections below are a culmination of those mini assessments along the way.
Science:
What we loved: we started seeds in winter, planted a garden, raised backyard chickens, and did experiments here and there. We visited the zoo, apple and cherry orchards, and the Discovery Science Center to learn about bugs.
On days where my efforts felt limited by morning sickness and crippling prenatal depression, we enjoyed Bill Nye, Modern Marvels, How It’s Made, Grow Cook Eat, Mythbusters, and SciShowKids, with a side of This is America, Charlie Brown.
What didn’t work: curriculum. At the beginning of the year, I bought units on energy and bugs, space, oceans. When those were a little too much for us, we switched to a read-aloud recommended by our co-op. Never made it past the first chapter. I even printed off a few units from Teachers Pay Teachers. We just didn’t make time for them most days, and we didn’t enjoy them when we did. I’m saving the unit studies for use in future years. For now, we are happy keeping science hands-on.
Religion:
I adored reading through the Jesus Storybook Bible one story at a time with our kids. I was 100% convinced it was Catholic because of the selection of stories and the way each covenant story ended up pointing to Jesus. Turns out, it isn’t by Catholic authors after all. Regardless, it is still our favorite children’s Bible so far.
We started working our way through this memory verse coloring book. It worked well for us because my daughter adores coloring and memory work, and she really enjoys going through the colored pages for review of all that she’s learned. Alas, we did not finish all 77 verses this year, so we will continue with that for first grade.
We also had a children’s saint book in our morning time basket and read the next bio every time we picked it up. A friend gave us this book on saints and my daughter “loved the creepy pictures.” She immediately book-marked the creepiest pictures for us to read those stories first. (Much to my horror, she gravitates towards Tim Burton-style stories and animation. Yet she insists that Star Wars is “too creepy” for her. I’m not sure we’re related.)
That was basically what we wanted to accomplish with kindergarten religion. She already knows several prayers by heart and leads us in a decade of the rosary at night (she thrives on leadership, accolades, accomplishment - okay, maybe she is mine, after all. Poor dear.)
Next year we will likely do more of the same - Bible, saints, prayers, maybe a few hymns (okay I won’t lie. We will definitely throw in some Matt Maher and Chris Tomlin and Audrey Asaad - yes I know she left the church but her prayers are just as hauntingly beautiful.)
I’d like to amp up our participation in the liturgical year, but with a newborn on the way - who knows? I’ve at least got a system: I input ideas from Kendra Tierney’s Catholic All Year into my iphone calendar, and maybe do some related Etsy crafts that require little prep, few materials, and no planning. Catholic Icing is good for that. We did her Our Lady of Fatima pop-ups this past week and they are stellar.
The thing is, my daughter sees this incredibly basic craft as glorious. She asked if we could keep it up all year. We feel so much unnecessary pressure sometimes (at least I do) that we forget it’s not about the end product at all. It’s about the moments of conversation with our kids, the memories and the joy they will (hopefully) associate with learning about and practicing our faith. That is the goal, far more than perfect catechetical memorization or Pinterest-worthy products.
Math
We started the year using The Good and the Beautiful’s Kindergarten Math. Their curriculum had so many opportunities for manipulatives and hands-on moments. But between shushing screaming toddlers (or ripping them off the bookshelves) and workbook fatigue on my daughters part, we just didn’t enjoy it. And it wasn’t necessary. We did some chocolate chip math with various edible materials but her favorite by far was color-by-number (which eventually became color-by-the-answer-to-the-addition-or-subtraction-problem). I found most of these at Teachers Pay Teachers. She loved it. Eventually I just started ripping out pages from our workbook and highlighting the sections I wanted her to complete for practice and skipping all the other activities.
Kinder goal: addition and subtraction. Can she do it? Yes. Can she do it without counting her fingers or other nearby objects? That’s what first grade is for.
She came away from kindergarten loving math. Even if she couldn’t add at all and barely knew her numbers, that alone would be enough for me to walk away from kinder math feeling like we accomplished something important.
Next year, we will be switching to Abeka’s Arithmetic 1. Still kid-friendly with its colorful illustrations, but much cleaner practice-focused without all the added instructions of G&B’s learning activities. I will probably circle back to G&B with my sons who are more hands-on, but this is a good move for us right now.
Literature
We read about half of the Little House series, tons of picture books from the library, and a sprinkling of stories out of an ancient myths anthology recommended by our co-op. My daughter’s favorite chapter book this year was by far Ella Enchanted. I think it is still winning over A Little Princess, which we are still finishing up at bedtime each evening.
Another win was reading a children’s version of The Tempest before taking her to see it performed at the Idaho Shakespeare festival. This isn’t something I’d recommend for 5-year-olds, but my daughter was enchanted, and because we were familiar with the story beforehand, she was even able to identify the characters and follow along with the plot.
I could read forever, and that may be the beginning of my downfall in this arena. Some of the readings we chose (i.e. the ancient tales) weren’t as fun as they could have been. I was so eager to skip ahead that I may have missed a moment to simply enjoy the wonder of stories. The kids are only little once. Next year, we will include more picture books and more excitement. Any Catholic books I’ll buy as keepsakes. The rest I’ll order for pickup at the library.
History
Which brings us to history. We read the first few chapters of The Story of the World and the corresponding activity guide was incredible. We got a late start with this and we really didn’t make it past Egypt, but what a blast we had with it. My kids’ pretend play was filled with talk of mummies and pyramids and the Nile and I was tickled every time I overheard one of them playing “pharaoh.” Will definitely use this curriculum in the future. But the kids get most excited by the picture books suggested in the activity guide. So for the reasons above, I plan to use the guide for its booklists until the kids get a bit older.
Reading
I told myself going into kindergarten that if we did nothing else, reading would be enough. Learning to read was the one goal Charlotte identified for herself for kindergarten, and that alone made it a top focus. (I realize some kids don’t read until 7 and that’s great. Studies even show early readers often lack a persistent love of reading more common to kids who learn later. But Charlotte, who started talking at 9 months and telling fully structured stories at 18 months is a highly verbal kid with an incredible vocabulary and gift for turn of phrase, so I knew if she wasn’t learning to read it wasn’t due to lack of readiness but failure on my part to create the opportunity).
So we focused on reading. So many people recommended 100 Easy Lessons but honestly, one glance through the book was enough for me. I hadn’t the least desire, patience, or attention to learn another language while growing a baby, pioneering homeschooling, and ripping toddlers off the bookcases while researching, writing and editing a book. And that’s what 100 Easy Lessons seemed to me. (Maybe it only takes 5 minutes to learn those phonics symbols. We will never know because I didn’t give it that long.)
My common sense philosophy (supported only by my own judgment and some logical extrapolation from Jim Trelease’s Read Aloud Handbook was this: she will learn to read by practice. I will read. She will read. Eventually, it will click.
And that worked so I didn’t have to revisit that philosophy (we will see if it holds true for kids 2, 3, and 4…).
We used The Good and the Beautiful for grammar (I think I liked it more than she did because I am a grammar nerd) and worked our way up with “I can read” type books. (If anyone knows of alternatives that aren’t so mind-numbing, please leave a comment!) Color-by-sight-word worksheets were a big hit. The key with Charlotte (as it was with me) is motivation. Kid will do anything for a sticker or a cookie, or, if I have to bring in the big guns, a trip to YogurtLand. Once we had a solid reward system in place, she pretty much taught herself to read. We plan to continue with this next year until she can read The Magic Treehouse series, which is her stated goal for first grade.
Art
We did a ton of projects in co-op, copied some famous paintings with watercolors, and created many playdough sculptures. She took dance classes at the city until she tired of them, at which point she requested theater instead. She will be attending Shakespeare camp this summer and next year, I plan to outsource art to drop-off classes at a local arts education center because frankly, I think I will have enough wiping up to do with 2- and 4-year-old boys and a newborn at home.
So there you have it. Kindergarten in a nutshell. For a preview of first grade, check out this post on our Catholic homeschooling curriculum.