Kindergarten Part I: What Worked

Highlights of our first year homeschooling.  Here's what made our first year of homeschooling "work" for us.






* Very few academic "goals."  I wanted Jonathan to continue moving forward in his learning (in phonics, mathematics, etc),  but he was too young for me to say "he needs to mast X by the spring."  This left little stress on me to cross specifics off of our to-do list while I spent time getting to know him and myself in this new context.



* Flexibility.  Seeing as homeschooling was a decision made that very August, I knew we would need the freedom to try a variety of methodologies and learning styles as we discovered what fit our family, and what didn't.  I set myself up to not feel like a failure if we started a curriculum and let it go.  We were learning about us and the process of learning, and that in itself would constitute progress.  Along those lines, we actually scrapped the not-so-cheap phonics / language arts curriculum we bought after day 2.  Yup -- 2 days of workbook and I was over it.  The texts and readers were eventually returned, but we simply ate the cost of the workbook.  That was absolutely the right decision for us.  Just from those two days I had realized: Jonathan needed his handwriting and phonics work to be separate, so that he could progress in each at his own pace.  And I'd seen that workbooks (except for math, actually) make me want to poke my eyes out.  From there, I visited another homeschooling mom and perused her bookshelf for options.  We landed on a very simple phonics book that provided exactly what we needed.  The need for flexibility extends beyond choosing a curriculum.  There are weeks we've done bedtime school (after the younger two are down), days we've done backyard school or park school, and many days we've done no school because it is too pretty outside to bother with books.  On the other hand, we did our lessons every single bad weather day that the local district took off.  If the weather's that bad, might as well catch up on copywork and spelling.

* "Morning Time"  As the year progressed I began placing the topics that were of either highest priority or could be shared with the younger kids as the first part of our morning.  With time, we developed more of a routine.  Reading about "Morning Time" from a number of homeschooling bloggers, and eventually just a few weeks ago from Cindy Rollins herself, I identified the criteria I was using for what would be part of our morning time.  We include those subjects that:
1) Are highest priority (Bible study, scripture memory, prayer)
2) Are for the benefit of the younger children, too  (poetry, hymn, folksong, picture study, picture books)
3) I tend to put off and leave incomplete if left to the end of the day (Spanish)

 * Five In a Row.  Oh goodness, this curriculum brought much joy to all of us.  A few weeks (months?) into the year, I felt that our "Kindergarten" year was far too heavy.  Jonathan was learning lots and enjoying Classical Conversations immensely, but I was aware that he was memorizing a timeline of history and asking questions about the leaders of the Axis powers in WWII while his preschool and kinder counterparts were reading picture books.  We were reading a slew of random books from the library, too, but it wasn't the same.  We began Five in a Row, dwelling with a single, lovely story with beautiful illustrations each week, and we all developed an affection for these books.  While FIAR doesn't align perfectly with Charlotte Mason's methodologies, these books highlighted for me the hear of CM's philosophy, in which children are drawn into a relationship with literature, authors, history, and one another through the sharing of beautiful, well-written literature.  We learned so much about picture study and art appreciation from the illustrations.  We delved into world and American geography and a variety of historical periods.  We discovered favorite authors and favorite illustrators.  We didn't adhere very closely or exactly to the curriculum as outlined, but rather used the lesson plans as an outline for points of discussion and discovery.  FIAR was one of the greatest joys of our Kinder year.

* Poetry.  Why did I think poetry was for high school?  Why did I think you needed to understand cadence and stanza and AABA BBCB CCDC to study poetry?  I think Charlotte Mason's greatest influence on us this year (and there's more on her to come) was the realization that one can glean much from developing a relationship with an art (composer study, picture study, poetry) even before any kind of formal "study" begins.  In fact, I think she would venture that the formal study of an art can and often does hinder appreciation, affection, and relationship with art.  We read a poem or two a day, and the children are discovering their favorites.  We read Robert Louis Stevenson for a few months, and we began to "know" his voice.  His sickly childhood, his vivid imagination, the presence of his nurse in and out of the nursery were part of the scenes in which we pictured him.  It simply hadn't crossed my mind that the kids would come to love poetry.  And it takes very little on my part to once-in-a-while point out the details of a poem's structure.  One day I'll highlight a rhyme scheme, or I'll suggest we tap the rhythm while I give a second reading.  I thought asking them to memorize and recite poetry might be a bit of a drudgery, but Jonathan literally jumped up and down with excitement the day he realized he'd memorized a poem that he had come to love.  That first poem will always hold a special place in our hearts.



* Charlotte Mason.  A few weeks into our school year I was "introduced" to this English educator from the turn of the twentieth century, starting with "When Children Love to Learn" by Elaine Cooper.  CM brought nature study to our homeschool, encouraged me to let go of my drive to "school" my 5 year old, and got us outdoors as much as possible.  She showed me how relationships (not just with a teacher, but with those who have lived and written before us) drive our education.  She showed me how habit formation and inspiring character development provide a head-start on many issues of discipline.  I've developed more value for the habit of attention and can see how it can be fostered long, long before a child is old enough to become a problem in the classroom.  And I've discovered the power of narration in taking a subject into one's mind, turning it over to relate it to oneself as a person as well as to other materials and authors, and then communicating all of that back to another person.  Teaching a child as they learn by narration is a joy as you discover how they see the world and what God has brought to them in the material you've provided.  And Charlotte has reminded me that I am responsible for providing a feast of material and ideas to my children, but that ultimately they are solely responsible for their learning.



* Classical Conversations.  While CM and CC cannot be said to entirely mesh in their philosophies of education, both have brought much to our family.  CC brought us community and mentors in homeschooling.  As we are now attending a CC in our own area, the value of that community is growing richer.  Jonathan discovered a love of history as we learned a timeline of history and 24 sentences of key points in world history last year.  He absolutely loves our community day and his class of friends, and the opportunity to give a presentation before his peers each week is invaluable.

As far as actual curricula that we found worked well for us last year, I'll save that part for another post!

For context, Jonathan has an August birthday.  At the start of last school year he turned 5, and we were quite undecided whether the year would constitute Kindergarten or Preschool.  The work we did was largely Kinder level, but at this point we'll call it PreK5.  This 2014-2015 year will generally be "Kindergarten" for us as well.  And that brings us full-circle to the beginning: Flexibility.