Every mom starting their homeschool journey wants the best for their kindergartener. In this post, I’m going to share our curriculum picks for kindergarten homeschool curriculum. I’ll share what we loved and what wasn’t a great fit for our first year of homeschooling.
Our Kindergarten Homeschool Philosophy
In the primary years we focus on reading and learning through play. The most important thing you can do for your kindergartener is build a natural curiosity and a love of learning. Providing opportunities for your child to explore and experience the world around them should be a huge focus over sitting at a desk doing formal school work and worksheets.
Charlotte Mason recommends not starting any formal learning before the age of 6. Instead she suggests using this time as a quiet growing period. Allowing your child to spend lots of time immersed in nature, play, and beautiful living picture books.
We took a great deal of inspiration from this philosophy, but chose to add in a small amount of formal instruction in reading and math. The rest of our learning took place through interest led learning, books, nature studies, games, and participating in the family culture of cooking and chores.
Kindergarten Homeschool Reading Curriculum
Our primary focus for academics in kindergarten was reading. If your child can read they can learn anything. I was a school librarian so I feel totally confident building a love of reading with my kids. I had no clue how to actually teach a child to read. Researching curriculums led me to All About Reading. A good reading program for elementary age kids needs to be researched based and fun! All About Reading hits both marks.
All About Reading is an Orton-Gillingham and science of reading based phonics program incorporating five key components of reading: Phonological Awareness, Phonics and Decoding, Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension. It uses a multisensory approach, provides scripted open and go lessons, and is completed at your child’s pace in 20 minutes a day. The curriculum comes with a Teacher’s Manual, Student Activity Book, Leveled Readers, Phonogram and Word Cards, and letter tiles. Throughout the course the curriculum offers amazing suggestions for games and activities to keep you child engaged and loving learning.
While we had so many amazing experiences homeschool. Watching my daughter learn to read has been the best the most amazing experience as a mom!
Kindergarten Homeschool Math Curriculum
We started the school year with Math For A Living Education Level K. Math for a Living Education is a faith based curriculum. Each weeks lesson includes a short story about Twins named Charlie and Charlotte. Sometimes the stories are related to the weeks lesson, other times their is just some character based theme. I loved the open and go lessons. Since the only thing that is required is the super affordable student workbook (there is no teacher’s manual) the curriculum was super easy to use on the go with little prep. There wasn’t a big manipulative kit, instead they just suggested using normal household items for counters and such. My daughter loved the stories and the extension activities.
I didn’t watch any flip throughs before purchasing the curriculum and didn’t know that the Level K for Math for a Living Education is actually below grade level. Since my daughter was enjoying it we decided to stick with it anyways. The gentle approach helped build a love for math. There was actually a decent amount of handwriting involved which helped build her handwriting skills. We just moved at her pace and did multiple lessons, sometimes completing an entire week in one day.
After completing the whole course half way through the year we decided to follow it up with Good and the Beautiful Level K, since we were able to print it for free. We’ll use it to continue to learn and review kindergarten math skills and build number sense until we begin our new 1st grade math curriculum in August. Trying different approaches for math during kindergarten was a great way to test how my daughter learned math best. It helped us in choosing a curriculum to move forward with for the upcoming elementary years.
Interest Based Learning
When it comes to history and science we chose to skip a formal curriculum for kindergarten.
We spend a lot of time outdoors. We hike, explore, garden and involve our kids in all kinds of real life learning opportunities. When we’re outside we talk about what we see, hear, and smell. When my daughter finds a particular interest in things we explore them further through books and videos to dive deeper. My daughter loved finding animal prints around our property. We purchased an animal tracking pocket book, learned to identify tracks and spent a lot of time researching all of the different animals we found in our own backyard.
Living books and hands on learning are great ways to teach about history and geography. We read books about historical events and important people that we checked out through the library or read together on Epic Reads (try for free!). Introducing your child to how they fit in geographically to the world around them is great for kindergarten. We spent time comparing were we live to friends and family and learning more about those locations. Map puzzles are great hands on learning tool for geography, plus puzzles in general are great for building spatial reasoning and problem solving skills.
Kindergarten Read Alouds
We read aloud together every single day. In addition to picture books we started reading chapter books aloud as a family last year and continue that practice into kindergarten. This year we read:
- Little House In The Big Woods
- Stuart Little
- Most of the Princess in Black Series
- The Trumpet of the Swan
- Sophie Mouse Series
- Mrs. Pigglewiggle
In addition to us reading aloud to our kids we also use audiobooks throughout our day. My kids love listening to stories at the dining room table on their Yoto player while they color, paint, or work on puzzles. We also use Epic reads during quiet time. My daughter loves that Epic Reads offers read to me picture books so she can see the pages and listen to the book. She listens to a few books while I put her brother down for his nap and then we get to do something fun together.
My Favorite Things From Homeschool Kindergarten
The best gift of homeschool was the time I got back with my daughter. When ever we were playing outside during the day, reading on the porch or baking together I would instantly get this sense of gratitude that I got this bonus time with her when she could have been away from us missing out on our family adventures.
Helping my daughter learn to read was absolutely amazing! I 100% that reading gives you the power to learn anything and helping her build that foundation was such a great experience as a mom. She felt so proud the first time she read a real book all by her self and I got to be there to experience the joy it brought to her.
Something I didn’t expect about being a home school mom but love so much is how much I’m learning right alongside my kids! I’ve learned so much about nature through our nature studies and we’ve taken on projects like gardening and new recipes as a family that have taught us all a whole lot.
My Biggest Lesson Learned
Your kindergarten homeschool curriculum doesn’t actually matter as much as you think! We put so much pressure on ourselves to pick out the perfect curriculum and the truth is there isn’t one. The homeschool curriculum you choose each year should fit the needs of your individual child and family dynamics. Those needs will change from child to child or from year to year as your family grows and changes. Connection is always the most important part of your homeschool!
I hope you found our journey helpful and encouraging as you start on you own homeschool adventures! If you need any more help or encouragement send a message I’d love to help in any way I can.
*Affiliate links used. All thoughts and opinions are 100% my own.
Save this post to reference as you plan your own Kindergarten homeschool curriculum!
