The homeschool curriculum choices blog posts are great, but what I really want to know is what families thought AFTER they used the curriculum they chose!  I will be sharing a series of posts with you; evaluating our choices in each grade level and our group subjects.

Next, Kindergarten! Here’s a reminder of the original Kindergarten Curriculum Choices post, and here are our literacy and math goals.

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Below I will go through each one separately and tell you our thoughts now that the year is complete. But before I do that I want to answer the most frequently asked question I get about our Kindergarten – always about our daily routine!

Although every day was different, and things changed throughout the year, here’s a basic outline of what we did each week…

• Literature Units ~ almost every day we usually did 1-3 activities per day.
• YCR Sight Words ~ more intense in the beginning, with up to 3 activities per day, more mild in the end when she was learning the words faster.  1-2 activities per day, only 2-3 days a week.
• YCR Word Families ~ same as above, more intense and daily in the beginning, only 2 days a week near the end.
• RLRS ~ we usually did one letter per week, doing 1 activity per day.  For most of the year she did the coloring page, the letter tracing page and the glue the verse page.  This was a small part, although we did spend lots of casual time talking about the verse and learning the verse tune.
• Logic of English Foundations A~ we did a few lessons per week, depending on the lessons.  I would stop when she seemed done.  Some of the lessons were longer so there wasn’t an exact method to this.
• All About Reading 1 ~ we started this in the early spring and she flew through it usually doing at least one lesson per day, sometimes more {at her request}
• Spielgaben ~ we usually only did 1 formal lesson per week, sometimes 2.  There was free play a lot but I usually only planned 1-2 lessons per week.  I loved the simple and engaging math lessons we did with Spielgaben, which we are still doing and will do throughout 1st grade!
• Daily Literacy & Spelling ~ she did this with Daddy, usually about 3-4 times per week. She really liked both, so it was a pretty simple add in.

Kindergarten Literature Units

I created these units on a whim and they were by far my favorite part of her homeschool year!  This was the core of her math curriculum, building in Kindergarten math skills in a simple way. She loved these units as much as I did. I am so glad I went with this plan, it was a great fit for her.

Here’s a recap of the units she completed during her Kindergarten year, in the order we did them.

       

You Can Read Sight Words

This was a great fit for Ladybug, as it was for Krash when he used it. She picked up on sight words quickly and enjoyed the units.  Near the end we actually stopped before the units were complete because I “pretested” her before preparing the next unit and she already knew the words!  Her reading skills really took off in the spring and there was no need to work on words she already knew!  So, we stopped YCR Sight Words after Unit 13 {skipping units 14-18}.  We did very little with the color/number word units also, since she knew those words too.

Here’s a recap of the units she completed this year.

You Can Read Word Families

I only wish I had created these earlier in the year.  I added them in a bit too late in the year but she still loved them.  After 7 units she had mastered CVC words so I didn’t even use the remaining units I had created with her.  Had we begun earlier we would have been able to use them all I bet.

Here’s a recap of the units she completed, click to see the post!

 

 

   

We now have the bundle available for purchase.

Raising Lil’ Rock Stars Through the Bible A-Z

She enjoyed learning verses with me, but this wasn’t her favorite part of homeschooling Kindergarten.  She didn’t dislike it, she just preferred other subjects. It was a very simple way to do a few things ~ memorize and learn verses, work on handwriting, reinforce new words within the verses and practice sight words. We didn’t make it through the entire alphabet, mostly due to life circumstances slowing us down.  We are currently still finishing!

See all of the units we have done here…

Logic of English Foundations A

We both LOVED LOE Foundations A!  I explained how we used this curriculum along with All About Reading in this post.  We were given LOE to review and I wanted to give it a try.  It ended up being the perfect thing to use right before All About Reading Level 1.

I tried to write out my review of this but just couldn’t so I made a video instead.  It’s about 6 minutes, walking you through the parts I really liked about this curriculum.

All About Reading Level 1

We began AAR 1 after we hit lesson 30 in LOE A, around February. It was the perfect transition and she has breezed through the All About Reading lessons.

She LOVED the books and so do I.  We will be moving on with AAR and beginning level 2 soon! Here’s a post I shared about organizing All About Reading.

Spielgaben

This was such a fun part of our homeschool and a part that I am really glad we added in.  Much of her math knowledge has come from working with our Spielgaben set. We will be continuing on with Spielgaben for 1st grade, mainly for math.

 

        

Integrity Time Bible

I truly love this program, but sadly I had to let it go when we were going through our move, and my husband’s injury recovery.  It was the extra that just had to give. She really, really liked the lessons, I just didn’t make time to add them back in once we moved.

Daily Literacy

We loved our Daily Literacy work and I made a little video to give you a better look…

Spelling

I ordered a simple spelling book using Zulily credit and I am so glad I did.  It ended up being a great fit for my daughter, here’s a peek in a video I made…

Kindergarten Apps

We used some great apps this year and I share them in this post.  I love everything listed and we will continue to use our iPad for homeschool learning in 1st grade too!

Want to see more of Kindergarten in action? Browse through our wrap-up posts, they are listed in order here and there’s a section for each of my kids in each post.

• The First 6 Weeks Wrap-Up
• Monthly Wrap-Up January 2015
• Monthly Wrap-Up February 2015
• Monthly Wrap-Up March 2015
• Monthly Wrap-Up April 2015

Stay tuned, I will be sharing our year-end review for our All Together subjects.  I will also be sharing our curriculum choices for 8th grade, 4th grade, 1st grade and All Together subjects.

We already shared our 7th Grade Year-End Review and our 3rd Grade Year-End Review.