Sunflower Faith

Here’s a rough idea of what we are doing for the rest of kindergarten.

For myself, I’ve ordered,”The Life Journal” from enewhope.org/bible/ and along with the bookmarks that I received from “Mom’s Toolbox” (thank you so much!), looking forward to doing my own “homeschooling” in God’s Word.

In the process, I’ve been looking more and more into AO (Ambleside Online via amblesideonline.org) and the Charlotte Mason method and found that, it works more and more for our learning style so I used most of vacation not only reading but re-doing a lot of how we have been learning and I have to say….the kids have taken to it like a fish to water.

I really like this method because it really makes learning more natural and fun like it should be and without boxing the child into a “school, sit at a desk style”. *Note* I don’t do a pure form of Charlotte Mason/AO but I try to do a close form but with a “twist”

Our current schedule for the rest of the year is basically as follows:

Bible -(Daily)
We use:

• “The New Bible in Pictures for Little Eyes (Hardcover)” by Kenneth Taylor amazon.com/New-Bible-Pictures-Little-Eyes/dp/0802430570
• Rocket Readers
• Bible coloring sheets printed off from the Internet
• and we have a bible verse that the kids will memorize each week.
• Phonics-Daily
• Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons (Paperback) by Siegfried Engelmann; This has worked really great for us amazon.com/Teach-Your-Child-Read-Lessons/dp/0671631985/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231180720&sr=1-1
• Work one list every two weeks of dolch words printed from: theschoolbell.com/ This is a method that has worked for us particularly on words such as “the”, etc.
• Reading Aloud-Daily
• Mother Goose-MWF
• Aesop Fables for Children-T and Th
• Penmanship/Copywork-Daily
• We are working on letter development using printables from the Internet and the StartWrite program to create our own handwriting/copywork. I love the Startwrite program because we can create our own copywork and also we can add our own images if we want
• Very very basic copywork of even copying Mother Goose rhymes
• Math-Daily mixture of copywork and mostly math facts drilling
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• *Updated to add*, I forgot to add that we are studying unit on Time; Basically learning how to recite the days of the week in order and the months in order and how to read a clock (old fashion way, lol).
• Math is basically a mixture of copywork, daily mathfacts, workbooks that we get from Walmart (great source and it’s inexpensive”.
• We also use a blank hundred chart sheet to teach counting from one to 100 and skip counting.
• Science-Study 3 times a week
• We use “What Every Child should know in Kindergarten” by Ed Hirsch as a basis of what kids need to be learning right now; For example…starting our “Organisms” unit we started out bible study this morning reading and discussing about Genesis and about God created the world and all living and non-living beings and from there I use a Montessari method of “hands on” using a chart I created from a file folder cut in half.                                                                                                              I label one, “Living” and the other “Non-Living” and using pictures of Living and Non-living, we talked about what makes an organism living or non-living and how to classify them as living and non-living. It was also a great opportunity while talking about living and non-living to go, “remember earlier when we read Genesis” to reinforce and discuss about the “Creation story” and the bible verse that the kids were memorizing this week which is Chapter 1, Verse 10,”God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters He called seas; and God saw that it was good.
• I am hoping to find a used copy of Jeannie’s Fulbright, “Exploring Creation With Astronomy” and “Exploring Creation With Zoology 2: Swimming Creatures of the 5th Day” to begin using starting in the first grade this coming fall.Though I am saving up to buy her accompanying journals for them,new, if I can find the actual books inexpensively, it would help our budget so much otherwise, my plan is to try and buy one of these books, maybe next month or next, wait two months and buy the others, so I can just have them on hand and ready when, we, are ready to use them.
• Starting Term 3, we are also going to start nature journals and take nature walks for our nature study, beginning with Hummingbirds in the Spring.
• *Note* We have our Terms spread out differently, hence any confusion or questions what are we doing? LOL
• Social Studies-Twice a week
• We will be learning about maps and what they are for and about our community
• memorize the continents and seas and where they are
• Never too late or early to learn about manners
• Art-Twice a week
• Pick an artist to learn about; I found a site that kids can use masterpieces as coloring pages to fill in
• basic drawing
• create an artist notebook