Here we are at the end of the year so I thought I would write a post on how we homeschooled Kindergarten for almost FREE. We are just about to wrap up for summer break. When we first decided to homeschool, I spent tons of time researching curriculum, how to do it, what was required for Kindergarten, and anything on the agenda of “how to homeschool.”
At First
Before I started, I was planning to buy all Abeka. I had talked to many homeschool parents and Abeka seemed to be the popular choice. The whole bundle was expensive but I was planning to buy a little at a time. When I joined our local co-op, they had a meeting for members to sell, give away, or trade their used curriculum. I checked out all the free items. Low and behold the Abeka K5 manusript writing curriculum was on the FREE table.
I got it home and began skimming through it. The more I looked through it, the more I did not like how Abeka was set up or at least for kindergarten. I also felt it was a little bit of a rip off. It only covered how to write letters in odd sequences by using a house, basement, and attic. I understand the concept but I felt it could be confusing and unnecessary to use a house to teach a child their letters. I didn’t feel I needed a book to tell me how to teach my daughter how to write her letters. It did include Phonics but I found a FREE phonics program to work through. I’ll tell more about it below. Anyways, if you use Abeka and love it, then great. But for us, I am so glad I didn’t sink a ton of money into Abeka. My best advice, go to a homeschool convention where you can look inside the books before you purchase. Find someone who already has the curriculum to look through. Many curriculums off a free PDF sample of the curriculum. This can give a good idea if the curriculum may or may not be right for you.
The Basics
My daughter had a head start on Kindergarten. She knew her ABCs, could count to 20, colors, could write her name, and shapes. We didn’t spend any time covering these (except writing her letters) since she already knew all of these. But if your child doesn’t know these things, you will want to spend some time on the very basics before moving on.
Math
We used Math-U-See Primer for our primary math curriculum. I had researched many different types of currciulum and had never even heard of Math-U-See. A dear friend gave us Math-U-See Primer, Alpha, and Beta. She also gave us the blocks and DVD that go with the Math-U-See. All I can say is, we LOVE Math-U-See. I personally love the DVD that you can watch with your child before the lesson. Both of my daughters love using the blocks. Math U See has printable worksheets from their web site to go along with their books excluding the Primer book. Math-U-See worksheets. I could easily find free worksheets to print out that went along with the lesson.
We worked through Primer fairly quickly. My daughter knew some of the content so we would quickly go over it just to make sure she knew the material and advance to the next lesson. We would spend extra time on things she didn’t know such as learning how to tell time.
We finished Primer in February or March and since we only had 2-3 more months left, I didn’t want to dive into Alpha only to stop in the very middle of the book. So we began reviewing all the materials that we had covered.
As soon as I felt there was no more to review, we began learning about money. We have learned and are still learning about who is on the coins, how much each coin is worth, how many pennies (quarters, dimes, nickels) it take to equal a dollar, the cent sign, how to write it in decimal form, adding cents, using the cent sign and in written form. I plan on setting up a “grocery stand” with all her play food. Then having her come purchase food with her play money. 🙂 I easily found free printable worksheets to use for her money lessons.
Language Arts
At the beginning of the year, my daughter already knew her ABCs. When I say knew, she really knew them. She could sing the song and distinguish the difference between the letters. She could write some of the letters but she needed some practice. She also needed help with Uppercase letters and Lowercase letters. She would write random uppercase and lowercase letters. She also could read but I figured she needed to practice writing both uppercase and lowercase letters. I bought a simple writing tablet from my local Wal-Mart for about $5-$6. It might have been a little cheaper than $5. I don’t remember the exact price but I know it was fairly cheap. There is also free printable handwriting paper. Donna Young has different styles of printable writing paper. I don’t know if its cheaper to pay for the ink or just buy penmanship paper. I figured it would cost more to print the paper than buy the tablet so that’s the route I went with. I am thinking I have seen them available at Dollar Tree so you might be able to pick them up for $1.
For Phonics, I used Progressive Phonics. It is a FREE phonics program and includes handwriting worksheets. There are three parts to the phonics program; Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. Each part has books to work through for each part. You can download the books and save them on your hard drive. You can just view them on your computer or you can e-mail the PDF file to your kindle e-mail address, put them in your dropbox or icloud to view on your ipad. I looked into other phonics programs but none of them seemed to sit right with me and this one was laid out well. To top it all off, it was the right price…FREE! Like I said above, my daughter could already read for the most part but there were some things she needed to touch base on. I didn’t want to sink a ton of money into a phonics program and only use part of the program.
Once a week, we make a trip to the library. Both of my daughters LOVE Thursdays. We get a variety of books including ones she could read herself and books we read to her. The hubby typically would be the reader for the books she couldn’t read by herself. Since I did the majority of the homeschooling, he wanted to help out. This was one simple thing he could do that I feel really makes a huge impact on our daughters’ (both of them) academic excellence. Check out this article, 10 reasons why you should read to your kids. Another thing we do is a daily bible study. We read one chapter a day and she reads the last verse. Check out a previous post to see how we a daily bible study, Why our family does a daily devotional.
Bible 
We feel that the Bible is one of the most important topics we can possibly teach our children. It is the foundation of our home and want it to be the foundation in our children’s education. When we first began homeschooling, I used Calvary Curriculum. I used the Little Ones Curriculum. The Curriculum is 100% free and has Little Ones Curriculum (3years old-K) and Children’s Currilum (1st-6th). The front page was always the verses your were studying, bullet points, and questions to ask. We feel the only thing you really need to teach your children is the Bible itself but supplements such as worksheets are nice to have. So I would read directly from the bible covering the topics for the date selected. After reading, I would explain it to my daughter on her level. I would only use the front page to help me come up with my own questions. The next few sheets of papers were coloring sheets, memory verse, mazes, word searches, crosswords all centered around the week’s reading.
As soon as we started doing our family devotional (you can read about it here, Why our family does a daily devotional), I stopped using Calvary Curriculum. Things were hectic and time was limited so our family devotional took the place of Calvary Curriculum.
Science
Science is usually not a subject covered in Kindergarten so I chose to do the Science, Social Studies, and Arts/Crafts on Fridays. For science, sometimes I would pick the topic to cover and other times my daughter picked the topic. I used MANY resources including documentaries, lap books, unit studies, worksheets, web sites for the topic we were covering. One week, used a butterfly lap-book for our entire study. It covered, science, math, and language arts. By the way, if you have never done a lap book, they are awesome! Homeschool Share has a TON of free resources for lap books and note-booking. Here is the Butterfly Lap-book we did. Another week, we took a fishing trip and learned about fish. We covered the anatomy, different kinds of fish, what you need to go fishing, and of course we battered the fish and cooked them! I used some of the fishing lap book resources and note booking pages from Homeschool Share. 2 weeks ago, we learned everything there was to know about Rolly Pollies! This was her choice and I learned quite a bit of things as well. Some of the other topics we have covered was 5 senses, sink or float, animals, and natural vs artificial (man made vs made by God). Basically it was a pick and choose topic. I basically did the child led learning and if she didn’t pick out a topic, I would choose one I thought she might enjoy.
Social Studies
In social studies we covered many different topics. I typically chose to teach about things I felt she was ready to learn. Some of the topics I covered was Community Workers, the state of Texas (our home state), the states of America, Our city, Holidays, Basic Human Needs, and Needs vs wants. One of the weeks for our study of Texas, we did a lap-book. Most of the materials was listed on homeschool share- Connections U.S.A. but I also pulled other materials from other sites. If you click on the previous link, there are resources for all the states and if you would like to add you own, check our their lapbooking resources. It has “type it in” lap-books where you can fully customize your materials that go into your lapbook, templates, the Master Lapbook List, youtube video about lapbooks, and of course a link to their blog that tells everything about lapbooks. This is especially great if your new to lapbooking so check out the Lapbook Series.
Real Life Learning
One some Fridays we would focus on Real Life learning which would take the place of Social Studies. One day, we drove around the neighborhood and city to learn about the street signs. She learned how to use a cell phone, our phone numbers, weather, seasons, days of the week, 911 and when to call 911, and her address. She practiced using the phone and calling momma and daddy’s cell phone number. Then we played on the phone. After we learned our address, she got to write letters to her grandparents! The grandparents loved the letters just as much as she enjoyed sending them. And what she loved the best was receiving a letter!! LOL
Some of the other life learning lessons was using measuring cups, growing seeds, making her own bed, and helping mama cook and she learned how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She made her a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and one for her sister. And let me tell you, it was the “BEST PB&J sandwich EVER!!” LOL
Workbooks and Other Resources
On days I was sick, extremely busy, or just plain tired I had back up solutions. I picked up workbooks from our local Teacher Resource store. They were called Ready-Set-Learn: Math Puzzles and Games Grd 1
, Ready-Set-Learn: Beginning Skills PreK-K
, Ready-Set-Learn: Kindergarten Fun (Gr. K)
and Ready-Set-Learn: Following Directions (Gr. K-1)
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I also used StarFall, Cool Math Games, and ABC Mouse.
Star fall is very good for Phonics. Cool Math Games is exactly like it sounds. It has math games for kids. ABC Mouse is an all around learning experience for ages 2-6 years of age. However, there is a paid subscription with ABC Mouse. It is free for private schools, teacher in a public school, or have preschoolers. In the state of Texas, homeschoolers are legally considered private schools so this is how I got the subscription for free. You can look at the details for the free subscription at ABC Mouse for schools.
I also use Planboard to plan my lesson plans. It’s a free site and I love how it is laid out. You can create classes, auto fills, insert youtube videos, and more. Check it out. It’s a really neat lesson planner. The best part is you don’t have waster paper. There is also a Planboard app available on the ipad.
So this is how we homeschooled kindergarten for almost free! There was some expected expenses such as supplies, field trips, craft supplies, etc. I am sure I have missed a lot of information but hope I have given enough information to help others out.
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. (Proverbs 22:6)
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