robina79 wrote:My daughter started her kindergarten year in public school and right after Christmas my husband and I decided to pull her out and start homeschool. I ordered a basic curriculum since she was in school for the first half of the year. I'm doing 2-3 units a week trying to figure out where she is at in her learning. Is this a good or bad idea? Is there any other way to figure out where I should pick up? She knows all her ABC sounds and written. Knows how to write them. Knows numbers 1-20 but stumbles on 13 which I think most do. Can count to 20 and recognizes up 100. I am lost on what to do. I don't want to bore her, which I am. When I talk about the unit subjects she knows them all so far.
Thank you all for your help.
Robin
If you have just taken her from public school in December she may need some time to slow down and get into the groove of home learning. It will be very different from what she did at school, with much shorter days and plenty of time for play. It can take a while to get out of the classroom mindset for both the student and the parent. Slow down, take a breath, and take the time needed to adjust to this change. Enjoy the new freedom and time you will have to help your daughter learn through playing and to make learning enjoyable.
If she is claiming to be bored, it sounds as if you may need to delve a little more deeply into the units and broaden the scope of ideas, which is easy to do with the help of the library... or even the internet. Instead of just learning about the unit subject (let's say you're on the N unit, Nest), expand it out into all sorts of animal homes. Look for books on animals that live in dens, burrows, or even hives. Talk about how God protects some creatures in their homes by allowing them to hibernate, and explore that with books. Talk about animal habitats and ways that God has provided everything they need for safety.
Or for the Elephant unit, take the time to compare African versus Asian elephants, where they each live, and their different adaptations to their environments. You can male comparison charts and expand this into a lesson about comparing and contrasting. Learn about how Asian elephants are used for work in India, or learn about Jumbo the famous circus elephant and the history of circuses in general. Look up the elephant sanctuary in Hohenwald Tennessee and explore their website to see how they help retired circus and zoo elephants. Look up the extinct elephant types such as mammoths and mastodons and compare them to modern day creatures.
There is much to learn about every unit. She can't possibly know
all there is to know about a unit subject... surely? My daughter already knew a great deal about the animal based units and so we fleshed them out into areas she did not know. There is so much depth that can be gone into for each unit to make it fun and engaging. If she claims to know everything about a subject, find and then explore something she
doesn't yet know. There are many ideas for this in the Kindergarten Ideas section of this forum which can be reached by scrolling down from the Board Index page.
Are you taking the time to do most of the projects and activities? If you are going at a pace of 2-3 units per week this may not be possible. The hands on learning in MFW is there to engage a child and help her learn skills and science topics in a very non-boring way. I can't imagine that you can be including many of these fun activities if you are going at such a fast pace. The activities for each unit and the Bible character lessons are the heart of the curriculum and much is missed if these are glanced over or done too hurriedly. The Bible lessons especially need time to be absorbed. Kindergarten is so much more than just knowing letter names, letter sounds and numbers.
If she already knows all her letters and their sounds, you can still work on improving handwriting, blending the sounds to make words, and reading short vowel stories. There are many great learning games listed in the teacher's manual which can make this sort of learning fun... and lots of ideas in the Kindergarten Ideas section of this forum. Same with numbers and math. If there is something scheduled that just seems far "too easy" for her, cover it briefly, move past it and go on to something more challenging. But do the activities and don't skip the fun!
Please remember that learning at home is going to appear very different from public school, and attitudes and expectations may need time to change.
If you could tell us what unit you are currently on, we may be able to offer some ideas.
I'm Shawna...
... a forgiven child of God since 1994 (age 16)
... happily wed to William since 1996
... mother of our long-awaited Gail (3/15/2006)
... missing 6 little ones (4 miscarriages, 2 ectopics)
... starting Rome to the Reformation this fall!
Is there an easy way to look it up the requirements with your state? I'm in TX. There is absolutely no oversight here! Can't give advice on that. HTH
It was more like "E. Learn how to shirk your personal responsibility because someone else in the group will do it for you." (I was the responsible one who did everyone else's work, can you tell?)
All regular church-going families, by the way. Their parents would have been aghast that wasting water was the only sin their child could name. And I have a suspicious feeling that such as this is the emphasis in social studies in public school these days...