Our 2019-2020 Kindergarten
We finished up our first “official” year homeschooling in May. It was a very sweet intro to homeschool life and we all enjoyed it thoroughly. We just started up again after a fun (and crazy…#coronavirus) summer, but before we get too far into the year, I wanted to take time to share what we did last year for kindergarten during our inaugural year homeschooling.
Now, hear me say this: I am not a seasoned homeschool mom (clearly). I am just figuring this whole thing out and making changes as we go along. Most of my decisions are based on what makes sense for our family (my capacity with having four little kids and also financial considerations) rather than on the ideal homeschool curriculum. But I do want to give you a brief overview and my personal review of the materials we used in case that would be helpful for you as you plan your year!
For Kindergarten with our oldest, I used My Father’s World. My main motivator in using this curriculum was that a dear friend let us borrow her teacher’s guide so all I had to purchase was the student worksheets, which was about $60. I already had a few of the extra books we needed for the year and we are frequent visitors to the library so I was able to get my hands on almost all the books we needed.
What I loved about My Father’s World Kindergarten:
It is a very gentle introduction to formal schooling.
I think MFW does a great job of slowly introducing the child to formal school. My Father’s World incorporates many of Charlotte Mason’s (a wonderful educator who lived during the late 1800s–if you don’t know her please look her up!) ideas into their curriculum, one of them being that a child should not begin formal lessons until the age of six. Before that, they should PLAY, spend time outside, and work on developing habits that will serve them (and others) for the rest of their lives. That being said, we were able to finish our entire homeschooling day in about 45 minutes using MFW kindergarten. It was short and sweet, and my oldest rarely expressed a sense of dread when it came to school time.
Everything is laid out very plainly.
In my dream homeschool land, I would develop each of my children’s curricula individually and incorporate things that interested them. I would be an eclectic homeschool mom and combine different learning methods to compliment each child’s learning style. I would also have a beautiful, organized homeschool library from which to pull resources. But reality is, I have four small children and we live in a small house. Space is tight and mental margin is even tighter. When I was thinking about our first year homeschooling, I knew I would have a newborn, a 2 year old, 4 year old, and 5 year old so I needed something as open-and-go as you can get. MFW was exactly that. With the exception of a few activities that need supplies (many of which can be found around the house or improvised), you can simply open the teacher’s manual each day with absolutely no planning and be good to go. The Bible lessons are even scripted for you! Which leads me to my next point:
It is built upon God’s Word and incorporates Biblical training into each lesson.
I loved this. The theme of MFW kindergarten is “God’s Creation from A to Z,” so as we went through the alphabet, we learned about a new animal or thing in God’s world. Each week, there was a little tag line to memorize along with the week’s letter sound. For example, when we learned about A apple, we learned that If I stay in Jesus I will bear much fruit. And when we were on N nest we learned that God takes good care of me. I just thought these were sweet ways to point little hearts to Jesus while we learned about the world around us.
It allows for much flexibility.
I said earlier that kindergarten only took about 45 minutes per day to complete. We also only did school 3-4 days a week. MFW kindergarten does have a suggested schedule based on a 5-day week, but subjects are easily combined or omitted to accommodate your needs. Last year we enjoyed a preschool play-date/co-op on Tuesdays and Bible study on Thursday mornings. We often did a few school things before the play date on Tuesdays, but for many weeks we just worked on school on Monday/Wednesday/Friday and it worked well. Also, I’ll speak more to this below, but I omitted a lot of the extra activities included in the curriculum anyways because my boys are easily bored by “crafty” activities.
Here are some of the things I didn’t love about MFW Kindergarten
The Creation unit at the beginning of the year.
Okay, so this critique is very personal to our family. I think it’s great that MFW starts the year out by learning about creation and then building on that foundation. Makes perfect sense! The problem for us was that it spends two whole weeks on creation. And most of the activities are very heavy on the crafts. So each day would follow the exact same format and then culminate with pretty much the same craft each day (except focusing on a different day of creation). My kids were bored. It actually caused a lot of tears for my oldest and heartache for me because he was dreading school every day. I was heartbroken because I had been so excited about this curriculum and had put so much effort into preparing! When I realized that the whole curriculum does not look like these first two weeks, I simply aborted mission for the creation study and went straight to the “normal” lessons. We were all much happier! I am confident many children LOVE the creation unit of MFW, but we just didn’t and that’s okay! Homeschool curriculums are meant to serve you, not you serve the curriculum. So if something isn’t working–reevaulate. Even if it worked well for someone else you know.
It can seem a little “preschool-y.”
Now for us, this was actually a positive thing. We didn’t do much, if any preschool with our oldest, besides reading tons of amazing picture books and working on colors, numbers, etc. in everyday life. So a kindergarten curriculum that was light and pre-school like was great for us. But, if your child has attended preschool or if you’ve already done a year of intentional homeschool preschool, MFW kindergarten might seem too “easy.” Each child is so different. To give you an idea, we just finished the year, and our son is reading three letter words (but still with a good deal of effort) and he can write all of his letters. But for our just-turned-six-year-old-boy, MFW was the perfect pace.
Overall, My Father’s World Kindergarten was a great way for us to ease into homeschooling. The lessons were short and sweet and I was able to supplement with a few other things to make our homeschool day well-rounded (think memorizing Scripture, praying for friends, and establishing chores/routines). Overall, we were very pleased with My Father’s World Kindergarten curriculum and are using it this year with our next kindergartner!
Do you use a curriculum for kindergarten? I’d love to hear your experiences!
