Core K

From Life Take 1
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2004-2005: My plans for our Kindergarten year is a lot!!! Boy am I ambious with a new little one due right smack dab in the middle of our school year. Below is a list of things I have ordered -- we will see how far I get, what get's moved to 1st Grade and what get's thrown out all together. I will let you know as we go along and I find time to update you all!! Here's my list, in addition to SL Core K:

Bob Jones K5 Bible Truths (We used this for 2 weeks and hated it. It is structured for a classroom and not a homeschool environment. On top of that, Kris complained because we weren't using a Bible for our daily Bible story. The only good thing I found from using this -- is that he truly did learn a lot more than I thought about the Bible using SL's Preschool Bible Program. From now on -- we will only be using SL for Bible studies.)

Kids 10 Commandment Videos (also called K10C; This is an excellent series that describes the 10 commandments using vocabulary and examples a child can relate too!)

Singapore Earlybird 2A & 2B with Saxon K (In hindsight I would have done Saxon K with Earlybird 1A & 1B last year and Saxon 1 this year with Earlybird 2A & 2B but that plan will wait until the next child. Saxon K is a preschool not a kindergarten program in my opinion. It could even be used prior to beginning the Singapore Earlybird Series. It is all manipulative based, no writing, no workbooks.)

Singapore Primary 1A/1B (we finished up the Earlybird series early and decided to keep going. About half way through 1A, I realized that Kris was able to do the work but was not learning or memorizing facts. He was still having to count on his fingers to know the answer to what 5+3 equals. So, we are yet again on a hunt for the perfect math program. We haven't found one but are now using a Scott Foresman Exploring Mathematics Series (which is out of print but still available through Academic Book Services or Ebay ... just make sure you get the right ones or you'll be disappointed!) and a Singapore Combo. This seems to work really well for us. He still needs help with memorization though.)

Saxon Math 1 (We ended up skipping Saxon K. It was simply to easy. Everything that was covered there is reviewed in depth in Saxon 1. My suggestion would be to save your money and skip K if Saxon is your math program of choice. We also ended up ditching Saxon math. It is just not a good fit for us and I could never make it work no matter how hard I tried. It is too boring, too repetive. We tried doing parts of it and tailoring it to fit our needs but still nothing works. We have to force ourselves to try and it simply isn't worth it.)

Rainbow Rock Cd-Rom (okay this is now back on my want list since we are doing Singapore again and Kris is begging for it. So we will see what it is like when it arrives. I pray that it is worth the money! Don't you all wish I would make up my mind?)

Quarter Mile Math Cd-Rom for K-3 (my son loves the horses and race cars in this program. It is really helping him build up the math facts that he so badly needed to learn. Another good thing to help with learning math facts is Calculadder. I have not personally used it but am considering it for the future as it somes highly recommended.)

Subtraction and Addition Songs (my sons loved this and the 1 yr old started counting to 3 after the first day of listening to the addition songs CD.)

SL Math Manipulatives Activities & Games (I have still yet to use this. Maybe if it was scheduled in someplace but alas it still collects dust on my shelf. Maybe some rainy day I will pull it out and discover what is inside.)

SL Science K (This was a great introduction to life sciences and how some things work. The things though are out of date. Consider getting the DK book The NEW way things work to supplement with. Makes a great addition and comes with an interactive CD-ROM. We rarely got to the science experiments except for once a month on family science day but the DVD was great as the kids could watch it over and over again and learned a lot of the terminology just from this.)

Startwrite Software (We use this to supplement our handwriting program. I also use for dictation or when my son wants to write a story or song. He tells me what he wants to write, I type it in this program and then have him trace it. This has worked great and has even improved his spelling since he is tracing words that he knows. Now he is trying to write these things on his own in his journal!)

MCP Phonics A

Bob Books/Readers (We have the whole set. These were great in the beginning but my son never got past the Level B Box 1 set. Not because he didn't need them any longer but because he got bored by the stories. He would much prefer easy reader books and muddle his way through those asking for help when he needed it.)

Reason For Handwriting K

Reason For Handwriting 1 (we finished up K early)

Usborne Internet Linked First Dictionary (We haven't really used the links yet but the dictionary itself is excellent!! It is easy enough for my son to use on his own to discover words to use with his spelling computer game.)

Saxon Phonics K

Saxon Phonics 1 (We finished K in less than 3 months and are moving onto Saxon Phonics 1. I cannot say enough good things about this program. It is easy to adapt to fit to the needs of your child, if it is too repetive (which it often is) you can easily skip that part but it is there if you need it and, as an added bonus, the way they present the phonics rules is superb! Thanks to these my sons spelling lessons are a breeze. As he tries to figure it out, I hear him repeating outloud to himself the various rules to fit his needs. We have had so much success using the first 2 Saxon phonics programs that I do not feel that we will need the third as he is already reading chapter books easily. So we will skip it and move onto other things.)

Wordly Wise A

SL LA 1 (parts of it. We are skipping the vocab, phonics, and spelling portions of this program. I ended up ditching this whole program with the exception of the optional workbooks and readers. Sonlight Language Arts is another program that no matter how hard I try to make it fit and work for our family -- it simply does not.)

SL LA 1 Readers

Language and Thinking for Young Children

Explode the Code 1,2,3

Usborne Peoples of the World (Actually ... we decided to combine GTG with Core K and it has been a great fit for us. Using the Create-A-Calendar that comes with the Core ... each month we have discovered a new country. We started a month before the calendar with the introduction and then each month the calendar chooses our country of the month. So we are once again using this book. We also did the Christmas study during the month of December. This will take us into Core 1 as it is a 16 month Calendar but that is okay. Also ... on the months when there is not much to find out at the library for the country we pick up another country that is in GTG but not on the calendar.)

Usborne Children's World Cookbook

It's Disgusting and We Ate it! (This book is hilarious and a fun way to learn about what other people eat around the world. Perfect for a K!!)

Come Look With Me Animals in Art & Come Look With Me Enjoying Art With Children

The Children's Book of Family and Home

Joseph The Canada Goose (Way to complicated for a 4-5 yr old. My hubby even thinks parts of this is too difficult for him -- we are shelving it for another year. Like Core 2?)

Start Smart Art Series (we replaced the above item with this -- much more age appropriate and fun!The crayons are very soft and after a few uses have started to curve to form against my sons hand. The also break easily. Well... to update you on this. We are now 6 months into the program. Save yourself some money and pick up a couple of color by number books at the grocery store. You will get the same results that we got here. The only thing Kris got out of this series was about shadows under objects and how to color in the lines.)

Color The Classics Godly Composers & Hymn Writers

Music Master CDs

The Story of Me

Visual Perception Skill Building 2

Can You Find Me? K

Dr. DooRiddles

Dale Seymour Critical Thinking for K-3 (we will only be doing the first part in each of the 3 sections -- you know the easy parts ... saving the rest of this book for later.)

Elmer & The Dragon, Dragons of Blueland (these were so fun to read and it seemed like one book instead of three. If you don't read these you are missing the ending to My Father's Dragon.)

Heroes For Young Readers Series (These are now available on audio CDs and with a curriculum guide. Both come highly recommended adn I am looking at purchasing these items in the future.)

Children Just Like Me Celebrations

A Life Like Mine

McGraw-Hill Animals Workbook (We used this as an introduction to animals and purchased several plastic animal kits so we could play with the animals we learned about.)

Singapore Start-Up Science books (much like the Earlybird Math series. Written at the same level in similar format. We went with these and dropped SL Science K for awhile because I was to pregnant to keep up with all the experiments.)

Everyday Graces (I love this book!! Every family should have one regardless if they homeschool or not. Teachs manners and life rules in the context of poetry and story exerpts. I highly recommend!)

And we will see what all else I add to this long list as well...... Remember this is what we are planning on accomplishing in a year. Not a day! Please note that some of the items we dropped because they simply did not work for our family -- the reasons why are listed above. If something doesn't get done this year --- we will simply add it onto the next. A lot of the extras are done on fun days when I simply don't want to do LA, Math, Science, etc... so I let Kris find something educational to do on his own. Or we do music or art or something else that is normally forgotten about.