Kindergarten Ideas

Here are a few ideas to help you get started with homeschooling kindergarten: 

 

When developing a regular routine, think about whether your child is a morning person or a midday person. Work with your child’s natural bent. Everyone is much happier and productive when you do. It usually takes time to develop sustained attention unless a subject is of a particular area of interest to your child. As you learn what their interests are, you can work to build around those. We want a child’s first formal learning experience to be fun and establish a foundation on which they want to willingly engage.  

 

 Planning activities that your child can do independently build confidence, while providing the benefit of developing large and small muscle coordination. Building small motor skills is necessary for writing. This could involve practical life activities, as children like to imitate adults and older children.  

 

Practical Life Skills and Other Learning Activities: 

 

Dusting or cleaning up a spill – These activities help develop large and small motor skills and teach your child how to be helpful. This builds confidence in being an essential part of the family and later in the community they live in. 

Fixing their own snack – Showing a child how to use a pastry spreader to cut a banana or a cucumber, using an apple slicer carefully to slice and eat apples, washing fruits and vegetables, etc., will help them become independent and develop confidence to try new things. 

Washing their own plate and cup – Arrange a stool or station with a bucket, sponge, a small container of soap, and a drying cloth, so your child can wash and dry their own plate and cup. This activity not only builds independence, but also develops the small motor skills necessary for writing. 

Liquid Pouring – Using pitchers, cups, and bowls, allow your child to transfer water from one container to another. It is a clever idea to have designated towels to wipe up spills and designated places to lay out towels to dry. 

  

Object Transfer — Using objects such as beans, rice, pom poms, or buttons, allow your child to transfer objects from one container to another with the aid of scoops, spoons, or tweezers. This activity helps develop the pincer grip that is necessary for writing. 

Matching — This activity helps develop visual skills necessary for left-right discrimination used in reading and writing. Using pictures and objects you have around the house; you can create a fun matching game for your child. 

Puzzles – Picking up pieces of a puzzle helps develop the pincer grip, while connecting the pieces will develop the visual discrimination and the visual memory skills needed for reading and writing. 

Tracing – Start by offering your child simple shapes to trace at first, then (with proficiency) add more complex shapes to the mix.  This easy and fun activity builds skills that are necessary for writing. 

Playdough – Children love working with and creating with dough, and it is a fun way to build the small motor skills necessary for writing. 

Cutting – Using a good pair of Fiskars Scissors, guide your child in the activity of cutting straight lines, slanted lines, curvy lines, and finally, in the cutting out of shapes. This important skill also builds the small motor skills necessary for writing. 

Read Aloud – Children love having books read to them! This bonding activity builds the auditory skills necessary for learning and helps develop literary skills, as you discuss the books with them. As you read, you may ask them what they think will happen next, or why they think certain events happened. Have your child describe the characters or the setting in the books you read, and allow them to tell you the things they like or dislike about the books. 

Book Look – Having books out for your child to look at, independently and quietly, builds reading skills. 

Outdoor Play – Climbing, jumping, hopping, skipping, throwing, and catching a ball or a bean bag, and learning to jump rope are all great ways to encourage physical activity and develop eye-hand coordination. 

Memorization – Children between the ages of 3 and 6 are in their prime learning stage. Memorizing Bible verses, poems, songs, chants, and nursery rhymes build a child’s auditory discrimination skills and auditory memory skills, which aids in their educational instruction. 

Oral Language – Teach your child how to introduce themselves and how to introduce another person. Teach them simple graces, like saying, “please,” “thank you,” “may I be excused,” or “how may I help you, today?”  Teach them how to describe an object by color or by one characteristic, i.e., rough, smooth, big, or small. Teaching a child how to ask a question is an especially important skill! Usually, when a child is asked if they have questions, a typical 5- or 6-year-old will launch into a story and not ask a question.  

One-to-one correspondence — A young child can develop mathematical thinking by counting the number of objects or spaces on a game board with exact touching and saying the next number. This is different from Rote Counting where they count to 10, 20, or beyond, just by saying the numbers.  

Number Sense – Show your child five objects laid out on a workspace. Have your child count the objects to show that they know there are five objects. Have your child close their eyes. Take one object and hide it in your hand. Have your child open their eyes. Say, “Do you know how many objects I have in my hand?” If they look, count the remaining objects that are laid out, determine there are four objects and deduce that you must be hiding one because they see four objects and they know that if they added one more object to the group it would then be a group of five objects and answer, “One.” Your child has demonstrated they understand the quantity of five. Before children can add and subtract with true understanding, they must understand number quantities through ten. They demonstrate this understanding by correctly deducing a missing quantity that is removed from the whole quantity. When they have this understanding through the quantity of ten, the next step is a quick and true construction of the number ten. As our mathematical system is based on ten, a good foundation of this will aid them in all mathematical operations. 

 

Sources: 

Kamii, C. (1982).  Number in preschool and kindergarten. Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children. [available from amazon.com ]

 

https://www.blog.montessoriforeveryone.com/arts-crafts

 

https://mycuprunsover.ca/daily-homeschool-schedule-for-kindergarten/ 

 

https://thishomeschoolhouse.com/kindergarten-homeschool-schedule/