I am very satisfied with the way the first semester of kindergarten has gone around here. We found our groove with so many things. That being said, there are a few areas where we are going to make some changes as we go into semester two. Here’s a brief look at where we have been and where we are going.

Olivia

Reading – Work with Reading Made Easy, Games for Reading, and our readers is going well. She did kind of lose interest in reading lessons at the semester finished and was much more enthused with math. We added Headsprout during December. We are going to continue that and also work some at the Progressive Phonics Intermediate level to see if we can jump start her interest again. I have noticed that Olivia prefers sight reading over phonics. I don’t want to totally ignore the phonics because I feel it is important, so I am hoping the Progressive Phonics’ focus on the high-frequency words will get her to where she wants to be more quickly.

Math – Our little eclectic mix seems to be working well as she is always learning and interested. I work hard not to be uptight about the seeming lack of order and scope to her mathematical learning. Everything will continue as before except we are going to drop the remainder of MEP Reception and begin MEP Year 1. She is well past the end of Reception at this point.

Handwriting – If one subject has been a bust around here, then handwriting it is. That is not to say O doesn’t write — she does all the time. The formal handwriting book is not her preferred venue, though. I had dropped this, but I think I am going to pick up handwriting practice with a new take. I am considering purchasing Startwrite and making practice pages out of things she narrates to me. One things she likes is when I write what she narrates to me in highlighter and she writes over it. We will continue some of this as well. Maybe I will take note of some of the letters she forms strangely and demonstrate them one at a time on the white board.

Unit Studies and FIAR – We will continue our literature based units. I will be very happy to move back the FIAR Vol. 1 and 2 for a while over making my own units (which I did for the holidays). I am going to drop the notebook idea and keep things largely conversational. They resist the cut and paste and so it is not necessary. I may try an experiment and have them draw or color a page about each book and then narrate a sentence or two to me about the story. We will put those in the notebooks instead of the lapbooking-type items we have been doing.

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Memorization – Going great. She has memorized some verses, prayers, poems, and cell phone numbers. I just need to be better about putting new material in the box.

Faith – Now that Advent and Christmas are past I need to choose some new reading. Not sure what that will be yet, but I have a number of items on my shelf.

Writing – I want to add in some activities to encourage more writing and literacy preparation. We will be playing games from Games for Writing, keeping a word box of favorite words, and adding a mailbox to exchange notes and letters. We will also be adding in some of the age-appropriate items from the Brave Writer Lifestyle.

Read Alouds – This is the area where I really want to focus and show some improvement. Some time during the day I want us to sit for about 30 minutes and read – picture books, introduce some short chapter books, fiction and non-fiction. This is in addition to the bed time reading we normally do. I also want to improve in pulling a selection of books each week to put in the reading basket for this time; we need stories, math readers, science readers and history readers in there along with books that are just plain fun.

John
I am still standing by my no formal preschool mindset, but as he likes something to work on with mom and we are almost done with all of Olivia’s left over workbooks I am going to pull a few letter activities each week from Phonics Activities and possible the Progressive Phonics Alphabet section (no handwriting, though). We will just do what he is interested in.

John also joins us for memorization, read alouds, unit studies, and faith as he desires.

I really need to replenish the school room shelves now that I have pulled many of the Montessori activities off (due to lack of use). I am just not sure how to do that and have it hold their interest for more than a day or two. Still thinking on what the future purpose of these will be. Open storage is always an option. I do want to have some time during the day where we go to the school room (or they go alone) and have items to choose from and work on as they desire and for them to work independently with those items. Right now the only things that get treated like that are the puzzles and art supplies. I want them to feel free to reach into the tubs and pull out books to look at or work on some other game or activity. I am just not sure how to get to that point with them. Something to think on.

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