BIBLE
We use
Bible Stories to Read and
Bible Pictures
to Color by Rod and Staff. There
are 36 stories from the Old Testament and 24 from the New Testament all written
in chronological order. Each story has a short song to sing, three questions
and answers, a short Bible verse to learn and a corresponding color book page
the child can color or paint while you are reading the story.
For Christian character development we use
Big Thoughts for Little People. This
book uses The Sermon on the Mount and the Ten Commandments to teach God’s laws
of right and wrong using wonderful full-colored pictures, a story, a little
prayer and a Bible verse.
The book
Poems and Prayers For The Very Young is a refreshing and lovely way to
worship our Lord through prayer.
Music is always a big hit with my children
and the Wee Sing Bible Songs are great.
The tape or CD comes with a book that shows the music, words, finger plays and
even the sign language to Jesus Loves Me.
We rotate these three Bible subjects throughout the year.
Memory Verses are said daily and are written
into the Lesson Plans.
ROD & STAFF KINDERGARTEN WORKBOOKS
Rod & Staff
workbooks are so much fun! Our children have truly enjoyed them. The
content covers colors and shapes, numbers, letters and sounds, and thinking
skills. The writing is a little smaller than
A
Reason for Handwriting K which is just what we wanted, since the child
will progressively be writing smaller until he is doing
Off We Go by Sing, Spell, Read & Write . The books are integrated with
the Math and Language Arts programs.
SING, SPELL, READ & WRITE
Sing,
Spell, Read & Write is one of the best phonics
program we could find and our children loved it. This program truly takes the
"pain" out of boring phonics. The program uses a multi-sensory approach
including music, games, reading and writing. We follow the teacher’s manual
closely for the "Off We Go" kindergarten
book. Your child will learn the sounds of the letters in the alphabet. The
second book “Down The Raceway" teaches
decoding and reading phonetically. Your kindergartener will learn how to read
short vowel words and some site words as we do the first fourteen out of
thirty-six steps. Steps fifteen through thirty-six will be done in first
grade. After completing the entire program in first grade, your child will be
reading at a third grade level.
GEOGRAPHY
Our geography program is called “Animals
Around the World”. Your child will be learning the seven continents, the
four oceans and the animals that inhabit those continents and oceans. We use
The Kingfisher First Animal Encyclopedia
in conjunction with DK’s The Ultimate Animal
Sticker Book. Children love stickers and animals so this is definitely
one of our children’s favorites.
LITERATURE
What child doesn’t like to have books read
to him? We have found some wonderful literature books that our children love.
The 20th
Century Children’s Book Treasury is one large volume with forty-four of
the twentieth century’s most beloved children’s books. All the selections
include the entire original text except for two (slightly abridged).
The books have a color-coded symbol with
each story to indicate the age level. I have placed these in the daily planner
from easiest, requiring a shorter attentions span, to the hardest, requiring a
longer attention span. You will also find emotion cards in the appendix which
your child will use to identify four of the different emotions (happy, sad,
angry and scared) of the characters in the stories. Identifying the different
emotions of the characters in the stories will help your child to listen more
carefully and develop a sense of empathy for others.
The next book you will be reading from is
A Treasury of Children’s Literature. The illustrations in this book are
simply beautiful. The stories are classics from years past including
traditional stories such as Goldilocks and the
Three Bears,
Aesop’s Fables,
Grimms’ Fairy Tales,
Mother Goose’s
Nursery Rhymes,
Children’s Classics (excerpts from books
like Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland),
Robert Louis Stevenson’s A
Child’s Garden of Verses,
American Tales (Bre’er Rabbit for example),
and Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales.
Richard
Scarry’s Please and Thank You Book will help you to
teach your child good manners and safety tips with colorful pictures and funny
stories. What curriculum would be complete without
The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter?
This book is such a find. It includes nineteen stories of
Peter Rabbit and His Friends, all with
original illustrations!
HORIZONS MATHEMATICS
We chose the
Horizons Math program for a number of
reasons. The first, being that these books progress in mathematical concepts
logically and clearly, and orderly. Second, they review these concepts
repeatedly throughout the year so the child does not forget them not unlike the
Saxon Math that our older children were
using. Third, we enjoy the workbook format because it saves time for other
schoolwork to be completed. Fourth, the workbooks are colorful and have great
puzzles to solve. Horizons also has worksheet packets available for extra
practice. When talking to a company representative, she told me that
Horizons Math is typically one to two
grades above grade level. However, our children have had little or no trouble
with the material.
BOB JONES SCIENCE 1 FOR CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS
We use
Bob
Jones Science 1 for Christian Schools. This gentle approach to science
shows how God’s hand truly is in His creation. Scriptures are given with the
text and also experiments. I have listed all the items needed for the
experiments in the appendix.
ART
Art is done the second half of the year,
since your child will be cutting, coloring and pasting quite a bit the first
half. The simple art projects given in the planner are those which we have done
and enjoyed throughout our years of home schooling.
MISCELLANEOUS
I tried to include as many objectives as
possible from Diane Lopez’s Teaching
Children: A Curriculum Guide to What Children Need to Know at Each Level Through
Sixth Grade. You may find,
therefore, little lessons here and there in the planner to include some topics
the books did not cover.
In the appendix is a list of holidays and
why we celebrate them. Starting on day 18, I put a reminder in the planner for
you to read the month’s holiday information (some months have none) to your
child. There is a reminder about every 20 days thereafter.
