Kindergarten Year Review
2022-2023
What a year! If you’re new around here, I have a 6 year old son who just finished up the last of his kindergarten work. This is our fourth year homeschooling and my older twins (age 9) went to public school for their kindergarten year so this was our first go at it doing all things kindergarten at-home. I LOVED it. In college, I studied early childhood education and human development and have such a passion for the early years. I feel so blessed and honored to have been able to share this year with my little boy.
Since kindergarten is many people’s first exposure to homeschool and we’re all pioneering into this lifestyle together, I know how helpful it can be to hear about someone else’s experience - especially with the curriculums and materials they used. After chatting with some of you last week I also felt inspired to offer some additional insights specifically into reading and literacy development. I do have some classroom experience on this, but, even more, now I’ve also taught three of my own kids to read and am beginning to work with my youngest son. This is a loaded topic so I’ll be publishing another blog post on all things reading next week.
Curriculum Choices
Last year I did a post on our kindergarten picks for this year. We stayed pretty close to this so if you’re looking for a more collective list on what we used - Kindergarten Picks 2022-2023 may be a helpful post for you to read over. We did change up a few things though which I’ll share about below.
Language Arts
As we approached our kindergarten year, it was an easy decision for us to use The Good and The Beautiful Level K with my son. I’ve used the curriculum with my older girls and already knew we loved it. We all love that the course is in full color, faith-based, aesthetically pleasing, and is just so inviting.
And, now that we’re done with this course, I feel like I can confidently say I would recommend it to others. We will be moving onto Level 1! I have a handful of thoughts to share though. Overall, this was a harder course for my son. Good, but hard. I think if my twins would’ve had this course - they would’ve sailed right through it so I really want to emphasize it just depends SO much on the child. But, ultimately, I want to dive a little deeper and share our experience.
Getting Started with TGTB
First, TGTB has a great Language Arts placement test. Previously, TGTB courses were said to always be about a year above public school grade levels and I agree. It wasn’t uncommon for a 5th grader to be in a 4th grade course book - or even lower. I feel like this throws a lot of people off if they’re coming out of public school. But, if you understand their LA levels don’t coordinate to their public school grade level - that can make a huge difference. Going forward TGTB FAQ page states their newly updated LA courses should will more aligned to public school grade levels (which Level K falls under since it was released in 2022). But, many concepts are still considered advanced. After working through the course, I definitely agree with this. I still think we’ll see a lot of first grade children using this course.
Specifically for Kindergartners who are just beginning though, what I would do is strongly recommend going to TGTB website and download the kindergarten course for free here. On page xxvi there are big letters that say STOP. Then, there are a few steps you need to review before beginning the course. I read this a few months before we started the course and I am so glad we did. One of the requirements for the course is letter sound mastery.
On one hand, there are going to be some children that are already reading before beginning kindergarten work. On another, it is also very normal for kindergarten aged children not to have letter sounds mastered before they start kindergarten. This is why in schools you’ll see children in “small groups.” At the beginning of the year you’ll have some kids working on letter sounds, some working on beginning reading, and some working at a higher level of reading. So I just want to say - if letter mastery is something your child is still working on, I would not start this course until they do. Generally speaking, this is not a prerequisite for “kindergarten readiness” for public schools so I think some parents will be taken back by this and that’s why I really want to bring awareness to it.
Since letter sounds is a prerequisite for this course and it may be harder for some kids to start - I guess I just don’t want anyone walking into this course feeling like their kindergartner is “behind.” No one wants to feel like that especially if it’s their first year of homeschool. The best thing you can always do for your child is meet them where they’re at and help them progress to the next level. I used the course book to do this, but I also needed to make some adjustments. As everyone knows, some children will progress more slowly or quickly than others and that is why it is such a blessing we can homeschool and personalize our children’s educational paths. And, I will say, there will be some children who will greatly benefit beginning at Level K even if they’re considered 1st grade age and that is 100% okay. I will plan to go more into letter sound mastery on my upcoming post.
But, bottom line, just make sure you understand the prerequisites. Don’t be afraid to take it slow. But, if you’re finding your child needs a little extra help before starting the course, it’s also okay to wait. There is nothing shameful about beginning a course that says K in January or another time of the year when your child may be more ready for it.
Our Experience
Last year when I started looking into the course, my son did not have all his sounds mastered. He was close, but I felt like we had kind of hit a wall. We had done two years of preschool and TGTB kindergarten Prep course, but he just still wasn’t ready. I knew that developmentally he probably just needed a little more time.
Since this was a brand new course and no one had done it yet and none of us really knew what to expect - I thought we could at least try starting the course and put it on the shelf and wait if it wasn’t going well. We started in slow and I tried really hard to maintain an atmosphere of no pressure. I knew my son was a kinesthetic learner and any thing hands-on is more appealing to him, so I started modifying the lessons to try to be more active and engaging (more on that below.)
Even though this course is a 4 day week curriculum, my son was also attending a Montessori school 2x a week so I didn’t want to overwhelm him with work. At the beginning of the school year (last August) some weeks we only ended up doing 2 lessons. I think doing a combination of more hands-on, more activity, no pressure, and moving at slower paced worked really well.
We LOVED the readers for this course. Helping my son learn to read was by far one of the most rewarding parts of this year. I’ll talk more about our experience with reading in my upcoming blog post. But, for now, I will say, we ended up not using the booster cards for this course because my son really pushed back on those. We’ve found other ways to practice the concepts being taught in those (see below.)
Attention Span
I learned so much about my son this year! It became clear that he is definitely a kinesthetic learner. While there are some hands-on elements to this course - in order to keep things simpler for the parents - the majority of the lessons are presented in a workbook style. A huge pro of this is how open and go these lessons truly are.
But, I get messages all the time about how their early elementary kids won’t sit still and do their work and I just want to say - this is just so normal and you can work with them using workbooks as a guide. Having children that need to constantly be moving is developmentally normal for this age. A realistic expectation for a young child to sit and work or listen to a story is about one minute per year of age they are - so 5 years old is 5 minutes. After the ages of 7-9, this number drastically increases. But, in these early years, when we have a course book that can take 15-20 minutes - can you make it work? Yes, I think so. Again - there will be kids all over the board on this, but beginning with realistic expectations is just really important. I’ll also say, play is always such a good thing to do at this age, I am not discrediting that, but I also believe around the age of 5-6 it’s okay to create a short structured sit down time to begin working on the habit of attention. We only spend about an hour a day on kindergarten work so there is A LOT of time for play here.
But, a few things that might help with more structured time is at first, take lots of breaks. At the beginning of the school year, when my son got restless during our lessons (this was also the case for math or any other sit down work we did) I would have him take lots of breaks. He had a hard time working longer than about 5-10 minutes. Sometimes we’d sit outside and he’d come work on a few things and then he’d get up and ride his bike. Sometimes we’d be inside and he’d go play with his brother for even 5 minutes and then come back and work. I’d just let him take lots of little brain breaks and this helped so much. Gradually, his attention span got longer and longer.
By about January-February time, I saw a huge jump in my son’s ability to concentrate and we gradually started doing 4-5 lessons a week. It has been SO rewarding to see how his concentration has improved. At this point he can easily spend about 45 minutes on more formal work before he needs a break. Some days he definitely still takes a 5 minute break or two but for the most part he is much more focused and what a joy it’s been to witness his maturity and growth first hand.
Adapting Lessons
To adapt lessons and make them more hands-on and engaging, my first go-to is definitely the moveable alphabet and our letter mat. Of course you can get by without these, but we get A LOT of use out of these materials. We enjoyed using the letter tiles app that comes with the course, but we used the alphabet more than we did the app. We also used it for spelling words, sounding out cvc words (constant, vowel, constant words like CAT), introducing diagraphs (sounds like sh, th, ee), ect. This way he could touch the letters while he was saying them. We also have these magnetic letters we like to use to mix things up.
My other go-to modification was to take words he was working on - whether those were cvc, sight words, or sounds - I’d write them on notecards and then use those in variety of ways like taping them to the wall and shooting them with a nerf gun, laying them on the steps and having him step up every time he reads, hitting them with flyswatters, making a “ladder” with the cards and having him jump from word to word, playing hide and seek with the cards and having him find and read the words. There are some suggestions for more types of these activities in the course book, but if this is something your child needs, don’t be afraid to experiment and have fun with it. I have two story highlights saved over on my Instagram called Kindergarten and Kindergarten II that shows lots of the things we did if you need more ideas.
Last of all, sometimes it’s just about mixing up the visual in the day to day stuff so if there was a particular concept I knew we were working on (ie compound words) — I might look to other resources in Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT) or Pinterest or just google to add in as a supplement and make it more fun. I especially like doing this for holidays. One of my “go-to” shops for early reading is Moffat Girls because she has such fun holiday and seasonal things. There are SO many free printables out there too so don’t forget to search for those. On TPT you can refine results to see only “free” items by grade or subject and use keywords (ie compound words) to search and see what’s available.
Other Helpful Resources We Used for Language Arts
Last summer we decided to try out the Explode the Code workbooks and see if my son would benefit from them especially as he was still working on letter mastery and beginning to blend. I am SO glad we started these. He does one page out of the workbook each day and they’re suuuuper simple pages so it feels very short and attainable for him. Like just a few minutes everyday. I would highly recommend these for extra phonics practice. We started with level 1 and this is a good place to start if your child is ready for blending. Shortly after the beginning of the new year my son finished the first book so he’s currently working through Level 2 right now and we’re for sure going to keep working through these. During the summer we will keep doing one page a day in ETC to help with phonics retention.
Dash Into Learning (Discount Code: HCL15 will give you 15% off)
I also bought the Dash Into Learning Readers (Sets 1-3) last summer hoping they’d help prepare my son for TGTB Level K course. A lot of people use the Dash Books to help their children learn to read. They’re so cute and well illustrated! As we started reading set 1 with him, my son definitely wasn’t ready for some of the sight words and was still struggling with blending. So, I read him the books and decided to start the course before trying to have him read these independently. As the year progressed, we’d periodically bring them out to mix up what he was reading from. I recently pulled the books back out again and he cruised right through them which was a huge confidence booster for him - reading something he remembers as difficult - but reading it with ease this time around. So, for even that reason alone, I’d recommend having other readers like the Dash books around the home. I also love their decodable poetry books! He read his first one last week and it was perfect! Over this summer, we will continue reading every day with him to build his confidence and fluency.
We’ve always used TGTB for handwriting and my little guy has done really well with it this last year. He started with their doodle books at age 3 and he’s just about done with Level K and will be moving onto Level 1 next year. To read more about how we incorporate handwriting into our days and some of the other materials we use see our Morning Handwriting Basket.
Poetry & Read Alouds
In addition to lots and lots of pictures books, we also read a handful of read alouds. Each morning we read from a nature poetry book: Sing A Song A Season. Nonsense. We have this Mother Goose book we like to read from regularly - any nursery rhymes are great. And silly nonsense poetry is also great for early childhood. We like the Shel Silverstein books. Last Fall we read My Big Book of Nature Stories. And over the last few months we’ve also been reading from the Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
For chapter books, we read/listened to - My Father’s Dragon, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, The Wild Robot, The Wild Robot Escapes, Charolette’s Web, and Wizard of Oz. My son said his favorites were My Father’s Dragon, Charlie, and the Wild Robot books. I’d recommend any of these those. The Audible version of Wizard of Oz is fantastic!
Math
When my son was 4 and beginning his second year of pre-school, I randomly did the The Good and The Beautiful Level K math assessment and he easily passed it. I bought the workbook and he did about a quarter of the lessons, but he definitely was not ready for any type of formal work at that age. I could’ve used the lessons and tried to make them more hands on, but I knew he would benefit by just waiting until he was a bit older. So, I put the course back on the shelf until we started kindergarten. Math is his favorite subject and it comes much easier to him. He flew through Level K and finished it in December. He’s about a quarter of the way through Level 1 now. We’ll take a little time off over the summer and I suspect he’ll move into level 2 sometime next year.
One thing to note, clearly, the math course book was much easier for us than the LA course. I will say - I don’t think I’ve ever read a math (or LA) lesson to my kids. I always skim over the parts that say “Read to the child.” I summarize it and then get right into the concepts being taught. Some may find it helpful to read these when you’re first starting out, but also don’t be afraid to just make the lesson work for you.
Historically, it hasn’t been uncommon to see children who are in different levels of math/LA with TGTB because their LA program was considered advanced. I don’t know if that’ll continue to be the case as their new LA materials are rolling out, but we’ll see. I would definitely say their Math levels are very similar to public school standards though.
While the Level K math course does come with a box of manipulatives, I have two go-to things I like to use in early childhood with young children. First, a Montessori number board. I introduce this beginning about the age of 3 and just have numbers 1-10 out. By kindergarten we’re working with all 100 numbers. Second, I love using these base 10 math blocks especially when kids start to skip count.
Science
We started the year off with The Good and The Beautiful Little Hearts & Hands science and loved it. Very gentle and easy to do. My son loved the Big Book of Nature Stories and like I mentioned I used this as a read aloud for the first part of the school year. We tried to get outside and take lots of little nature walks. All of TGTB videos are so well done - including their science videos for this course for young children.
We also studied Birds, Safety and the Solar System family style. I have full reviews on these studies so you can visit those pages if you want to see what curriculums we used. If I was only working with my Kindergartner, I am not sure I would’ve used TGTB Birds and Safety units just for him because they’re geared for more older children. But, many of the units over at Little School of Smiths are great for early elementary kids - which is what we used for our Solar System study. We also did a Zoology unit last year that would be super fun for kindergarten age.
Again, my son also attended a Montessori school 2x a week and they do a lot of science/social studies there so I didn’t feel like it was necessary to add in anything else specifically for him.
Social Studies
We ended up pulling from three main social studies units:
Me On The Map from Little School of Smiths (Discount Code: Homecenteredlearning10 will get you 10% off).
I had planned to break up this unit and do longer unit studies through out the year (like spend a few days once a month learning about houses and then the next month cities, then states, ect.) But, I never got to it at the beginning of the school year so after the New Year we decided to just turn it into a 2-3 week mini unit study and that worked great. It was such a fun unit and a great introduction to Geography!
Story of the World
This year I was reading Story of the World with my older girls and we studied a handful of ancient history time periods. My Kindergartner would sometimes listen in, but he wasn’t very interested in the read-aloud. For different time periods I gathered lots of picture books and stories from the library and I read a lot of these to my Kindergartner. He joined in on most of our hands on projects and he especially took a high interest in Ancient Egypt. Overall it felt like just the right amount for his age. I also have a blog post coming on all this with more details.
Emotional Resilience from Dash Into Learning (Discount Code: HCL15 will get you 15% off)
Loved loved loved these books and printable games for emotional intelligence. The books talk about all things feelings and working with big emotions through stories. I used these with all my kids, but it was especially appealing to my younger boys. This is a perfect unit for early childhood year and I love that they’re based on fairy tales! These are ones I can see us pulling out again and again.
Other Studies & Interests
For our scripture study, we follow our church’s study schedule and utilize materials from The Red Headed Hostess. I especially love the subscription kits because they’re catered especially for children. These materials are aligned with our faith and are not a Christian Worldview so keep that in mind. At this age we primarily focus on helping our kids get to know the stories. This year we’ve also been working with our beginning scripture marking with stickers and encouraging my son to draw something that reminds him of what we’re learning about that week. For more information on our study, please visit Our New Testament Study.
It isn’t uncommon for us to be done with kindergarten work in the early hours of the morning so that gives my son a lot of extra time to explore his interests and play, play, play. He spends a lot of time outdoors, loves to play with his friends, plays lots of card and board games, and he would probably ride his bike and motorcycle all day if he could. He also enjoys drawing and loves to use Art Kids Hub.
Last Fall we re-enrolled my twins back into on-line piano lessons. My cute little Kindergartner wanted to do it too, but I just didn’t feel like he was ready to start piano without needing a lot of extra help from me. I wanted something that would be a little more independent and just fun! So, for Christmas we gifted him Prodigies Desk Bell Lessons and it has been the perfect fit. This is a great introduction to music and so far he’s loving it. I don't require he does it every day or anything - we just let him use it as interested and my little 3 year old has actually really enjoys using them as well.
Engineering and building is also an interest of my son’s that developed this year. In hindsight, I can see now that he’s always had a math/engineer mind, but it wasn’t until I started working with him more that I realized this. One day I came across the STEM Inventions channel on YouTube and it has been a HUGE hit over here with my little guy. For Easter, we bought him lots of materials to keep building these projects and he’s done really well with that and I suspect we’ll continue to be utilizing more of these type of resources in the future.
If you made it this far, whew! It is hard to fit a whole year into one post, ha! But, I hope you found something here that you’ll be able to adopt or adapt into your home! Kindergarten is SUCH a wonderful age so have fun with it and enjoy!
If you have any questions, drop them below in the comments and be sure to subscribe and tune into my first LIVE this Thursday over on @homecenteredlearning!
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