This is the last year before both my children are in formal lessons, and I have bittersweet feelings about it. During the early years (age 0-5) I have grown a much deeper respect for my children as persons, and giving them a quiet growing time is something I will never regret.
Over the past year with my second born, our preschool year was full of rich stories, songs, poetry, Scripture, time out of doors observing nature, habit formation, and establishing home rhythms. In between playtime and snacks, we would work on letter formation, sounds, and numbers a few times a week in the way of play.
My son will be 5 in the Fall and now that we’ve been establishing a foundation for formal lessons to begin in a year or two, we will continue adding to the framework of our Charlotte Mason home education, slowly building upon ideas, nurturing good habits and together, seek truth, beauty, and goodness.
This year we will continue building on the habits of attention, observation, and obedience, as well as continue to cultivate a love for God, knowledge, and living books. We are not following any particular kindergarten curriculum, but I have found a handful of resources we may include in our time around the table, laying before him just a taste of the wide and delightful feast of a living education that is to come.
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Before you read any further, please be encouraged that your own homeschool kindergarten does not have to look like mine. In fact, how I did kindergarten homeschool with my first didn’t look like how I’m doing it with my second. When we consider each of our children as their own unique persons designed by God, choosing curriculum, and choosing how or when to begin more formal lessons will vary in some way or another. I hope this article serves you as inspiration for ideas and a practical breakdown of how just one Charlotte Mason homeschool family does kindergarten (the year before formal lessons truly begin).
Numbers
My son is continuing to work towards identifying numbers and increasing his counting skills so I have decided to try The Charlotte Mason Elementary Arithmetic Book 1 as a guide. I also grabbed Kindergarten Math With Confidence as I’ve found it to be a good resource without the added busy work you often find in workbooks for this age level.
Writing
Since my son has been asking how to write his letters, I thought it was time to get something to help guide him more properly in his letter and number formation. We will use The Good and The Beautiful’s Handwriting Level K for practice but also continue drawing letters in the sand or forming them with playdough (two of his favorite ways to play with letters).
Beginning Reading
As my son continues to make connections with his letters and the sounds they make, I plan on introducing word building at our table time. We have these wooden letters that make it easy to do this activity. We will start with letter blend sounds such as “IT”, “AT”, “CL” or “BL” and build words with those blends.
Another word-building activity will come after reading our poem of the day, Bible passage, or nursery rhyme, I will choose a word from the passage we read and show him the word, tell him what it says, and then ask him to build it with our wooden letters. We will also build words that are part of his every day such as “cup”, “food”, “blanket”, “toy”, “door”, “dog”, “dad”, and “mom”. My purpose for this activity is to get him familiar with looking at words, taking a picture of them in his mind and knowing them upon seeing them, laying the foundation for reading by sight, and by sound, unhurried and in the nature of play.
If you’re unfamiliar with this method of teaching to read, you can find a step-by-step explanation in this blog article I wrote when teaching my first to read more fluently this way. Of course, this is not the only way to teach reading, but this is the route I am choosing.
Truth, Beauty, Goodness
As part of our morning invitation to the homeschool table, we begin our homeschool days reading the Bible, and poetry, listening to and singing hymns and folksongs, and also looking upon beautiful pieces of artwork from famous artists. During this time we also say our school prayer and practice memorizing family rules, months of the year, catechisms, and our Bible scripture passages together.
Nature Study and Science
“The child’s observation should be directed to flower or boulder, bird or tree; that, in fact, he should be employed in gathering the common information which is the basis of scientific knowledge”
Home education by charlotte Mason pg. 177
About once a week, we will head outside for our nature study object lesson. Both my kids will have the same nature study topic (we’re following Ambleside Online’s nature study rotation this year). This year my kindergartner is simply coming along for the ride, not required to make entries in a journal, but encouraged to observe, ask questions, and take in the world around him.
On Fridays or over the weekend we will do a science experiment together (dad included!) from the book Science in Seconds for Kids by Jean Potter.
Living Books
During preschool, I made a goal to read 3 books a day with my son and it was a very attainable goal for our home which I will continue into this school year. I don’t stick to any single booklist out there, but some books on my list to read are Wynken, Blynken, & Nod, Millions of Cats, The Real Mother Goose, The Forgotten King, Frog and Toad Collection, Henry and Mudge readers, and other books from our local library.
“In this time of extraordinary pressure, educational and social, perhaps a mother’s first duty to her children is to secure for them a quiet growing time, a full six years of passive receptive life, the waking part of it spent for the most part out in the fresh air.”
Home education by charlotte Mason pg. 144
Quiet Growing Time
Don’t be fooled by the above list of subjects in our kindergarten plans. None of these things happen for more than 5-10 minutes at a time, leaving the majority of his day to his own quiet growing time. Here is just a handful of activities I’d expect will take place:
- Build puzzles
- Playdough creations
- Add treasures to the nature table
- Watercolor
- Grow chrysalis to butterflies
- Dig for worms
- Identify birds and bugs in the backyard
- Prepare lunch and snacks
- Help bake
- Tidy/make bed
- Sort/put laundry away
- Fold towels
- Make a fort
- Play with legos
- Press flowers and leaves under books
- Go fishing
- Help prepare the campfire
- Paint with water on the sidewalk
- Water the garden
- Rake leaves and debris
- Pull weeds
- Play backyard soccer
- Count and sort toys by color, size, and shape
- Race paper boats in water
As I prepare for kindergarten homeschool for the second and final time in our home, here are the books I am revisiting:
The Early Years Handbook by Sonya Shafer and Karen Smith
Treasuring Christ by Gloria Furman
Honey For A Child’s Heart by Gladys Hunt
Home Education by Charlotte Mason
School Education by Charlotte Mason (particularly focusing on chapters 1-3,12-13,20)
The Mother the best Kindergartnerin.–It is hardly necessary, here, to discuss the merits of the Kindergarten school. The success of such a school demands rare qualities in the teacher– high culture, some knowledge of psychology and of the art of education; intense sympathy with the children, much tact, much common sense, much common information, much ‘joyousness of nature,’ and much governing power;–in a word, the Kindergarten method is nicely contrived to bring the child en rapport with a superior intelligence….If the very essence of the Kindergarten method is personal influence, a sort of spiritual mesmerism, it follows that the mother is naturally the best Kindergartnerin; for who so likely as she to have the needful tact, sympathy, common sense, culture?”
Home Education by charlotte mason pg. 178
Thank you for taking the time to share your experience and these resources!