2010-11 Year in Review: Kindergarten

Isaias (6) was my Kindergartener this year. I really hadn't planned on schooling him because- quite frankly, I didn't think he was ready.

Which is funny because I thought the same thing about Isaac at this age, too.

What happened is that while I didn't say anything to Isaias about schooling last summer, several extended family members did. Things like, "Oh, you get to be in Kindergarten next year, right? What a big boy!" and he got all excited. While I wasn't too keen on the idea of schooling him just yet, I knew that not schooling him would be a low blow to him after all those comments. I just couldn't envision myself bursting his happy bubble. Not because I can't say no to my kids (believe me, I can) but because I knew that for Isaias, a no about this would be devastating to him.

So Mark and I decided to go ahead and begin and call it Kindergarten, but to start really simple. The first week of school I had planned for him to practice forming his ABC's with his finger using a small tray of rice. I had visions of making it through the alphabet in a few weeks but he could seriously not even make a diagonal stroke for the A on the first day. (Told you he wasn't ready.) It was a little mind-boggling, honestly. I mean, I didn't think he was ready, but... um, I really did not realize how UN-ready he was.

So I scaled it waaaay back. We called it school and I made sure to write his name up on the dry- erase board each day with Ella's and Isaac's names and t0-do's, but his list would look like this:

Isaias
-Super Star Speech* with mommy on the couch.
-choose a (picture) book for mommy to read to you
-color at the table

*Isaias had trouble with some of his sounds and for a season, was pretty difficult to understand. I purchased this book two years ago and I worked through the exercises with him last year and at the beginning of this year and it really helped him. His speech is much better and I found this book really helpful for me to be able to narrow down which sounds he was struggling with and to pay attention to that in his speech and catch him on those things and work on practicing the correct sounds with him.)

I did a bit of searching for something for him to do that would feel more like official school to him and discovered this little pre-cursor to what Isaac was doing:
and scooped up this series and that gave him some book work to do at the table when E & I were doing theirs. It's very basic but was really perfect for where he was at.

We also worked on an All About Me book, did several ABC Hunts (uppercase and lowercase letters) for letter recognition, and he traced around metal insets. He played the dice math game, worked on various ABC puzzles/games that we have around the house, and did all of our Bible/memory work and history with us each day.

At some point during the year we went back to my original rice-tray idea and he easily formed the letters. At the end of our year he now is familiar with all the letters and their sounds and often writes and sounds out the words as he writes. He's come a long way and we're really proud of him.

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I think all I have left for these Year in Review posts are the ones on Nature Study, which I began but decided Mark should do instead since he's actually in charge of it. Maybe I'll interview him and post it that way. Oh! AND I remember now: I promised a book list, so I'll do that, too. :)