Kindergarten Comes to a Close

End of Year Homeschool Report
May 18, 2010

Our first year of homeschooling has come to an end. We started this journey almost a year ago with little expectations and almost little to no understanding of what all is involved. I'm thrilled to report that our first homeschooling year in Kindergarten was a success. Our county requires that we begin reporting homeschooling at the start of first grade with a declaration of intent, monthly attendance reports and a yearly progress report that we keep for our own records. While it's not necessary for this year, I thought I would get into the practice of it.

OVERVIEW:
In general, we mainly focused on the three R's (reading, writing, arithmetic) and sprinkled in science, social studies, music, art, sports, computer and other interests around that core foundation. We joined a NEACH homeschool group to do fun activities, projects, field trips, park days, Spanish club, and just make new friends and experiencing children of all ages.

MATH:
He excels in math. He grasps the concept easily and in fact surprises us on occasion with what he knows. For example, the other day we were driving in the car .... it was 1:11 in the afternoon. He asked how long until we'll arrive to where we were going? We said in ten minutes. He says, "So that means we'll get there at 1:21 correct? He has been able to tell time for quite a while now to the minute, but we were surprised at how he added on ten when it wasn't an even number. When asked how he did it he said, "That's easy. I just added ten and then added the one back in."

He also counts to 100 without a problem. Skip counts by 5's to 110 on his own and can count by 2's to 30. We wrapped up a first grade math workbook (adding, subtracting single digits) and started second grade math (addition/subtraction of double digits which begins place value). He is just beginning the concept of carrying over, but can tell he does so because we've told him to and not because he has grasped the concept yet.

For next year, we bought a new curriculum called RightStart which was developed by a Montessori Math PhD. using Japanese philosophies. One example of this philosophy is the way the Asians name their numbers. In English we count ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, and so on, which doesn’t give the child a clue about tens and ones. But in Asian languages, you counts by saying ten-1, ten-2, ten-3 for the teens, and 2-ten 1, 2-ten 2,and 2-ten 3 for the twenties. Another important difference is the emphasis on non-counting strategies for computation. Japanese children are discouraged from counting; rather they are taught to see quantities in groups of fives and tens. For example, when an American child wants to know 9 + 4, most likely they will start with 9 and count up 4. In contrast, the Asian child will think that if he takes 1 from the 4 and puts it with the 9, then he will have 10 and 3, or 13. They also use math card games and other manipulates including a special double-sided abacus based on five's and ten's. It's structured by levels rather than grade-level. It's completely different than how I was taught, but Jimmy really understands this concept, and he is the one teaching it...and it appears that Gabriel may be ready for something like this so we're hoping it will go wonderfully. Needless to say, we're really excited about beginning first grade with this curriculum.

LANGUAGE ARTS:
Reading: I'm happy to report that since the purchase of the BOB book sets and creating a reward system for reading, he is now reading at a first grade level with ease and confidence. I wouldn't say he is motivated to read on his own, but at least he is reading more and more.

Writing: His penmanship for print is clear. Sometimes needs to be reminded to bring the ascenders up to reach the top line and the descenders down beneath the baseline. When there are lines on the page, his writing is much better as you can imagine. He uses his finger to space out words still, but at least you can read what he is writing. He still sometimes writes his d's and b's backwards as well as s's and 2's. He draws his "o" in the opposite direction then what he is supposed to so hope to correct these mistakes this year.

Comprehension: His comprehension is surprisingly good considering he doesn't act like he is paying attention at all. There are occasions where I'll ask him what I just read when I KNOW he wasn't paying attention and he can't recall, but the other times when I'm unsure he knows exactly. He has been reading comprehension stories for 2nd grade and doing quite well. We will stick with this level for this year as it is challenging him at just the right level, and may even go back to first grade comprehension as remedial.

Spelling and Vocabulary: I give him pop-quiz spelling tests with either sight words, vocabulary words or words we've been working on recently. Anywhere from 8-12 words at a time and he generally gets most of them correct depending on difficulty from easy three letter CVC words or the more difficult four letter words with silent e's. We use the plain old-fashioned dictionary to look up meanings of words. He's not shy about asking what a certain word means that he's never heard before.

Phonics: We have been decoding words in our new Explode the Code workbooks which he seems to like. I can tell this is helping and we'll continue this along with another curriculum with cassette tapes I recently purchased.

Grammar: He understands nouns, verbs, adjectives and pronouns, but that's it. He also understands to capitalize letters of names and places. Sometimes he will begin using all uppercase letters and throw in a lower case letter. We are working on either using all caps or use of initial caps with consistency. He understands basic punctuation such as use of period at end of sentence, exclamation points for excitement and question marks for questions. He can write easy three word sentences, but anything beyond this he finds daunting.

SCIENCE:
He loves science and is glued to the T.V. when MythBusters comes on...or Sid the Science Kid. He is always asking why does something work the way it does so we are trying to nurture that curiosity by doing experiments as things come up in our daily life. We do not have a curriculum per se, but we read science, nature, human body, and physics books to him. We research the weather together and talk about seasons, etc. Currently, we are reading a book on Albert Einstein. We will use Science in the Kitchen to conduct any learning opportunities this coming year. He also loves helping us to cook and bake which allows him to learn how to operate/manipulate the various instruments and learn measurements.

SOCIAL STUDIES:
We plan to begin Story of the World text with it's accompanying workbook, but this year we focused on reading some books on culture and talking to him about people in general near and far. What they do, what they eat, what they wear and what they may believe. In addition, we keep a calendar in his room so he can mark off the days of the week (which he knows) and follow the months of the year (which he knows) while learning the different holidays. He knows the continents and we will begin the study of particular countries this coming year.

PHYSICAL FITNESS:
Jim works with him on golf, soccer, and tennis while I teach him to swim and dance with him in our living room. He is athletic, but not very focused or fast. Perhaps that will come with age....we hope!

OTHER:
Drama/Music/Art: He loves music and to sing. In fact, he recently told me he wants to be a song creator when he grows up. He loves rock or pop songs or anything with a beat. He sang "Jesus Loves Me" in Spanish with his homeschool group. He doesn't really care for drawing, but can color fairly well inside the lines. We hope to begin piano lessons this year. He also loves maps and mazes and we supply him with age-appropriate levels. He likes to tell jokes and act out or say movie line quotes so we'll explore this some more as well.

SUMMARY:
In my opinion, Gabriel is working above grade-level, but we want to be careful not to either push too hard or become complacent and find ourselves struggling in a certain subject. While he is a bright, young boy, he has a hard time focusing on what he is supposed to be doing at times, unless it's the television or computer screen. On that note, I'm watching for any signs of ADD or ADHD or seeing if he just grows out of being a boy. I think it's apparent that he is a kinesthetic learner, but doesn't fail at auditory or visual learning either. Overall, he has a love of learning and doing new things, is quite social and enjoys his friends, telling jokes and having fun.