My oldest graduated from kindergarten this past may, and I thought it would be nice to share a recap of how our year went to help future homeschooling moms with their first time homeschooling. I count kindergarten as our first official year, and I consider preschool our first unofficial year. However, to understand why I call preschool an first unofficial year, I’ll have to give you a mini recap of that year before moving on.
Preschool
I made a couple of videos on YouTube about homeschooling my preschooler. At the time, everything I said and did felt like the right things. However, now when I go back and see those videos, I laugh a little. (by a little, I mean full on laughter ha) I had so much to learn and still do. I had the misconception that I had to pretend to be an actual teacher who made lesson plans. While that may be the best course of action for some people, it really wasn’t for me. I LOVE making list, so I enjoyed making the lesson plans, BUT I allowed the lesson plans to stop me from moving forward with school if I hadn’t had time previously to make them. For example, if I didn’t have lesson plans, I would not do school so I could make lesson plans. I quickly became overwhelmed and discouraged that I wasn’t able to get them done before and that we were falling behind. I started the year out strong, but that only lasted the first few weeks before I was completely burnt out. The rest of the year I would randomly do a school activity with him. Unfortunately, it wasn’t consistent though. I also did more research and realized a structured homeschool wasn’t necessary because children learn so much through play. Other countries, like Finland, don’t even start formal school until age 7. (source)
Now Kindergarten…
Curriculum
Considering how preschool went, I knew I needed to figure out a better way to do things. I found that a consistent routine worked much better than premade lesson plans. I decided not to purchase curriculum for kindergarten because we found out our dog had cancer and we needed to put a lot of money towards trying to help her. (Unfortunately, she didn’t make it.) I wanted to see how well we could do with free resources before I purchased something to keep our budget in check, and thankfully there are so many free resources online that I was able to make it work without needing to purchase curriculum. Someone had told me about The Good and the Beautiful sharing their curriculum online for free. I printed a few things from them throughout the year, but literally only a few. I did however, look at their online textbooks often to check to make sure I was staying on track with what my son needed to learn. I also purchased a few workbooks off of amazon because they were very inexpensive and easier than printing worksheets everyday. We did a few pages from each workbook daily. Overall, I learned that having a routine of what we did every day really helped. Occasionally, I might plan something a little more than our typical things, but for the most part we stuck to our normal stuff. Here are the workbooks I used:
Handwriting (technically this was a workbook we utilized in preschool, but we had some pages left, so I let him use it a little more during the first part of kindergarten as continued practice. We didn’t end up finishing it, and I’m about to let my 3, almost 4 year old use it, as he is getting good at tracing things.)
*There was one more math workbook I need to find, but it was really similar to the one listed.
Switching to year round school
I originally planned to homeschool with our local school’s calendar, as that is how our umbrella school works. However, after we took our spring break, I realized how much review I had to do when we started back. I started to question what would it be like if we took off the entire summer. Then I did some research and talked to other parents who homeschool. Often I heard that the parents who didn’t do year round had to spend the first several months of the new school year reviewing. The ones who switched to year round said how much better it was for them, how it really kept them on track with learning, and they felt their child did much better with continual learning. I decided to switch to year round school for the next year to try it out.
Homeschooling while fresh postpartum
During the school year, I gave birth to our third baby. For the first couple of weeks, my husband helped a little with doing school with him, and I just gave myself a lot of grace on days that I didn’t have the energy to do much, if anything. After a couple of weeks, we were able to pickup our regular routine for the most part, but if you’re postpartum while homeschooling, I just want to make sure you know, it’s okay to get a little behind! One of the beautiful things about homeschool is going at your own pace. You’ll catch up when you need to over time, especially if you decide to do year round like I have. If not, you’ll still be okay. You’ve got this!
Kindergarten Graduation
Typically, our umbrella school does a little kindergarten graduation. Unfortunately, for various reasons, they didn’t do it last year. That’s okay though! We had a little something for our son at our house. He did a little mini graduation walk down our hall and through the main part of the house, and then gave a little speech. It was seriously the cutest! They also included him in the graduation day at church. Special thank you to our family, friends, and church for helping making him feel so special and loved!
Since they didn’t have a graduation, I let him pick what color cap & gown he wanted for his party. Fun perk of homeschooling! He picked a blue one. I did also end up ordering a white one later as well because at our co-op, they let all of the senior graduates walk the hall, and they let the kindergartners walk with them if they wanted to. I didn’t know this when I ordered the first one. They were inexpensive though, so it wasn’t a big deal to get both. I’m also a photographer, so it’s nice to have them for any other kids that might want or need photos in a cap & gown.
Link to the blue cap & gown: https://amzn.to/4gAoDP1
Link to the white cap & gown: https://amzn.to/41WaKpU
*Note about the white one: It came with a “Kindergarten Graduate” sash, which was so cute. However, it kept sliding around and I kept having to adjust it.
Overall, I’d say our homeschool year was pretty good.
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