Choosing Homeschool Curriculum Gr. K to 6

Find Great Homeschool Courses Kindergarten to Grade 6

Homeschooling Encouragement Article by Harriet Yoder

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Math Lessons for a Living Education Levels K-6.

Parents ask me about teaching reading or math. It can be overwhelming to think about teaching numbers and words. There are all kinds of gimmicky flashy products that promise to help. I don’t think most of it is necessary, and it is definitely expensive. If you have a child with learning problems, one who is having difficulty in a particular area, or many children then some of these things might be an excellent investment.

The suggestions I am making apply to the average child. Bright children will do these things faster while late-maturing children or those with learning problems may take longer. The basic foundation for any learning is a firm base of phonics, reading and basic math skills. If there are chunks of information (bricks) missing at this level, the wall of learning your child is building will crumble at a higher level.

I knew one mom who could only teach her oldest son for 7th and 8th grades. Something prompted her to teach him at home because he had major learning problems. They devoted his seventh-grade year to filling in the cracks. She re-taught him handwriting and basic math and helped with his reading comprehension. It was frustrating for them to have to spend the first year “doing nothing” new. She even had to teach him to write coherent paragraphs after she taught him to write good sentences. However, when her husband insisted that the son go to public high school, he was ready. He wasn’t a straight-A student, but he made good grades and went to college! His handwriting is beautiful! (Today he is a practicing attorney! Isn’t God good!)

Fortunately, most of you will not have to deal with repairing the damage. If you do your job in the early grades and lay a strong foundation for learning, your child will be successful in the later grades, no matter where he is or what he studies.

What do you need to teach in the first few grades? Here is a listing of suggested goals for this age group.

Bible and Prayer

The foundation of any education has to be the Rock! “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.” Matthew 6:33 As a family, we try to read Bible, pray, and praise the Lord together every day. We don’t always succeed. It is really hard when you don’t grow up doing that as my husband and I did. Bibles were for Sunday. This has been a great struggle for us. We are more diligent than we were a few years ago and progress is being made.

We ask one child to bless the reading of the Word. Then my husband reads the Bible, explaining passages or asking questions. We then pray one at a time for the needs of the day and when we can we gather around the piano (but it could be the stereo) and praise the Lord with music.

One thing I have learned is that every Bible reading session may not a spiritual high. I guess I expected every devotion to be a major spiritual experience for everyone every day. Real life is that some days everything clicks into place – everything relates to what is in the Bible and that some days it does not seem very spiritual. The Word does not return void. Whether or not it feels spiritual, it is an act of obedience to read the Bible and God will bless your efforts.

I can not tell by physical appearance how the day’s devotion impacted children. I know that as we have become more regular with our devotions, the younger children can pray better prayers and are more sensitive to the needs of others than I would have expected them to be for their ages.

See Bible Study Curriculum

Obedience

If your children obey, teaching them is much easier. If you are having problems is this area, one good book to read is Child Training Tips by Reb Bradley. Many books are available on this subject. Pray for wisdom. Ask several couples who have obedient children how they accomplished the task.

Diligence

Train a child to work on an assignment until it is finished. The first part of a lesson should be done as well the last part—not hurried at the end to finish. All the lessons for a day don’t have to be done at one sitting, but the child should know that you don’t play until the work is complete (although “recess” is a good refresher if progress is being made). My husband works at home so when he goes into town, he usually asks me who is available to accompany him. Translation: the one(s) who finished school for the day gets the prize!. That is a great motivation for diligence!

I would suggest not going to any outside activities unless and until the assigned work is done for the day. It is well worth missing a swimming lesson, field trip, or park day to make the point. This also works for chores. The house has to be clean before we go out. And if it isn’t, it is because I wasn’t diligent in enforcing the rule. When the children know I mean it, they comply.

The goal is to train your children to pace themselves. For example, my older daughter knows what is expected during the school year. She has learned to plan her school work around the rest of her activities. I no longer have to check her every day. She’s learned that if she works ahead, it frees up time later!

Self Motivation

By the time your child is fluently reading he should be able to read instructions in the book, do the problems, answer the questions, and perform the assignment mostly on his own. That is a major goal of mine. After all, a person must have the ability to learn and find out things for himself if he wants to be successful in college or business. You should be there to check the work, answer questions, tutor as needed, and monitor progress.

Preschool Curriculum

Horizons Preschool Curriculum is a complete program. There are several choices with this new curriculum. The most basic is to purchase the Horizons Preschool Curriculum Set which includes the Teacher’s Guide, student workbooks, and music CD. You can add the multimedia resources by purchasing the complete set. If you already have a preschool curriculum, the Horizons Preschool Multimedia Set is a great addition if you want to supplement it with interactive, character-based, Christian multimedia content.

For younger preschoolers, there is Horizons Preschool for Threes. This complete set comes with one Student Workbook, a Workbook Companion, a Teacher’s Guide, and an illustrated Bible Story Reader at an affordable price. For the Bible, you can choose the scripture of your choice—KJV, NKJV, or NIV.

Kindergarten Curriculum

There are many Homeschool Kindergarten Curriculum choices available. Most of the major homeschool curriculum publishers have kindergarten programs.

Reading

Lay the foundation for phonics with an excellent phonics program. Readers are nice but the library has many easy reader books or you could use the Bible like Susanna Wesley did. Reading aloud with your children is one of the most beneficial learning activities.

You can pay big bucks for a fancy reading program that works. However, most of us don’t have it. We have taught our nine children to read. I am helping with a couple of the grandchildren. That doesn’t make me an expert—I wouldn’t dream of teaching a room full of first graders to read. However, I have enough experience with phonics to know that a basic inexpensive curriculum can be sufficient. If you don’t know phonics, complete programs range in price from around $40 to several hundred dollars. You should be able to purchase a complete program for under $200. An excellent series of reading workbooks is Explode the Code the whole series should be under $65.00. They can be purchased separately.

The best method for teaching reading is one that uses phonics and is multi-sensory. See the word, say the word, touch (write) the word, and hear the word. If the child has any dyslexic tendencies, this method is best for teaching because it helps compensate for weak areas. I have noticed that some children seem to take longer to read using phonics. I have one friend who had a ten-year-old tested for various disorders because he was still reading slowly. Whatever else the doctor found out about the boy, he told the mother that her son knew his phonics!

Common Sense Press has updated Learning Language Arts Through Literature program. The Common Sense Reading Program Blue Book(1st grade $95.00) and Red Book (2nd grade $85.00) covers language arts including reading. That makes the price reasonable. The student workbook is the only consumable and you can purchase extra workbooks. Save even more when you purchase the E-book version!

Any of of those programs can be a starting point. The principal goal of reading is to have a child who loves to read books. How sad it is to see people who know how to read but were taught in such a way that they hate reading. One of the significant things about homeschooling is that these children love to read!

See Reading curriculum

Handwriting

For handwriting practice, you can purchase an inexpensive consumable handwriting book or you can have your child copy words from the reader, the Bible, or other books you choose. Or you can simply write words for your child to copy. It is nice to have some half dot lined paper. The 3/8″ to 1/2″ size is best for little hands. Think about it. Do you want to write letters two or three inches high? This is about the same size ratio to your hand as those 1″ lines are to a little person’s hand. Wal-Mart has some inexpensive tablets for this.

Handwriting Curriculum: More thoughts on handwriting

Spelling

See Spelling Curriculum

Writing

When children can form sentences and ideas faster than they can spell or write, they need help to capture them. That is why dictation is helpful. Have him dictate a letter to a friend or relative while you write it down. Then he can recopy it at his own speed knowing that his original thoughts were preserved. I usually let a child dictate until he reaches the age when he realizes it is easier to do it himself than to wait for me.

I encourage him to write the words and I help him spell the hard words. How? I sound the word out slowly and ask the child what letter makes that sound. Piece by piece the child gets the word spelled. I don’t tell them how to spell it, I just tell them if they guessed the correct letter. By hearing me pronounce the word as I sounded it out, the child gets the drift of how to spell phonetically.

You could also let the child use a recorder to tape what he wants to say and help him write it later. The idea is to capture the thoughts before they are forgotten. Whatever method helps your child to do this is alright.

If your child gets stuck, you can ask questions about the work in progress. “What happens next? How did he do that? How does it look, feel, sound, taste, or smell? What would you do differently? What else do you want to tell Grandma?” This should get you started with creative writing.

Wordsmith Apprentice from Common Sense Press is an excellent program for 4th to 6th grades. It is a methodical introduction to writing based on creating newspaper type articles. It sells for around $15.

Frode Jensen has updated Format Writing! Though I haven’t seen it yet, I expect the revised edition to be the same quality as his other revised books have been. Format Writing is an excellent text to use for college-bound students who need to learn to write great papers efficiently.

See Composition Curriculum

Grammar

Daily Grams and Easy Grammar are available for each grade from 2nd through 6th grade plus. These are very homeschool friendly with a high retention level. I highly recommend these having used them for my children.

Wordsmith also has combined the old General Punctuation and Major Punctuation into a wonderful text called Jensen’s Punctuation! It will help you solve most of your punctuation problems, but it is for use with Jr. high and up.

See Grammar Resources

Arithmetic

I am in the age group that was learned real math (not new) and phonics. I still remember some of the lessons. I guess that is why I like a nice orderly math book and not some jumbled up math texts that I have seen. Just looking at some of them makes me feel dyslexic. If I was a child and had to learn from some of these, I would hate math. But since I had good teaching, I like math and know an excellent book when I see one.

If you are looking for a print and online homeschool math kit, Envision Math for K-5 fits the bill. It has plenty of practice in the print workbook with additional practice printables in the Teacher’s Resource Masters.

Horizons Math is a splendid choice if your child likes variety. Modern Curriculum Press has a proven program for K-6 that is affordable. They are consumable until 6th grade.

For manipulatives, I use one-centimeter blocks and a rod track (50 or 100 cm) for adding and subtracting. Later I use a set of base 10 blocks for borrowing or carrying (alias renaming and regrouping). For teaching time, use a real analog clock and the digital one on your microwave or radio. And money? Use actual money! It’s cheap because when you sell it, you get all your money back!

Cuisenaire rods are helpful for skip counting and fractions. You can get a small set for under fifteen dollars, but these are not absolutely necessary.

If a child is having a tough time in a particular area, I use math game books for activities and games on that subject. I also might purchase or make a manipulative if it would help.

I try to use consumable textbooks as long as possible. When we do switch to hardbacks, I give my students a graph paper spiral notebook. The little squares help the child to keep numbers in the right column and promotes neatness. This reduces the number of errors due to messy copying.

See Math curriculum

Science and History

Real books and multi-level teaching. Read to them. Let them read good historical fiction at their reading level. There are several early reader series that have easy-to-read biographies, historical fiction, even science stories. You can select books on a subject that interests the child. The Sowers Series is a wonderful series with biographies about famous people with good character. Again either read aloud to the child(ren) or give him the book to read.

Check the historical books that you read for science topics. For example, in G. A. Henty’s, Cat of Bubastes, topics such as irrigation, deserts, and crocodiles are discussed in the context of the story. Select related science books and read them along with the historical book. Instant multi-level unit study which covers history and science.

If you look at most science and history books for elementary grades, they are very simple and if you noted the topics, you could check a book out for each one and cover the material better.

Science in the Beginning is new from Dr. Jay L. Wile. It is a hands-on, multilevel science course for grades K-6. Your student will study science as it was created based on the Creation week in Genesis. There’s a hands-on activity for each lesson. This is a plus if your student is a hands-on learner. At this time there are five books in this series plus Dr. Wile has written a new high school chemistry textbook.

Great Science Adventures from Common Sense Press is a topical science series for homeschoolers in K-8. We used The World of Tools and Technology with hands-on projects and activities. At $22.00 each, the books in the series are well worth the price. Topics include plants, space, insects, human body, and tools with more in the works.

Savvas Elevate Science comes in a print and digital homeschool kit and offers a secular perspective at a very reasonable price!

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