Halfway through Kinder! What?

We have just finished up week 18 (of 36) in the Sonlight Core A curriculum that I’m using for Hannah’s kindergarten year. It took us 10 weeks to do 6 weeks of schedule, but we had a month long vacation and Hannah went to a half-day camp during that time, so I’m happy. I’m still having a great time being impressed with the amount of content and great stories and watching Hannah soak it all up. She now will tell people that she is going to “school at home” if they ask her if she goes to school. She used to say no, because she doesn’t ‘go’ anywhere. Talk about being literal 🙂

I am really happy with the Ergermeier’s bible that is scheduled in this core. I feel like they do a really good job of paraphrasing each story in a way that a 5 yo can understand but without babying it so much that the content is lacking. They have recommended questions after each story and I’m usually impressed with Hannah’s ability to answer them. They aren’t always just factual questions. Sometimes we lose Benjamin, but most of the time, he sits with us.

In history/social studies, we continued with a large number of missionary stories and moved from about 300 years ago into the first World War timeframe. This included a short study on the western expansion and a gloss over of Native Americans.

For read alouds we completed; Beezus and Ramona, Twenty and Ten, Mary on Horseback, Dr. Dolittle, Dolphin Adventure, and Dolphin Treasure. Twenty and Ten and Mary on Horseback were great historical stories that really helped you get a feel for how people lived in the time periods they were set in. I liked all our read alouds.

Reading / LA – We’ve moved along with the grammar part of the LA. She typically reads the week’s worth of reading assignments the first day, so we fill in extra reading practice with other things like Highlights or other books we have. I try to have her do at least 10 minutes of out loud reading a day. She will read to herself a lot as well.

In science, we finished up our unit on eggs and chicks, did an overview of the animal kingdom and the different types of animals, and started our overview of the plant kingdom. I enjoyed the book “How Flowers Grow” by Usborne. I was a good intro to plants and how they reproduce.

Math is our biggest struggle. She is really good at it and loves to find patterns and point out when its the same answer more than once. But she complains and whines the whole time. It’s frustrating. She may be bored by the amount of repetition. Maybe I need to cut out some of the extra problems if she gets a certain number right without help.

Extras – Hannah attended her first ever camp. It was a half-day brain training camp for a week. She had a great time.
She also participated in a PE class and will be starting an art class for the fall. We’ve found a homeschool group that we think may work for us. We’re hoping to make some friends Hannah and Ben’s ages and do some fun outings together. So far, we’ve been to a candy factory, an earth science exhibit, and attended two presentations at Usery mountain park.