Homeschool World Forum

Hello, This is my first post, and I have a huge question! I hope to learn alot from this website since I don't have any experience:) First a little background, then my question. This is our first year homeschooling our eldest who is 5. We have not done any formal schooling and he has not been in any day care, preschool or Kindergarten. We have decided to make our own curriculum instead of buying prepackaged curriculum as we really like the freedom that approach offers. I have no experience teaching and my husband and I have researched many recommended choices for curriculum used for Kindergarten. We also have the book Home Learning year by year. Our plan is to start with a reading program that is very flexible, then after 6 months or so, add in other subjects.

My question is this- how many resources do you use with each subject?

The book Home Learning has so many suggestions that I don't know which ones to use or how many to use.

We are planning on using the distar based approach to reading with Teach your child to learn in 100 easy lessons; but other than that what should we use? We want a very well rounded curriculum, so we need help with finding resources that work well with this text as well as using different approaches to apply the same concept. I hope that makes sense:)

So for example, we will use the book, then we would like to have some ideas for crafts or activities that are hands-on, then also some worksheets, or even some other text that uses multi sensory methods. Any suggestions would be helpful. We want to get enough pulled together so that it is not boring, but we don't want to use too much either. Thanks for any input!!

How many resources I use with each subject varies. It just depends on how much money I want to spend and how many things I see that I think my children would enjoy and benefit from.

I would suggest two things. One would be to take advantage of all that your local public library has to offer. They will have so many wonderful things........books, dvds, books on cd, story time, etc. -- all for free!

The other thing is the internet. There are lots of free educational sites that you can use for your son to keep things interesting. For example, if you are learning about something specific, just google it and you will come up with tons of ideas.

Your plan sounds great. Best wishes!

My child is a little younger than yours (she turned 4 in September) and we have homeschooled her for the past two years. I found that all I really need are books on any number of topics (use the public library), plenty of paper and craft materials and access to the internet. For kindergarten I personally would like a math curriculum although we have managed to get by up to now and she is doing fine. I also have the book The Ordinary Parents guide to teaching reading and although I have not used it with my daughter as is, I did use it to be sure I know what phonics rules can be covered (the print in the book is too small for my daughter and I also find that she wants to read books more than she will be able to do if she just follows that book)

There are enough free sites on the internet to cover almost all the subjects - you'd be using endless resources but all in one spot.