Help your child succeed at home. Homeschooling kindergarten children is a great way for them to begin learning about science, math, reading and other subjects.
As a parent of young children, your love and concern for them will be a great incentive for learning what you need to know to have a happy, productive home school adventure, so don’t worry too much if you are feeling some apprehension.
A few homeschooling teaching tips…
- Familiarize yourself with the basic skills your children should learn. Find them in this homeschooling kindergarten easy to read list or under each of the subject headings above.
- There are many different and creative ways to teach basic skills. Some parents prefer to follow an educational curriculum while others teach without one.
- As your child learns his/her ABCs and 123s, educate yourself on child development and on how children learn.
- If you are just beginning and feel a little insecure that you are covering all the skills necessary, reinforce hands on lessons with an online or other curriculum.
There’s more than one way to teach math…
Here is a sample of skills to teach for a math lesson on repeat patterns:
- The student will create patterns at various difficulty levels (red, yellow, red, yellow, repeat… or red, red, yellow, red, red, yellow)
- The student will copy patterns that others have made
There are many kindergarten type workbooks available where kids can color patterns in the book …ho-hum, not too interesting … OR… you could go for a walk on a warm autumn morning and kick some colored leaves and practice the same skills.
- Gather the leaves and place them in rows - yellow leaf, yellow leaf, red leaf, yellow leaf, yellow leaf, red leaf.
- Try AB AB patterns or AAB AAB. Not sure what this is about? Read for more information on teaching patterns.
- Play games with your child.. “I’ll make a leaf pattern and you copy mine, then you make a leaf pattern and I’ll copy yours.
Get your kids outside!
- If you are a parent homeschooling kindergarten or young children, you have the advantage of going on field trips everyday, even if it is just to the backyard or park.
- Use everyday objects to teach math, science and reading skills.
- Teach basic skills with games, puzzles, toys or math and science equipment.
- Use the outdoors as your classroom as much as possible when homeschooling kindergarten or preschool age children.
- Teach skills with real objects that your children can touch and discover and encourage problem solving and creative thought processes as your children explore their surroundings.
One day when my daughter and I were walking home we found a giant caterpillar on the sidewalk. Because there were so many crows pecking the ground close to it we took it home, researched it on the internet and created a habitat for it in the backyard.
We learned that some caterpillars build their chrysalis under the ground!
My daughter learned skills of observation, research, measurement, how to take care of living things and more during the whole process of finding, researching and documenting her observations in an easy to make science journals.
Easy ways to teach outdoors…
- Go to a park and count the rungs on the monkey bars, the steps on the slide, the number of swings
- Write numbers and letters in the sandbox with a stick
- Start a leaf collection - classify them by shapes
- Observe and draw - teach children how to label parts of their picture
- Create letters with twigs
- Go for a “letter walk” down a neighborhood street…look at signs, mailboxes, and house numbers. Can you find some Rs? the number 4?
- Let your children organize mini-trips. They will learn to be responsible as they plan, print lists, and pack. Each time they will learn from what they forget and plan more carefully.
Cook with your kids…
Cooking with your kids offers so many learning opportunities. They experience following directions, sequencing, measurement, hygiene and so much more. For a complete list skills kids learn when they cook, check out this post…
Hands on activities first, worksheets and recording sheets second…
- When homeschooling kindergarten, use worksheets and pencil or paper type recording sheet activities after children have had lots of practice with hands on activities
- Read to find out how to teach children to record their observations and discoveries.
- Invest money in science, math and art and craft equipment and materials rather than thick workbooks.
- Worksheets tend make children think there is only one right answer. Recording sheets are designed to record the children’s thinking, observations, and ideas.
Check out my latest e-book, Challenging Children to Investigate with Everyday Things. It shows you how to provide your students with a new science and math investigation every week of the year