Kindergarten Homeschool Curriculum: Is Your Child Ready to Graduate?
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I am going to break down the four main categories that children should have mastered to move on. I also teach my children Bible, but it is not a subject that holds a child back or promotes them forward.
Math
- Recognition of Simple patterns such as triangle, square, circle, triangle, square, circle.
- Writing numbers up to 12, but being able to count to 100 verbally.
- Master simple shapes such as circle, oval, square, triangle, rectangle, diamond, and star.
- Recognize money and be able to name each coin. They don’t have to know how much each one is worth yet.
- Beginning introductions to clocks. Being able to recognize all of the hours. If they can write their numbers up to 12 this shouldn’t be a problem.
- Understand the concept of one whole and one half. They should be able to color in half of a circle or a whole square.
- Understand the concept of addition and subtraction using only small numbers. Johnny get 5 skittles for dessert, but gives Jane 2. How many skittles does Johnny have left? Or Sarah had 3 skittles and Maria gave her 2 more. How many skittles does Sarah have altogether.
- Able to identify if someone has more or less than another person.
- Introduction to simple bar graphs. An example would be a graph that showed how many classmates had cats and how many had dogs.
- Practice under, over, around, up, down, through.
Language Arts
- Master writing the alphabet in both cases (upper and lower).
- Master writing their name.
- Able to write simple words based on their sounds. Easy words like dog and cat.
- Verbally communicate days of the week.
- Verbally communicate the seasons and describe each one.
- Point out colors and recognize them as sight words.
- Understanding of beginning and ending sounds in words.
- Comprehension of small stories.
- Able to tell the order of events that happened in a short store (what happened 1st, 2nd, and 3rd).
- Able to look at a book and know where the title and author are written.
Science
- Understand the difference between something that is living (plant) or nonliving (rock).
- Learn what plants need in order to grow (light, water, soil). Keep it simple.
- Learn basics about animals. Touch on habitats and how some animals are only found in certain climates.
- Understand weather. What rain, snow, and wind are. Keep a chart for one month whether it is sunny, cloudy, rainy, or snowy.
- Identify changing seasons and what happens during each season (such as the leaves fall off the trees in the fall).
History
- Identify the days of the week.
- Identify holidays such as Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, etc.
- Know personal history and create a family tree with pictures.
- Discuss the community and how it works (postman, firemen, grocery store clerk, librarian, etc.)
- Identify the state in which the child lives.
- Introduction to maps and making one of the classroom.
- Able to recite personal address and phone number.
- Identify wants and needs.
- Identify goods and services.
- Able to say the pledge of allegiance.
- Discuss the characteristics of a good citizen.
Ready for Graduation?
If your child is in Kindergarten and they have mastered all of the concepts above, then you can go ahead and hold a graduation ceremony for them. If they had trouble with one or two concepts then graduate them, but do a little bit of summer school so they don’t start off first grade behind. If your child, however, had difficulty with quite a few concepts it would be best to repeat the grade.