Adventures in Homeschooling - Prep for Kindergarten

 It is hard to believe that I'll have a kindergartener this year! The prep and excitement for homeschooling has begun. We picked out a full curriculum plan and have to source the books and materials on our own. I've been looking on Amazon and Goodwill books, this way, at least I have free shipping. There are quite a few books that we will only use for a week at a time. I scoured our library system website and found many of them are in the system. Libraries are amazing! (My boys are always shocked that we don't have to pay when we check out. "You mean the books are free?!") I have to work out a system for putting items on hold at the proper time to make sure that we have the books in time. I know that I don't have to stick to the schedule super strictly, I can swap out one book for another if I don't have a book yet, but this part stresses me out a bit. I wanted to buy all the books, after all most are classics that I wouldn't mind owning anyways but it doesn't make sense financially for us. I just need to be patient. I requested 4 books for the library to purchase that the library doesn't currently have in their system and that I would prefer not to buy or could not find online. Time will tell if they are purchased or if I'll have to do more searching.

The curriculum we are using takes its philosophy from Charlotte Mason, its theology leans reformed Baptist, overall, we were impressed with the scope and scale of the curriculum. I know for kindergarten we probably do not need a specified curriculum, but it was important for us. We have never homeschooled before; I was not homeschooled, though all of my cousins were. My husband was homeschooled through some elementary years. We both felt it important to have some structure mostly for my sake. I like that the curriculum contains a lot of books we can snuggle together and read. The only math listed is math games, which will be super fun!

My firstborn is very academically inclined. He wants to figure things out and feel smart. In January we started the book Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Siegfried Engelmann and finished it at the beginning of August. He has the ability to read, and I appreciate the book (I got it for $7 and thought that if I could teach him to read for less than $10 then that was pretty good!) but now that the book is over there is still so much to teach him as far as the "Why?" and the "When?" certain pronunciations occur. The curriculum we chose has another book to help me teach him to read, I've only skimmed through it, but it seems more thorough and purposeful in its explanations and introductions of sounds. I think I am going to like it; we'll have to see how it goes. 

This blog post will come out after we start, but I'm writing it before we start. We plan to start August 5th because I'm excited and I hope he is too!