Kindergarten Homeschool for Your Child

3 Rs Learning Goals & Objectives for Parents

After four or five years of parenting, many parents are reluctant to turn in their teaching caps, but committing to becoming homeschoolers can be a frightening proposition. The education of a child is an enormously important issue and parents can be intimidated by the prospect of being completely responsible for the outcome. The simple solution; try it for one year.

Teaching Kindergarten

The skills learned in kindergarten are the prerequisites for first grade and are often a natural succession of the skills children pick up in play and conversation during the pre-school years.

The skills and ideas taught in kindergarten are generally not extremely difficult for a parent of average intelligence to impart to their own children. Focusing on the goals of a kindergarten education will help parents to know whether or not they are on track.

Homeschool Math for Kindergarten

There are several resources for teaching math at home. Several websites offer downloadable ebooks, printable worksheets, teaching tips and a newsletter.

Grace Coates and Jean Kerr Stenmark have written a guide called Family Math for Young Children [Lawrence Hall of Science, 1997]. It takes a fun-and-games approach to teaching math that will surely capture the attention of even the rowdiest homeschooled kindergartener.

Keep in mind that while standards vary from country to country and state to state or province to province, they're notoriously low. Check with your local Board of Education or equivalent for the standards used in local classrooms, but by all means, understand that they're extremely low estimations of what children are capable of. With very little effort, these standards can be exceeded.

Kindergarten Homeschool Reading

By the end of Kindergarten, kindergarteners are expected to participate in oral language (talk and listen), recognize rhymes, and use words to describe their environment. They are also supposed to ask questions, take turns in conversation, stay on topic, pretend and follow directions.

Additionally, they should also be able to divide words into syllables, hold books right-side up, understand and explain that books contain letters & words and that they have meaning. Finally, they should be able to retell a story and discuss the characters, setting and plot.

For a family that is accustomed to reading and discussing books and stories, these requirements might seem overly simplistic. A kindergarten child who is already proficient in these skills and is ready to move on might enjoy Starfall.com, an online phonics program that helps children learn to read through interactive games and activities.

Homeschool Writing in Kindergarten

Kindergarteners are expected to learn to write their first and last names and upper & lower case letters. They write for communication, using pictures and phonetic spelling. For homeschoolers, the kindergarten writing skills can be practiced systematically, by making rows of letters and numbers or naturally, by making grocery lists, writing thank-you cards, love notes or letters to Santa.

At home, there are many ways to teach kindergarten skills without a textbook, but there are also several homeschool curriculum publishers and educational activity books and kindergarten programs designed to help parents impart these skills.

Some parents believe it is best to keep learning fun, so as not to crush the child's spirit. Others believe it is best to put a firm amount of pressure on a child in order to help them reach their highest goals. Still others see that children have been learning their entire life and that it isn't necessary to "make learning fun" because it already is. Taking the time to evaluate your position will save you the disappointment of choosing a program of study that you or your child are uncomfortable with.