The Johnson Crew!

Today I'm going to show you how to teach your kindergartner and only one hour a day just three days a week with everything they need to learn for their entire kindergarten here let's go hi welcome to my channel if you're already a subscriber welcome back if you're new here my name is Sarah I have 4 kids from the ages of 1 to 8 and have been homeschooling for the last four years and on the side I also helped my husband run our wedding photography business first I want to let you know that I have included a link below to a Google spreadsheet that I made with our lesson plans in them it's got lesson plans from pre-k up to 2nd grade

So check that out I've also created a shopping list on Amazon and put that link below with the workbooks that we use for kindergarten and science experiment kits and cool craft kits so check that out as well so by the time my second child was in kindergarten my oldest was in 2nd grade and my plate felt kind of full with his schoolwork so I opted for a very easy system for my kindergartner that required no prep on my part we did our formal sit-down teaching time just three days a week

And it would normally take between 40 minutes to an hour each day we would join in with my oldest for Bible time and science lessons so I'm including that in the 40 minute to an hour time here's the thing when it's just you and your child at home you can knock out school much faster that quality time allows you to get some really good one-on-one teaching done so if you're hearing wow that's really not enough time to teach the kids everything they need to know trust me it really is if you haven't seen my other videos yet I do talk about how you shouldn't try to model your homeschool after public school or private school because it's just totally different that one-on-one time really

Allows you to get a lot more done in less time so here's our blueprint for kindergarten we would choose 2 to 3 of the following core subjects to do per day math reading and writing for math one of my teacher friends showed me this book years ago and it covers everything that they need to know and we would do about three to four pages per day in this book and I've linked to it below you can find it on Amazon the only area where I feel like it's lacking is skip counting which they're gonna go over that in first grade as

Well but if you wanted to do a little bit more with them on that you can easily go on YouTube and type in skip counting counting by 5's counting by tens and that's a great way to allow someone else to teach your kid for a little bit and they usually have fun songs and things that help stick in your kid's head so then also to help with skip counting is just grabbing some things around your house that you can count together so very easily you could grab Cheerios

And you could separate groups of five and then you guys could be counting by 5's or separate amount in groups of ten and count by tens make it fun and with those items you can also practice addition and subtraction with them little hands-on activity there where you have five Cheerios what happens if I take one away I have four left or you could have four Cheerios and you could say two and two makes four or three and one makes four you know you can practice all those kinds of things

And it's fun for the kids to have something they can touch and hold for reading we love the Hooked on Phonics app we put it on their iPad which to them is really exciting that they can use their iPad during school time the app is perfect even to start in preschool they've got some pre reader activities and videos they can watch and then they have 24 units and within each unit is three lessons you can just do this at your child's own pace that's the beauty of homeschooling

So if your child is really eager to learn how to read you could easily knock this out within a year if they're a little more apprehensive you can stretch this out over two years and that's perfectly fine so the app says that it's perfect for preschoolers through first graders so you can stretch that out and do it depending on what your child is ready for ever kid is different if you feel like they're not ready to learn to read don't feel pressured by the public school norms to to push them through it it's kind of a bummer to just make them hate reading

So take time with it I've heard of some people who waited till they were quite a bit older to start teaching them to read because they just weren't ready yet and by that time they were ready and they were eager and it was way less painful way less tears and they got it really quickly so just take this time to really learn your kid what are their current learning styles right now and figure out what pace is best for them my oldest loved math and kindergarten

And first grade and still does and so even though he hated reading at the time I just allowed him to excel more at math and we didn't push as hard with reading until a little bit later and and that seemed to work well for him and and he's a great reader now and he does actually like it and he's also really great at math so there are 72 individual lessons on the app so even if you only did two lessons per week you would get through all of them

And 37 weeks which is a normal school year this app is six dollars a month or forty dollars a year or eighty dollars for lifetime use on up to three devices so that's what we chose because we're planning to use it for all of our kids so that ends up being a really great deal for our family for handwriting we use this workbook by brain quest I have link to it below on my Amazon list for each letter it has two activities and then two pages to practice writing the uppercase

And lowercase version of each letter I also found this dry erase board at the Dollar Tree to use for more practice it also has a number section to work on writing numbers this workbook has several other different sections you can work on throughout the year there are phonics activities a sight words section shapes and colors patterns matching and sorting time and money we typically would do three to four pages at a time which left us with some pages that we could continue working on throughout the summer to keep things fresh there were also four extracurricular subjects that we would sprinkle in science Bible music

And art for science this year I have a second grader as well so we would just join in with his science lessons and I want to keep doing that as they grow up and do those lessons together just to save us all time but when I was just teaching my oldest son I would just ask him what he wanted to learn about each week and if that's a little too like off-the-cuff for you you can do like I mentioned in the preschool video pick one theme to focus on each month

And that could be like human anatomy whether plant life cycle water cycle and we would really just spend one day a week on this maybe looking up YouTube videos one week and then the next week maybe trying to do something hands-on related to that topic I would also ask our family members to get them science experiment kits for Christmas and their birthdays and that would be something really fun that we could throw in there your science class at this age doesn't need to get complicated really it's just a way to pique their interest about different topics

And spark that love of learning how things work for a Bible time at this age we really had liked the character builders Bible and I mentioned that in my preschool video so check that out if you want to see inside of that book with my oldest we also started online piano lessons in kindergarten because he was really into music and wanted to learn that there's an awesome channel on YouTube called the Hoffman Academy which actually has free piano lessons that we have loved for years

Now now my second child is not as into it as my oldest so we are just waiting and we'll see if she's interested in a different instrument otherwise we'll kind of dip into the piano lessons in first grade now I am NOT a big arts and crafts person so instead of stressing myself out over this I keep a good amount of crafty stuff on hand and I encourage my kids to make their own crafts throughout the week they can do this when they're done with their schoolwork or during quiet times in the afternoon which is when my littlest

Now since we only do school four days a week with my oldest we still have a fifth weekday open and that's when I try to do one artsy or crafty project with all my kids at one time and full disclosure that doesn't always happen where do I pull these ideas from Pinterest and again I like to ask my family members for craft kits you know fun painting Sun catchers paint a piggy bank those kinds of kits for Christmas and their birthdays and that's it folks this system worked really

Well for us this past year so check out the Amazon list below that has two workbooks and science experiment kits and craft kits listed on there so you can get prepared for this coming school year tell me about yourself in the comments below how many kids do you have is this your first year homeschooling are you just looking for something new this coming year if you enjoyed this video please give it a thumbs up and as always don't forget to subscribe thanks for watching talk to you soon