Review, Review

Today marked the end of a two to three week kindergarten review that I have been doing with Emma each morning.Next week we will officially start first grade! I decided to do a review so that we could wake our sleepy summer brains back up! I also thought it would be a good idea to slowly ease us back into the routine of schooling each day, while allowing new schedules for the rest of the house to fall into place and giving life a chance to calm down a bit before jumping into new material. I bought some addition and subtraction workbooks from the dollar section at Target and we went through those these past couple of weeks. There were also some review sections in her first grade spelling and handwriting books, so we knocked those out of the way, too. Last but not least, we went through the book What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know (it is part of The Core Knowledge Series, and it is awesome!).

One of my biggest fears as a home school mama was that I would not teach my children all that they needed to know. How was I supposed to know what each grade required a student to comprehend before passing them on to the next grade level? It was overwhelming, to say the least. The easiest route, of course, would have been to select an all encompassing curriculum, but I am not really a boxed curriculum kind of gal. I tried that, and it just did not work for our family. I wanted to create my own mini curriculum, but had no idea where to start. Then my friend introduced me to The Core Knowledge Series books. They have a book for every single grade level and when I read it, it made me all warm and tingly inside, because it told me exactly what my daughter needed to know for each grade. (What? A textbook has never made you all warm and tingly?) All I had to do was find a curriculum for each subject that covered the required material. It was awesome. Love at first sight. I read through this book towards the end of the summer and highlighted areas that I wanted to introduce to Emma before moving on to first grade. These past two weeks we have talked about poems, tall tales, common sayings, weather and seasons, authors, the continents, pilgrims, and presidents, just to name a few. I had originally planned to only review for a week, but she was so fascinated that it ended up taking three! That's what I love about learning at home. You can adjust your schedule to meet your child's needs (and even their wants!).

So, that is what we have been up to. Reviewing in the mornings, and playing Just Dance in the afternoons. We have also thrown in some mall time, card time, and Grammy and Da time. On Friday Kate starts mini school, and next week dance classes for the girls pick back up. Fall is officially here, and our school schedules are underway. Life is good.