He tends his flock like a shepherd: 
He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; 
he gently leads those that have young. 
Isaiah 40:11 

 This verse was a great encouragement to me when I was raising small children. It was a comfort to see God as my shepherd — gathering me to Himself, leading me where I needed to go, and being gentle with me when the world (or my own unrealistic standards) treated me harshly. 

As I endeavor to answer the question, What should I do for Kindergarten?, I’ll challenge you to follow the Great Shepherd and choose to be gentle with yourself and with your little lamb. Allow your child to ease into the rigor of academic life. Embrace the joy of being together and learning together.  

Whether you are beginning Kindergarten with your first-born or preparing to teach the tenth child in line in your family, I hope you will prayerfully consider what will make it a great year for you and your child and, most of all, what will honor God and also light the fire for learning in your child’s heart and mind.   

Here are ten thoughts that I hope spur you on to pray and think before you plan and buy: 

1. Don’t over plan.  Your little one is growing physically, mentally, emotionally, and academically every day. Look at how much he or she has changed in five (or so) short years — from a babe in your arms to a child ready to learn to read.  
 
In our quest to spur them on to do well academically, please don’t allow your zeal to dampen the joy of learning and being. Leave room to chase proverbial rabbits and find answers to the random questions they will ask. Leave time for wondering, reflecting, and thinking. Nurture your little plants in the greenhouse we call home. 

2. Don’t under plan.  We do need to take our role as “teacher” seriously. The old adage, Failing to plan is planning to fail, certainly applies to home education. I’m reminded of the conversation between the Cheshire Cat and Alice:

Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” 
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. 
“I don’t much care where–” said Alice. 
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat. 

When comes to our children’s education, we certainly do care. We care very much! And that means that to be successful in getting them there, we need to have a plan for the way to go. 

3. Playing is learning.  Play can be scheduled. Time to work puzzles, build with Legos, play in the kitchen … all these activities foster thinking, processing, creativity, and problem-solving skills. 

4. Sibling time is important.  When they play with older or younger siblings, social skills also develop. One of the reasons we choose to do school at home is to foster a sense of family and belonging. We want our children to love each other! We want them to count one another as friends, as well as siblings. The quality time is often found amidst the quantity (no matter what the culture tries to tell us). When you schedule your kindergartener’s day, build in some time for her to work puzzles with her 12-year-old brother and build Lego structures with her 8-year-old sister, as well as play with her baby sister. 

5. Kids thrive with a schedule (and moms do, too).  It’s not just enough to invest in all the books and manipulatives. You may know you want to do reading, handwriting, phonics, science, art, etc. with your child, but each of those subjects needs to be mapped out on a schedule. Decide how much time for each and how many days and which days. Sharpen your pencil, lay it all out, and then post it on the fridge. The children will help keep you accountable. You may not eat lunch at precisely 12:30 every day, but you may very well be the only family on the block that knows you are supposed to. 

6. The Letter-of-the-Week plan works.  Pick up any preschool or Kindergarten curriculum and most will be organized around a “letter per week” plan. And that plan is effective! 26 letters means you have a template for almost the entire school year. 

During ‘A’ week, you might: 

• Memorize an ‘A’ verse for the week:  A friend loves at all times … Proverbs 17:17 
• Make applesauce, apple dumplings, or avocado toast.  
• Visit an orchard and pick apples
• Read: Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day, How to Make an Apple Pie and Change the World, and Amazing Airplanes 
• Get books from the library about ants or airplanes 
• Do an ‘A’ collage by cutting out photos from old magazines. 
• Build an Ark or a paper Airplane 
• Find places on a world map or globe that begin with A: Africa, Asia, Antarctica, Australia, Alaska, Angola, Algeria, Afghanistan, Argentina.

7. Read, read, read. If you don’t do anything else each day, read aloud to your children. Gather everyone together to snuggle up after lunch and read aloud. Pay your dues with all those Dr. Seuss books and eventually you will move on to Charlotte’s Web, The Little House books, and the Chronicles of Narnia. Exposing your children to quality literature will spur them on to become good readers, writers, and speakers themselves. (Check out some of our previous posts for ideas on what to read and to glean some read-aloud tips.)

8. Multi-sensory methods maximize competency (and they are also fun!)  All of us — but especially children — are more likely to retain what we learn when the senses are engaged. Don’t just read about how it works … build it! Don’t just look an apple pie … bake one! As the senses of seeing, touching, hearing, smelling, and tasting are engaged, we heighten likelihood to remember and retain the information. Let them not just learn how to write an A, but form one with dried beans, play-dough, or pipe cleaners.

9. Hide God’s Word in their hearts.  Children are little sponges. My children memorized circles around me when we were going through those Awana books. You and I most likely rattle off Scripture easily that we memorized as a child, but somehow need to keep cycling back to re-learn those we learn as adults. Capitalize on those early years by intentionally including Scripture memory in their regular schedule. If God’s Word is in their hearts, it will be on their tongues. Jesus Himself said, “…For out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.” (Matthew 12:34)

10. Consider resources from our sponsor, A Reason For.  The name says it all — every resource our sponsor publishes is based on God’s Word: 

Handwriting – they learn penmanship by writing out Bible verses. 
Spelling – a multi-sensory approach that also unpacks the same verse from Handwriting, with a read-aloud devotional story and discussion questions. 
Guiding Reading – children learn to read by reading Bible stories 
Science – A weekly science experiment (with a resource kit to complete it is included) is transformed into an object lesson to teach a truth from Scripture. 

Here’s what I like to recommend for Kindergarten: 

Handwriting K Book — This not only teaches proper letter formation but does it in a fun way. Each lesson also includes a coloring page that depicts an animal that begins with that letter. An elephant, for example, is featured for the letter E.  

Handwriting Teacher Guide — Something unique about this teacher guide: it covers every level from K (Kindergarten) through F (6th grade). Stick with this program, and you never need to buy another teacher guide! I especially love the resources included for Kindergarten. For example, here’s the resource information included for elephant:  

The elephant is the largest land animal. Elephants have floppy ears, long trunks, and wrinkled, gray skin. African elephants have large ears; Indian elephants have much smaller ears … Elephants eat plants – lot of plants! A single elephant can eat as much as 300 pounds of plant food a day and drink up to 50 gallons of water. 

As your child is coloring his or her elephant, you can read those couple of paragraphs to them.  They are learning new information (and you are most likely learning along with them). You can go to a map and find Indian and Africa. At dinner, your budding scholar can quiz dad: 

Daddy, do you know what is the largest land animal? Can you guess which has bigger ears—an African or Indian elephant? Can you guess how many pounds of plants an elephant eats each day: 100, 200, or 300? 

The subject may be Handwriting, but this resource helps you drop in some science and geography, as well! (Note: the Teacher’s Guide and Level K handwriting book are available as a set, at a discounted price.)

Guided Reading — While this two-year program is typically introduced in first grade, many of our home-educated students are pleading, “Teach me to read!” Investing in this resource will have you ready when they ask. It includes 95 readers, leveled A-M, that lead children systematically and incrementally to reading fluency and comprehension. They are delightful! Why read about Dick and Jane — or a cat and a rat — when you can learn the Bible as you learn to read? Ordinarily, students can progress at a pace of two new readers each week. If your child is ready to begin in kindergarten, you might start out slowly, with only one book per week.

Spelling – Levels A and B of A Reason For Spelling® are both two books in one, as each includes “bonus” phonics lessons at the front of the book. Investing early in the Level A (first grade) book will allow you to cover the phonics section in Kindergarten and be ready to jump into the spelling for first grade.  

More details on the above can be found in the A Reason For online store. You can also download free samples, preview a scope and sequence, and find lots of helpful additional information for every subject.

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Just in time for back-to-school,
A Reason For is also making a special offer available to our readers!
When you visit the A Reason For website using THIS LINK
— or enter discount code ARFH-KINDER19 at checkout — 
you will receive 20% off your order, through July 29th, 2019.

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We hope and pray you have a delightful Kindergarten year with your precious family!
I’ll leave you with my favorite education quotes:  

Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.
– William Butler Yeats