Secular Homeschooling?

[CityslickerHomestead]

Does anyone know where I can find comprehensive secular homeschooling curriculum for pre-k to kindergarten aged kids? Google has not been as fruitful as I expected.
Thanks!

 

[BYCforlife]

https://www.raisingaselfreliantchild.com/2013/10/16/10-free-secular-homeschool-curriculum-websites/

Abeka sells kindergarten books, but they have more religion which you probably wouldn't like. You could cross out the religious parts, I don't know.

 

[CityslickerHomestead]

https://www.raisingaselfreliantchild.com/2013/10/16/10-free-secular-homeschool-curriculum-websites/

Abeka sells kindergarten books, but they have more religion which you probably wouldn't like. You could cross out the religious parts, I don't know.

Thanks!

I don’t plan on homeschooling, but I would like to incorporate it during the summer before preschool starts. I have friends who have told me their kids were expected to be able to read before kindergarten, and I don’t want my hyperactive wiggleworm to have an even greater disadvantage. If he’s going to be bouncing off the walls at school, I’d at least like him to already know how to read.

 

[Kiki]

Thanks!

I don’t plan on homeschooling, but I would like to incorporate it during the summer before preschool starts. I have friends who have told me their kids were expected to be able to read before kindergarten, and I don’t want my hyperactive wiggleworm to have an even greater disadvantage. If he’s going to be bouncing off the walls at school, I’d at least like him to already know how to read.

My Mini's school used this site in kindergarten.
I am pretty sure you can sign up for a free 30 day trial.
It is wonderful for learning how to read. I highly recommend it.

https://accounts.learninga-z.com/ac...lDexEnjvcTtaAYpt8_D7ypOgY6r1I6kIaApshEALw_wcB

 

[ketojenn]

Nothing beats just reading story books to them. It's how I learned to read. Sit on mommas lap and read. After awhile, they learn to follow along and recognize words.

When I home schooled mine I had to pull material from several sources, there just isn't much for the secular teacher out there, but the religious stuff wasn't hard to work around.

 

[cassie]

Jean Kerr, the author of Please Don't Eat the Daisies gave her boys a project that would stand them in good stead the whole of their lives. Each week they were to memorize a poem and recite it after dinner on Saturday night. Any poem they chose would be fine. They started out with doggerel such as I've never seen a purple cow etc. and then graduated on their own to such complicated works as The Highwayman Came Riding.

Just a comment on home schooling. I once knew a couple that did just that. They home schooled their three boys and they did such a good job of it that all three of their sons were accepted into Harvard on full scholarships. The boys are all grown now and they are all very successful in their chosen careers. If anyone is considering home schooling, see if you can get a copy of the book, Home Schooling for Excellence by Mickey (sp) Colfax.

 

[cassie]

Another thing you can do is hands on learning. Go on walks and identify flora and fauna. If you live in California, you can visit missions up and down the state. You can also go to the ocean and look in tide pools or you can trace the San Andreas fault. If you live in the South, there are Civil War sites. In fact there are historical sites to be found in every state. Get an inexpensive microscope and collect pond water and see what lives in it. Get some books on insects and birds and see what you can find and identify. Visit museums. If there are any ghost towns, check them out. See if there are any fish hatcheries in your area. Some plants offer tours. You would be surprised at what you can find if you look.

 

[Ribh]

As a homeschooler I would also suggest you show him how reading is relevant. Choose simple, child friendly recipes & show him how to read & follow a recipe to create something yummy to eat. No cook treats are great for littlies.

Another tip, depending on how you choose to teach him his letters: I made small, child size cards with all the lower case letters on them [vowels in a different colour]. I would sit a chop chip on each card & for every letter the child could give the correct sound [sound not name because it is the sounds he will use to sound out words] they got to eat the choc chip off that card. The cards are easy to manipulate when you move on to creating words & sounding them out. All the best.

 

[cassie]

If I was going to teach a youngster to read, I would use the Dr. Seuss books. They have a limited simple vocabulary and they are fun. All these years later I still remember how I felt about Dick and Jane. I was not a violent kid, but given an opportunity I could have quite happily strangled Dick and Jane and their dog Spot, too. I thought they were an insult to me and children everywhere. I didn't talk like that and what's more, I never knew any kid that did. The fact that I learned to love reading was in spite of, not because of, Dick and Jane.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

I agree with just reading books as a good start. Make sure he/she has a good understanding of numbers and the alphabet.
I was the youngest in my family and when my siblings were at school, I remember asking my mother to teach me to read. We actually started with the Encyclopedia Britannica. She read to me and I learned simple words as she read. We also had a world atlas which intrigued me and I learned geography and map reading very early.
The only problem was that when it came time to learn reading in 1st grade with the Dick and Jane readers, I was so painfully bored with school that I almost completely lost interest in school.
So extreme boredom with school can be a problem. That can lead to class disruption.
My kids went to Catholic school for all but the first couple years when we didn't live near a good one. The local public school had a good reputation. When my son entered 1st grade he was in a big class and we got a call from the teacher that he was being disruptive in class. I met with the teacher and she acknowledged that the problem was boredom. There were 4 other boys in the class who were equally disruptive - also because of boredom. Since I worked nights, we came to a creative solution. Every day, I went to school and took the 5 disruptive/bored kids to the library to allow the teacher to focus on fundamentals with the rest of the class. The assignment I gave the boys was to pick a topic and research that topic, write a report and present it to the class. I forget what topics each picked but I remember one boy's topic was dinosaurs. It was valuable for the teacher to focus on the kids that needed to learn basics without disruption and for the advanced students to learn researching a topic of interest, writing, public speaking and independent thinking at a very young age.

My wife isn't well educated but I credit her with my children's quick start and excelling in school. She spent hours each day teaching numbers, the alphabet and nursery rhymes. As infants, they had foam numbers and letters that stuck to tile that we'd play learning games with while they were bathing in the tub. After alphabet recognition, they would start to make words on the wall. She would even teach them about all sorts of animals and the sounds they make.
For my preschoolers, I added learning numbers and alphabets in Spanish, French and German which they took to very well. By the time they reached 1st grade, they could recite the alphabet and count to 20 in all of those languages.
When it came time to learn about money, instead of just teaching denominations and simple ways of making change, for example making 75 cents change for a dollar doesn't have to be just three quarters but it could be a quarter, 4 dimes, a nickel and 5 pennies. I could see that spurring enlightenment and imagination in their eyes.
When they leaned graphing with the x, y axis, came home and were excited to tell me about it, I then introduced them to another axis - z, as an introduction to three dimensional measurement. Cartesian coordinates.

Here are some other places to look.
https://thislittlehomeofmine.com/homeschooling-kindergarten/

http://www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com/blog/2014/02/homeschooling-101-creating-lesson-plans.html

https://www.education.com/lesson-pl...jLvYDzCdTymKRiSFFG5r8c5szqSSmQeEaAu0jEALw_wcB

https://www.abcmouse.com/landing/se...DH-cqxhdnoMNXsZ_ZdpxneveJcPdo6UgaAkOPEALw_wcB

https://start.k12.com/schoolindividual.html?st=mo&product=mova&leadsource=sem&vendor=acronym&utm_source=Google+Adwords&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=MO>SEM>Non+Brand>Google>MPS>Home>Phrase&utm_term=home schooling kindergarten&ad_group=MO>Home>Home+Elementary>Homeschool+Kindergarten>Phrase&lead_source_detail=Google+Adwords&keyword_match=p&adposition=1t3&ef_id=Cj0KCQjwo7foBRD8ARIsAHTy2wm2TW5xunnnJbEHYdA9aP9JCwHm-56yHnDdaJ-ADkjYXNSLtaqd6ScaAg2AEALw_wcB:G:s&s_kwcid=AL!2165!3!344631256461!p!!g!!home schooling kindergarten&gclid=Cj0KCQjwo7foBRD8ARIsAHTy2wm2TW5xunnnJbEHYdA9aP9JCwHm-56yHnDdaJ-ADkjYXNSLtaqd6ScaAg2AEALw_wcB