All of our paperwork is turned in to the school district and we officially started yesterday, August 1st!
I used this super basic affidavit from AskPauline.com and this set of objectives. You can find the .doc versions of them on this page. I was a lot more worried about this whole process than I should’ve been. Honestly, the hardest part was finding a notary public, and I just ended up at a UPS store. I was a bit worried that when I turned in the papers they would go over them and have questions, but they gave me a receipt and I was out of there in a matter of minutes. The affidavit states that I have at least a High School Diploma, and that I will be keeping track of medical/immunization records. I did not hand in a copy of either as from what I’ve read, the affidavit should be enough.
I plan on taking this year very easy. We will be using Build Your Library Kindergarten, but not necessarily all of it, or do it every single day. For the first day, we did some Rocket Math, read a story, went over 11 spelling words, and then spent the day at a state park. We had a beautiful picnic with sunflower seed butter and jelly sandwiches, blueberries, watermelon, celery, and then a slice of cake for dessert.
I’ve read different opinions about doing Rocket Math in K, mostly that it shouldn’t start until 1st grade. My little one is pretty good with the first levels of the math facts, so we are going to give it a shot. We use this reusable dry erase pocket that I got at Target for $1. That way we don’t have to print off more than one copy of each sheet. Once he can do the sheet in under a minute, we’ll move on to the next level, but I’m in no hurry. I want to read and do some kind of math every day because I think those are important foundations, but I want him to enjoy it and learn to love them on his own. I get the Rocket Math sheets from Dad’s Worksheets and printed off the tracker from there too.
We are also using this reading log that I’ve customized. I grabbed the super simple booklog from Ask Pauline, and added an extra column to write whether the book was read by the student, parent, or if it was read together. I will probably keep a general, undated list of all the books we read through out the year as well as a list of field trips we go on. This is our Attendance Calendar. All of these papers are in a 3 ring binder.
This is the student planner we are using. It serves as a list to see what we have planned for the day, ie Rocket Math, piano class, read Harry Potter, go to the park, and also so we can look back at the end of the year.
There is a spot for spelling words, and I’m going to pick a few from the Dolce Kindergarten sight words list, a few from flash cards, and a few that are relevant to whatever we are working on. For example, on the Keyboarding without Tears app, there is a section titled “Go to Work.” My little guy already knew ‘go’ and ‘to’, so one of his spelling words is ‘work’.
I’m have a few ideas about resources we are using, and some ways we are veganizing things. If you have any suggestions or questions, let me know!
Vegan Homeschooling 