Shoved to Them
Here are my favorite picks for homeschooling young children including links and prices. As with everything else homeschoolers do, this is what works for us and may not necessarily work for you, but this is where I always recommend that people begin. If you can get things for free at the library, I’ve mentioned that and always recommend that you take a look at books in person before you buy them if you can. If you can’t, most homeschool books are easily resold on ebay. After doing this for 10 years, here’s what I like for the youngest learners.
Five in a Row Beginning with Before Five in a Row, this is my favorite resource for preschool and Kindergarten lessons. The premise is simple. You read a classic book to your child every day for five days and teach simply lessons to your little one based upon that book. For example, with the book Madeline, you teach your child geography (the location of Paris and France where the story takes place), math (twelve little girls in two straight lines….how many in each line), biology (where is your appendix and what is it for?), etc. The lessons are all laid out in the book, and the majority of the story books are available through your local library, although you may just want to own them all because they’re that kind of quality literature. Only available at this time from Rainbow Resource. Cost for the textbook – $35.
Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons Homeschooling parents either seem to love 100 Easy Lessons or they really don’t like it. I’m a fan. I’ve taught 3 of my 4 readers how to read with this book, and the 4th has vision issues and required special efforts and tricks to learn to read. I will make a confession here, I don’t do all the little rhyming and word game side lessons and simply concentrate on the big bold letters. This works, and the kids like it, you just have to not let yourself get bogged down in the extra stuff. Cost for the textbook $12.40. Can often be found for free at your local library if you want to try before you buy.
The Kids’ Nature Book Science for 3-7 year olds based upon the world around them. Quick, easy mom-friendly activities based upon the seasons and observing nature such as watching ants at work or fun science experiments such as making sun prints using construction paper, leaves and the sunshine. You don’t have to do them all, but if you do even 1/5 of the activities in this book, you and your kids will learn a lot of basic science. Cost for textbook $10.36 Some libraries carry this for a free try before you buy.
Miquon Math The book series I most often recommend. Miquon is NOT a traditional math program and focuses more on actually training the brain to think mathematically than on teaching a child to memorize math facts. Memorization is not learning, it is regurgitation. These books are a non-traditional approach to learning mathematics, but so worth the time and effort. This is one of the few books for young students where you NEED to buy the teachers manual. Text books are $5 each. You will go through one a semester approximately, but be ready to buy 2 or more at a time because your child will LOVE math and fly through them.
Singapore Math What if you like a traditional math program? What do you do after Miquon? Singapore! Singapore leads the world with math comprehension among their students. Once you see their math program, you’ll understand why. It is logical, easy to use, and actually teaches the why and how of how math works rather than just repetitive memorization of math facts. This program will take you up through 6th grade easily and my kids all still love math after using Singapore. How many other programs can say the same thing. Learn it, love it, be able to do it. Text book and work book together will run you $17 a semester
Story of the World The most child-friendly history program I have tried, and in 10 years of homeschooling, I’ve tried a lot of them. The chapters are written like the best of story books, but even more interesting because they are TRUE! This comprehensive world history series puts world events on a time line so that your child learns what was going on in China while the Egyptians built their pyramids, and what the Israelites were up to while Ghengis Khan was conquering the world. I love the feeling of getting the whole picture of human events instead of just bits of western culture. Get it with the activity book and your lesson plans and activities are all planned out for you, the worksheets and color pages are provided, and someone else has already planned the craft to go with the lesson. Yippee! I love when someone else does the hard part for me. Cost for Textbook $13. Cost for Activity book $24. You can even buy the audio book and let your children listen to someone else read the lesson if you need to. Cost of audio book $30 (I might even get this to listen to in the car for fun.)
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