Mini Man's and Little Lady's PreK/Kindergarten Literature Curriculum

When Big Buddy was in Kindergarten, we did a lot of monthly unit studies. You can see some of them here. However, now that Mini Man and Little Lady are Kindergarten/PreK I've decided to take a different route. Instead of doing unit studies we are going to focus on one great picture book a week.

This works well for our family because all our kids are book lovers. It's funny because it doesn't matter what book is being read aloud in our house, they will all gather as soon as they hear it. Another reason it works well for us is that Big Buddy's (classical) history and science curriculum take up any space we might have to focus on a unit. This also allows for all the children from, L (a child I babysit) age two, to Big Buddy age 7, to participate on some level.

a few of the book we will be covering

The books I have chosen are picked with Mini Man and Little Lady in mind. They are seventeen months apart with Mini Man having just turned five and Little Lady will be four in January. Jeremy and I have debated about "putting" them in the same grade and for now it seems to work. If you've ever homeschooled children close in age, I'd love to hear about what you did and how you handled it, etc. Like all children, they have their strengths and weakness so this year it's a mix between PreK/Kindergarten activities.

We will start each week by reading the book. Initially, we will talk about the cover and any predictions they may have. Then, I will slowly read the story asking them thoughts about the illustrations, guesses at what comes next, as well as highlighting any new words. When finished I'll ask them a few questions about the story. We will then reread the book a couple more times throughout the week. After the the second/third reading I'll ask them to retell the story to me or Jeremy. Later in the week we will also read some other complementary literature: same author, same theme, etc. Depending on how hectic the rest of the week is, we may do a some related activities, games, or crafts. 

In addition to the picture books, Mini Man and Little Lady will also be memorizing several Mother Goose poems. We enjoy The Real Mother Goose or Mary Engelbirght's collection. As well as reading through Aesop's Fables. They will also be working their way through Handwriting Without Tears, My First School Book and Math in Focus Grade K. When they are ready, we also plan on using the reading program, The Reading Lesson: Teach Your Child to Read in 20 Easy Lessons. We used The Ordinary Guide for Teaching Reading with Big Buddy and it worked...ok. In fact I still plan on using some of the rhymes and other tactics from that book, but this new one, however, looks a lot more hands on and less dry. I think this will especially work well with Mini Man. What are your favorite reading programs? 

Later this week I'll post about our first two books, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and Over in the Meadow.