As public schools become less and less of a viable option for many Christian families, interest in alternative schooling options is increasing. Christian private schools remain financially unattainable for many (especially for larger families). Homeschooling, on the other hand, can be incredibly intimidating for those without direct experience or exposure to what homeschooling looks like from day to day.
The internet has been an amazing tool for homeschoolers. Homeschool moms and dads share resources and advice; parents considering homeschooling can watch vlogs and curriculum flip-throughs; documentaries like this one starring Kirk Cameron can find a wider audience; and parents can access books and training materials for free. However, as the homeschooling community grows and resources proliferate, decision fatigue and information overload follow for many researching parents. As marketing opportunities arise, parents are targeted with resources pitched as must-haves for successful homeschooling.
Thankfully, veteran homeschoolers like Sarah Mackenzie, Ginny Yurich, and Cindy Rollins are speaking up against the flood of “must buy now’s” to remind parents of the simplicity at the heart of homeschooling. These experienced voices are reminding younger parents (with a tendency toward helicopter parenting!) that even with the surplus of resources all around, the essential magic of homeschooling remains the same: real world, family-life experiences; the best of the good books that have stood the test of time; and the “three R’s” taught simply and easily when each child is developmentally ready.
In the spirit of these homeschool mentors and other scrappy homeschool veterans like them, I would like to share what a kindergarten year has looked like in our home. I hope, on the one hand, to provide encouragement that stepping out in faith that first year is attainable and joyful; and on the other hand, to adjure our readers that, in the words of Charlotte Mason, “Nothing is trivial that concerns a child.”[1] Even kindergarten matters, and the educational choices we make (which rest on the foundation of how we view the world) teach our children what we believe is important and can set the tone for the rest of their maturing years.
Plato said, “The most important part of education is right training in the nursery.”[2] Mason agrees and adds, “It is in the infinitely little we must study in the infinitely great; and the vast possibilities, and the right direction of education, are indicated in the open book of the little child’s thoughts.”[3] Here is a glimpse of a nursery education based in those three magic homeschool ingredients: experience, books, and skills.
Family-Life and Real-World Experiences
Kids are born learners. That does not mean they love to sit at a desk and copy their ABC’s! But they are natural experts in investigating the world through their senses. Our kindergarten has aimed not to take away from the time and space my kindergartener needed to continue learning in the way he has since he was born: by getting his eyes and ears and hands (and mouth, at times!) on all the wholesome things in the world he could possibly get to. For our family this approach has meant time outside, helping mom and dad with chores and projects, and visiting people and places.
Spending time in nature is essential for physical, cognitive, and spiritual development. Children’s senses are primed for constant input; this fact makes auto-play YouTube videos a huge attraction. However, the world outside provides a richer yet slower multi-sensory experience that satisfies children’s craving for sensory stimulus while also training their powers of attention. In nature, all of your child’s senses are stimulated—wind blowing on their hair and skin; bird songs whistling, now louder, now softer in their ears; sunlight dappling through the leaves and leaving patches of warmth on their skin; musty dirt smells rising through their nasal passages and salty-bitter dirt tastes in their mouth.[4] This low-level sensory “white noise” escorts the brain toward deep concentration—immersive play, benign boredom, or captivated observation. This ability to focus his mind and body will prove essential as my kindergartener grows into more academically strenuous tasks later on in his schooling.
In addition to outside time, my kindergartener spent much of this year helping with daily tasks around our home. This aspect of his education included helping make breakfast, fold laundry, vacuum floors, pull weeds, plant seeds, and put shoes on his baby sister. Competence in everyday tasks gives children a sense of self-worth and confidence—they become genuinely helpful to the family, and they know it. They know they are needed, and they are confident that they can accomplish real-world tasks with observable positive outcomes.
We also reserved some time this school year to explore outside the bounds of our home and family. We visited nature centers and museums and homes of friends, family, and church members. My kindergartener got to experience being under the care of other loving, trustworthy adults in settings outside of our home—from helping his maternal grandfather feed farm animals and a few days spent with his paternal grandfather painting their living room, to kids’ classes at church and all day spent with a friend, we attempted to take advantage of the opportunities we had to explore more of the world around us and the people in it.
Time-Tested Stories and Beautiful Words
Another important pillar of our kindergarten year was daily excursions into the wide world of literature. Just because the youngest children cannot read well does not mean they cannot understand beautiful language and nuanced ideas. By reading aloud to my kindergartener every day, he was able to enjoy works far above his reading level that helped populate his inner world with the building blocks of stories on which the rest of literature is built.
I focused with him this year on folk tales from Grimm, Uncle Remus, and a smattering of tales from other countries, like Russia and China. We also read from the Bible itself and from a quality retelling. These two (folk tales and Bible stories), combined with his previous foundation of Mother Goose and his future years of myths and lore, form the foundation for all other literature. By being intimately familiar with the common characters, tropes, plotlines, and turns-of-phrase from these sources, I hope to pave the way to an easy enjoyment of classic literature through his middle and high school years.
We also enjoyed some childhood classics together, such as Charlotte’s Web and Little House in the Big Woods. Many of these selections, such as the several books we read by Thornton W. Burgess, included observations about the behaviors of wildlife that dovetailed well with the hours we spent outdoors running into some of those same woodland creatures. Mrs. Piggle Wiggle got the most laughs from my kindergartener; The Book of Dragons by Edith Nesbit tickled me the most, though.
Additionally, we took a little time every day to sing hymns and folk songs and read a poem or two from The Golden Treasury of Poetry (edited by Louis Untermeyer). Hymns transmit the culture of the Church, allow kids to participate meaningfully in the Sunday gathering, and teach excellent theology (if chosen well!). Folk songs pass on the culture of specific pockets of society and open a window into the traditional skills in which people participated in years past, such as sheep-shearing, sailing, and old-fashioned mourning and celebrating. Poetry is the breadth of human experience distilled in the most potent form of communication. Getting a taste for it early trains your ear to hear the exceptions the syntax of English makes for good poetry and trains your heart to see and think poetically—drawing connections from a space of wonder. These three were a small but rich part of our kindergarten year.
The Three R’s
Finally, we did include some of those good basic skills: phonics, handwriting, addition, and subtraction. Often this aspect of homeschooling meant taking an opportunity during those everyday activities we were in the midst of to draw out some good thinking and hands-on practice: “If we’re going to divide this recipe in half, how many eggs will we need?” “That sign says, ‘Yield;’ the letter team ie can make a long e or a long i sound, depending on the word.” “Let’s write your name on Abuela’s card,” and the like. We also worked slowly and incrementally through a simple phonics and math curriculum. Pacing and length of lessons was key: we avoided unnecessary repetition, yet we lingered with each concept until we reached comprehension; when attention started to wane, the lesson was over—we seldom spent more than ten minutes in one sitting on any one of these skills.
Modern education has stripped so much from what is included in its curriculum until the majority of what is left is skills—and it attempts to turn non-skill subjects into skills as well (e.g., “reading comprehension” as part of literature). In reality, skills like reading and handwriting (as distinct from composition, which is a different topic for a different day) are better introduced late and learned quickly than pushed early and slaved over. They can be learned quite quickly when children are developmentally ready—for some this age may be at the typical timeline, as seems to be the case for my kindergartener, but for others reading and writing may not take off with ease until late in elementary school. Thankfully, homeschooling allows for this timeline, since the mentor-style teaching allows for all the content subjects to continue even if reading fluency is slower to develop.
Conclusion
As you can see, a year of homeschooling kindergarten does not have to be complicated; yet, while simple, it can provide a rich foundation for your child’s remaining school years. Anyone can homeschool kindergarten; and if you stick to the bread and butter of homeschool magic—experiences, books, and skills—I venture to say you might just try first grade, too!
[1] Charlotte Mason, Home Education (1886; repr., [n.p.]: Living, 2017), 5.
[2] Plato, Laws, Book I, in The Great Tradition: Classic Readings on What is Means to Be an Educated Human Being, ed. Richard M. Gamble (Wilmington, DE: ISI, 2007), 16
[3] Mason, Home Education, 5.
[4] Time outside also trains the other senses of our bodies, such as our senses of balance, special awareness, and pain. For a deep dive on time outdoors and kids’ physical and cognitive development, see Angela Hanscom, Balanced and Barefoot: How Unrestricted Outdoor Play Makes for Strong, Confident, and Capable Children (Oakland, CA: New Harbinger, 2016).
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