This thread is right up my ally. My 5-year-old is kindergarten age this fall, is reading on a 4th grade level. My husband asked me, "So what's next for Peter?" I have taken that question to heart and I struggle a little with it. I'm a homeschool graduate and have always planned on homeschooling him, so the level of officialness with his age is exciting, but also a little intimidating because up to now we have always done "school" in a fun, joyful way, never as work, but always as a game. He has learned so much that way, and I want to keep it that way. But there are some skills that you have to work for, like writing, and while I want it to be fun for him, I think he's old enough to have required tasks.
For writing in the creative sense, I have let him start his own blog. (private of course!) He is writing a story about an airplane on it right now, but I will also scan in his artwork and things like that to make a nice little record. At the end of the year, we'll print it out and he'll have a keep-sake book.
For penmanship, I finally decided to go with this program:
http://teachmejoy.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=2. We are going to start with cursive. Handwriting is something we're starting from scratch this year.
For math, we're doing math-u-see.
For science, aside from all the books we check out from the library, we're having fun with this kit:
http://www.amazon.com/Be-Amazing-Toys-Big-Science/dp/B0034N7OZOWe are focusing on American history this year with help from the internet and library books.
We are enrolling him in the local community children's choir. Oddly enough, he's very excited to stand in a line with the other kids on stage.
I've decided to really focus in on music this year for all of my kids. Before now, I have focused on reading because I knew that knowing how to read would open up so many doors for them in all the other learning areas. I've dabbled in music until now, but I'm going to really focus on it this year, maybe even to the neglect of other subjects because I know that having a solid foundation in music will likewise help with the other subjects. Besides, we read a lot of books from the library on a variety of subjects, so they are still learning in those areas. I know that learning a foreign language is important, but it's an area that is really intimidating to me. I really struggled with my foreign language classes in college. However, music is like a foreign language in many ways, so maybe I get brownie points for that.
I can't wait to see what other moms have to say about this, because I'm still in the research phase for answering this question myself. I've got a reading 5-year-old. Now what?!?
Digg
