Binkies and Briefcases

Holy Cow.

When we signed up to homeschool one of the reasons I chose a public cyber school was because the curriculum was already planned and they would send us the supplies for free. (Well, not completely free because we pay taxes, but you know what I mean.)

Did they ever…

Yesterday afternoon the UPS man rang the doorbell and left 3 huge boxes on our front porch. They were filled with Nick’s kindergarten supplies.

Here are Math and Language Arts

and here are science, social studies, art, and music.

I’m so excited to get to teach again. This is like Christmas for me. 🙂

I was pretty impressed after looking over the k12 Language Arts curriculum. They included tons of well-known storybooks, a separate phonics curriculum (which is an area I felt was lacking when I taught 1st grade in a Maryland public school), magazines, leveled readers, textbooks, teacher guides, assessments, workbooks, and two complete sets of Handwriting Without Tears: one for Pre K that we can use to practice over the summer, and one for Kindergarten, plus the special paper and chalkboard that go with that series. Handwriting was also an area that the curriculum lacked when I was teaching in public schools, and HWT is the system that all of the Occupational Therapists I have worked with recommend, so I was really happy to see those.
Plus, there was a box full of magnetic word work activities, a personal whiteboard, and a standing whiteboard easel, and a DVD.
I was also really impressed with the other subjects.

We got supplies for history, science, art, and music.

I know from experience that many public school teachers are forced to leave science and social studies out of their day because of time constraints, so I’m happy that those will be a main component in our curriculum. When you have a set amount if time in a day and you are mandated to teach 2.5 hours of language arts and 1.5 hours of math, something has to go. In the lower grades, it’s usually science because it takes a lot more time to do an experiment with 20 six-year-olds and then complete the assessment to make sure they understood the concept than it does to read them a chapter in a social studies book. It’s a real shame,  especially for curious little guys like Nick who are much more engaged in the hands-on learning that science offers than they are sitting and reading for hours at a time.

The music and science supplies seemed to be ok. They were about what you would expect for kindergarten.

History seemed well planned in comparison to what I’ve taught in other schools. I was expecting maybe a workbook about a community or one textbook, but they sent a map, a globe, several multicultural storybooks, and a DVD in addition to that workbook I was expecting.

I was actually the most impressed with the art curriculum.

I was expecting a kindergarten art curriculum to be mostly learning primary colors, textures, finger painting, etc., but this program looks pretty hardcore. They sent art history books, a ton of prints depicting different painting styles, modeling clay, oil pastels, paint, and a student workbook.

When I was teaching in Prince George’s County, MD we didn’t even have art. It was considered part of my job as a general classroom teacher to incorporate art projects into other subjects and twice a year an art teacher would come into the classroom and do a special lesson for a few combined classes. Those lessons were activities like making a puppet out of a paper bag, so I was pretty shocked to see how intense this program is right from the start.

The one area that did not impress me at all was math. C’mon, guys, math is a core subject and it seemed like the area where they put the least amount of emphasis.

They sent a student workbook, a teacher guide, and 3 small boxes of shapes and linking cubes. I kept opening the other boxes expecting to see more math supplies, but nope, that was it. I am trying to reserve judgment because maybe the online lessons will be amazing, but I’m thinking I will probably have to do a lot of supplementing in this area. Really? No number line, no ten frames, no rulers, no geoboards, no clocks, not even any counters? I’ll make it work, but I would be nervous to recommend teaching kindergarten math with just these supplies to someone without a background in education.

I already own the manipulative kit for Saxton math, so we’ll probably need to be supplementing with that a lot. I would never teach an abstract concept without a concrete example, ever.

Overall, so far I’m really happy with our decision.

I was very impressed that they sent all of these supplies for one student. In the public schools where I worked, I never had individual science manipulatives for each child and there were many times when students had to share textbooks.

I know Nicholas is going to do well with the one-on-one attention. He is already making huge strides from the mini-lessons we have been doing over the summer. My husband was watching me do simple addition (with counters) the other day and Nick was getting the concept just fine, but he was very easily distracted. Eddie was commenting how if Nick had been in a general classroom he would have been completely lost because I literally have to stand over his shoulder and redirect him every few seconds. A teacher with 17 other students cannot give that much attention to one child. It’s not fair to the other kids in the class.

Seeing the curriculum is also making me consider cyber school for the girls in the future because, now that I have seen the difference, it seems to be much more in-depth and has a greater potential for real learning.

The one drawback to cyber school so far is that we are required to follow the public school calendar, so I don’t have access to the online classrooms yet.

We’ll see how the reality of actually teaching all of this pans out. We are required to sign-in on the computer and do language arts and math lessons every day, but we can schedule the other subjects however we want. I’m not sure if I want to have a set schedule with every subject every day or do a block schedule so that we can get more in-depth with science or art on days that Abby will be in preschool for a few hours.

Stay tuned.

Update: Check out all of the posts I’ve written about our homeschooling experience!

Diary of a Reluctant Home Schooler

How to Set up a Homeschool Nook

Diary of a Reluctant Home Schooler, A is for A-ha moment!

Diary of a Reluctant Home Schooler, Weird and Overwhelming

Diary of a Reluctant Home Schooler, Our First Day!

Diary of a Reluctant Home Schooler, Week 1