Minimalist Homeschooling Kindergarten: Teach Everything with a Pencil, Notebook, Crayons & Library Card

What better place to start, than with minimalist homeschooling kindergarten?

The irony is that when people first begin homeschooling their little ones, they feel so much pressure to do it “right,” or to do it “all,” that minimalist homeschooling often doesn’t start until the later years.  In reality, the requirements in kindergarten are so straight-forward, that I highly recommend starting minimalist homeschooling with the youngest learners.

It takes a leap of faith, and a whole lot of confidence to minimally homeschool – to trust that simple works, and that simple is enough.

Why not start here?

If you are homeschooling multiple ages, and wondering how to convert to minimalist homeschooling, and take that leap of faith, perhaps changing how you school the youngest learners in your home will empower you to gradually simplify your approach with the older children as well.

I’m now homeschooling my third kindergartner, and I am just NOW fully embracing minimalist homeschooling for this age.  So, I figure that if I show you how it can be done, maybe you won’t have to wait until YOUR third child to trust the process.

I actually began using this system when we were travelling for long periods of time with my preschooler at the time.  Then, I gradually used it with my older children while travelling.  One year, I literally brought three notebooks, some pencils, and a box of crayons on a six week- long trip for a preschooler, kindergartner, and second grader as our “school.”  I got a library card from a local library for $5 for the month.  I was amazed at how easy it was!  Eventually, this became an option for any time of the year, and any child.

 

 

The reasons I don’t use this approach all of the time are:

1. because my children take pride in finishing books,
2. sometimes it’s nice for me when my children can just open a workbook and go, and someone else has put the thought into learning objectives and age-appropriate skills, and
3. we all like a little variety.

Do what works for your family!

Keep It Simple (and Short)

Before I launch into the big laundry list of ideas for minimalist homeschooling kindergarten (which may not look very minimal), let me lay some ground rules to keep it simple…

First, do NOT do all of this in a day.  Don’t practice every skill, or every item within a skill.  Choose wisely.  Take the time to really decide what you MOST want your child to work on this day, this week, and this quarter, and then limit your lessons to those tasks.  I like to do a fine motor task, gross motor task, math task, language arts task, creativity or observation task, and read aloud each day at this age.  You’ll see below that some of those can overlap.  For example, tracing sightwords and saying them out loud covers fine motor skills and language arts for that day.

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Second, keep tasks short.  The beauty of using a notebook is that it limits the amount of a single subject that we do in a sitting.  I will do one math page, and one language arts page.  In contrast, when you have a 90-page handwriting workbook, it is easy to keep going and wear-out little hands.  If they are having fun, do a page or two more.

Skills

First, think about the basic skills that kindergartners are working on.  Once we have simplified our focus, it is easy to see how to make each one happen.  Your job is to first identify what exactly you want your kindergartner to learn… only then can we talk about how minimalist homeschooling kindergarten happens.

 

The idea is to start with a broad-view game plan for the quarter, semester, or year that guides your lessons.  Homeschooling is more focused (and valuable) when you have specific and individualized goals that you are working towards.  I have included the broad skills that I focus on at approximately  this age.  You can also look for standards online for each grade, and use those instead of my list.  Always adhere to your state or national requirements.

Within each skill, I would then think about specifically what I want to work on.  Skip counting by two’s for math?  Letter sounds?  Punctuation?  Rhyming?  You get the idea.    

My point right now is to demonstrate how you can take ANY list of skills and translate them into lessons that require no prep time, and only a few supplies.

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Some Kindergarten Skills:

• Recognition (letters, numbers, shapes, sightwords, etc)
• Math
• Phonics
• Fine Motor Skills
• Gross Motor Skills
• Creativity
• Observation
• Communication
• Independence

How to Make Minimalist Homechooling Kindergarten Happen

Now I am going to give you examples of “lessons” that I use with my kindergartner using just a box of crayons, a pencil, a notebook, and a library card.  I’m assuming you have a pair of scissors.  A bottle of glue or construction paper would be a bonus, and something I recommend if you’re using this method over a long period of time.  However, if you’re trying this out for a few weeks, or while traveling, keep it super-simple.

> Read More: What exactly is Minimalist Homeschooling anyway?

There are a lot of ideas out there for how to school a child with items around the house – board games, baking, and such.  This post is not that.  This post is about how to make more traditional subjects happen, usually in a notebook, with very few supplies and very little preparation.  This post is all about what you can put into that notebook to facilitate lessons appropriate for a kindergartner.  I do adhere to the school of thought that promotes “teaching moments,” and that children are constantly learning, however, I also like to use traditional lessons (for a lot of reasons that I won’t go into here).  Anywhoooo, here’s how you can cover all of the basics with just a few supplies…

Copywork

Copywork can take many forms depending on your child’s level.   At this age, you can use a notebook that has those big lines divided down the middle with a dotted red line.  If you don’t have that, you can write using two wide-ruled paper lines for each line.  You know, make your letters double-sized (or bigger) for the little ones.

In the beginning, children can trace the letters or words that you have written.  As their handwriting improves, they can copy the letters on the lines below the lines that you have written on.  For a bigger challenge, they can copy words or sentences from a book.

Copywork is your best friend when minimalist homeschooling kindergarten because it is so versatile.  Use copywork to practice fine motor skills, handwriting, letter recognition, sightword recognition, punctuation, phonics, and  even colors or shapes.  You can give different instructions to help with communication skills.  Here are a few ways to make copywork fun (and more valuable):

• Rainbow tracing.  Use crayons to trace each letter or number with all of the colors of the rainbow.  Or, have them trace each word in a sentence a different color to help them recognize words (versus letters).
• Specific tracing.  Give instructions like “Trace the capital letters in blue,” or “Trace the sightword ‘the’ red any time you see it.”
• Trace or copy pictures or shapes.  Children love to try to copy simple drawings.

This is a skill that probably requires your oversight to ensure that handwriting habits are properly instilled.  Save independent work for some of the other lessons. 

Matching & Finding

You can either line-up two columns on the right and left sides of the page, and have your child connect the pairs, or you can create a random scramble of items all over the page to have your child find things.  Take your pick.  I use these games for recognition tasks and to strengthen observation.  The possibilities are endless.  Use these as independent work when a child is reviewing skills.  Here are some examples:

• Search for a particular sightword, number, or shape in a jumble of other sightwords, numbers, or shapes.
• Circle different numbers (or letters, sightwords, shapes, etc) with a different color in a jumble of items.  For example, circle the 3’s with pink, and the 5’s with green.
• Make a column of lowercase letters on the left and one of capital letters on the right, and ask the child to draw a line to match the pairs.
• Put numerals in a column on the left, and groups of dots in a column on the right and ask the child to match the numeral to the group with the corresponding number of dots.
• Put simple addition or subtraction problems in a column on the left, and the answers in a column on the right and ask the child to match the problem to the correct answer.
• Make a jumble of simple addition or subtraction problems all over the page and ask your child to circle all of the equations that equal a certain number.
• Match the pattern in the column on the left with the shape/color that comes next in the column on the right.

Quizes

When your child has mastered a skill, quiz them.  Children actually love showing off their knowledge – especially when it is received with much fanfare.  Make sure you are their biggest cheerleader when you use this approach.  Ask your child to write letters they have been working on, or give them a page of math problems to solve.  Boost their confidence and solidify whatever they have been working on.

 Tell Me About It

In this lesson, I ask my child to draw something for me.  They can draw out something that we read, or they can draw something that they want.  I can say a word and they have to draw something that rhymes.  I can draw three squares and ask them to draw what happened at the beginning, middle, and end of the fairy tale.  Drawing is a good way to reinforce reading comprehension, creativity, communication, and fine motor skills.

If you have a budding reader/writer, ask them to write a sentence or a title for their drawing.  This will reinforce phonics skills.  Remember that there is such a thing as “correct mistakes” at this age.  Focus on phonetic writing, and save spelling for later years.

This is an activity that can be done largely independently after you provide instructions.

Read Aloud and Read Together

I probably should have listed this first.  If you can only do one thing with your child today, read aloud, and then talk about what you read.  Have your beginning reader read books to you that are at or below their reading level.  Read quality literature that boosts your child’s understanding of the English language and their imagination.  Talk to your child about what you read to reinforce communication skills and curiosity.  Choose books about history, science, emotions, and the world around us in order to cover a wide variety of topics.  This is where you can “spread the feast” for your child.

Pair your book with “Tell Me About It” to solidify concepts in these other subjects.  I bet there are probably people minimalist homeschooling kindergarten with ONLY a library card.  Don’t forget that audio books count, too.

Nature Study

Take the time to observe the world around you, and then have your child draw or orally narrate what they observe.  It’s ok to write down what your child says every once in a while – this models how ideas get translated onto paper for everyone to see.  My littles love sharing their ideas that I have written down with their father.

Expand science knowledge by explaining (at their level) why things are that way.  Teach your child the correct names for things like friction, maple trees, and locusts.  Ask them if they would like to label their drawing.

Simon Says

Be “Simon” and ask your child to do schoolwork.  Simon says to draw a triangle.  Simon says to color it green.  Give it purple polka dots.  Simon says to stand on one foot.  Simon says to clap six times.  Simon says to write your name.  Write a question mark.  You get the idea…

This is minimalist homeschooling kindergarten at its finest – absolutely no prep required.

Make Your Own Puzzle or Game

Get out those scissors, pull a sheet or two of paper out of the notebook, and make a puzzle or a game.  You can ask your kindergartner to draw something that you cut into a puzzle, and they put it back together.  You can do the drawing, and they do the cutting.  They could do the drawing AND the cutting.

Or, make a simple game board and some cards that quiz your child.  They can draw a number out of a hat if you don’t have any dice, and move around the board with any sort of marker (a stone, penny, or other treasure works well) when they answer the questions correctly.  If they help color the board and cut the cards, the game is extra special.  You can cover all sorts of topics this way, for example:

• Ask questions about things you have read, or any other topic you have discussed.
• Ask them to read a sightword, or tell you the sound a specific letter makes.
• Ask for the next item in a pattern, or ask them to put things into the correct sequence.
• Ask for the answer to a math problem, or ask them to skip count.

Reverse Roles

Let your child be the teacher.  I let mine choose three activities to “teach me.”  I love seeing which lessons they mimic.  Not only is this fun for kids, it builds self-confidence and demonstrates proficiency.  After all, you can’t teach something that you don’t know yourself.  This is a great lesson to use when you or your child are feeling a little burnt-out.

Building

Use whatever you have handy to build something… anything.   Use stones, or blocks; mud or playdoh.  Recyclable materials are awesome for minimalist homeschooling kindergarten.  It really doesn’t matter what you use, or what they build.  You are fostering creativity, motor skills, and communication when they tell you all about it!

With Just a Little More….

Stickers or Stamps

These are not on my list of minimal supplies, but if you have stickers or stamps, use them.  I like to use stickers for independent activities.  Here are just a few ideas to inspire your own:

• Place the correct number of stickers under each number or math equation.
• Put a sticker next to a specific sightword.
• Find a sticker that starts with the “b” sound.
• Stamp all the way around the lines on this big letter ‘A.’

Cutting and Pasting

This requires a few more supplies than what I listed, but I’m going to include cutting and pasting as an option because it is a great way to allow open-ended creativity, or give instructions.  There are letter crafts, and pinterest ideas galore.  Get in some valuable fine motor skills and hand strengthening with just a couple more supplies.  Add some empty bottles, string, toilet paper rolls, and/or wrapping paper scraps and your kindergartner just may think you’re the coolest mom ever.  Roll up your sleeves and create something alongside them – you won’t regret it.

 

 

And, of course, feel free to use other craft supplies that you have available.  Minimalist homeschooling kindergarten doesn’t have to be strictly paper and crayons.  No dogmatic rules here.  Kids love craft supplies, and there is a lot of value in allowing children to experiment with how colors mix, which objects stick, and how gravity affects their work…

 

Because this list might look overwhelming (or perhaps, too simple)….

 

As a frame of reference, I am very deliberate about making sure my kindergartner does a math page, a language arts/handwriting page, a creative or observation activity, and a carefully chosen read aloud or two with me.  A few times a week I ask her to draw or color something. Those are my teaching priorities.  Sometimes she asks to do more pages, and we do.  Just this weekend, she found her notebook in my diaper bag, and asked to do it while at her brother’s basketball game… so we did!

In addition, she likes to pick at least one thing for me to read to her each day.  On her own, she plays dress-up, dances, makes up games, plays with her siblings, explores her world, talks a lot, hears a lot, draws, cuts and glues.  She plays soccer.  I play all different kinds of music in the house and we have a basket of instruments.  She does a learning app 2-4 times a week when it suits our schedule because she likes it, and because it helps me logistically manage 4 kids.  That is how minimalist homeschooling kindergarten looks in our home these days.  I’d love to hear how yours looks!

What do you think?  Are you minimalist homeschooling kindergarten?  Or considering it?  Do you have ideas to add?

Please leave your comments below…

If you’re interested in minimalist homeschooling (at any age), you would love our facebook group. 

I also highly recommend the Minimalist Homeschooling Mindset Series.

The book Minimalist Homeschooling is a step-by-step guide that walks readers through creating their own meaningful, excellent, and simple homeschool.  If you’re ready to purge your schedule, priorities, lessons, resources, and space, this is the book for that!

Wishing you all of the simple things,
Zara