How to Choose the Best Kindergarten Homeschool Curriculum
There are thousands of kindergarten homeschool curriculum options out there. This is great because it allows parents to customize and choose the perfect options to fit their kids. But, it can also be overwhelming trying to find the right homeschool curriculum from the sea of choices. Here are some things to consider before choosing a curriculum for your kindergartner. I’ve also included our top kindergarten homeschool curriculum picks, to start you off in the right direction.
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Before Choosing a Curriculum
Before you choose a kindergarten homeschool curriculum, here are a few factors you should consider.
1. Your philosophy of homeschooling
What kind of homeschooler are you? Do you prefer Charlotte Mason or Classical Education? Traditional school at home or unschooling? Unit studies or eclectic homeschooling? Figuring out your homeschool philosophy before you choose curriculum is important. If you know your homeschool philosophy, you can choose curriculum that aligns with it- and eliminate curriculum that does not- easily.
If you aren’t sure what kind of homeschooler you are, you can check out the descriptions in my homeschool philosophies post.
2. What subjects you need to teach
The first place to start when figuring out what subjects you need to include in your kindergarten homeschool curriculum plan is your state’s legal requirements. Some states have legal requirements for kindergartners who are homeschooling and others do not. You can learn more about your state’s specific requirements from the HSLDA.
Once you have figured out the legal requirements, it is important to take some time to think about your family’s priorities. What subjects would you like to include? What do you feel is important for your child to know? You can find more about choosing subjects for homeschool here.
3. What format you prefer
Do you prefer textbooks and worksheets? Are you looking for an app or website that your child can use independently? Would you like a curriculum that includes video lessons? Are you looking for a project based curriculum? There are a variety of formats available, so it helps to think about what might work for your family before looking at curriculum options.
4. Your budget
Curriculum options vary in price, ranging from free to thousands of dollars per year. It is helpful to take an honest look at your budget before considering curriculum options, as they can add up quickly. But even if you are homeschooling on a tight budget, there are many high quality free homeschool curriculum options available as well.
5. How your kindergartner learns best
Is your child a visual learner or an auditory learner? Or do they learn best through hands on activities? Taking this into consideration when choosing a kindergarten homeschool curriculum will allow you to find an option that is a good fit for your child. Your child will learn the material better and with less struggle if the curriculum is a good fit for their learning style.
In general, kindergartners tend to learn well with short hands-on lessons. A curriculum that caters to kinesthetic learners can be helpful for active kindergartners.
6. How you teach best
Do you prefer to be hands-on with your child, and to teach each lesson to them directly? Or would you like your child to learn some of the material from a video?
Another important consideration for any curriculum is how messy the curriculum is. Are you comfortable with your kids spreading out art supplies to make a messy art project? Or does the thought of a chemistry experiment in your kitchen make you cringe? It’s best to be honest about this upfront. If you choose a curriculum with lots of messy projects, and you hate messes, it is likely that the curriculum will sit unused.
Make sure you choose a curriculum that is easy to teach. Is the curriculum divided into lessons to make it easy to plan? Does it include a script to read to your kids, if you don’t feel comfortable explaining the concepts yourself? What supplies are required, and are they listed separately for easy gathering? If the curriculum requires lots of strange materials that you don’t have at home, proceed with caution! Science curricula with lots of experiments can be notorious for this.
7. Your season of life
What other factors in your life, and your family’s lives, will be impacting your homeschooling this year? Are you expecting a new baby? Are you working full time? Struggling with a chronic illness? Sometimes factors outside of our control prevent us from being as available to spend lots of time homeschooling. A good curriculum can help make homeschooling easier. Features like video lessons, or pre-planned lessons divided up by day, can lessen the burden in a busy season.
8. Your worldview
One of the benefits of homeschooling is the ability to choose a curriculum that aligns with your worldview. Do you want to teach from a Biblical worldview, or are you looking for secular options? This is another factor that will help you easily eliminate curriculum choices that won’t be a good fit for your family.
How to Choose a Kindergarten Homeschool Curriculum
The best way to choose a curriculum is to read curriculum reviews of options that you are considering. You can check out my curriculum reviews to see what we have used, or keep reading for my kindergarten homeschool curriculum recommendations. You can also check out Cathy Duffy‘s reviews on her website.
Full Year Kindergarten Homeschool Curriculum Options
Five in a Row
Five in a Row is a full year kindergarten curriculum that covers a variety of subjects, using read-aloud books as the theme. The curriculum includes a list of children’s picture books and a variety of activity ideas to go along with each book. Each day for a week (five days in a row) you read the book to your child, and then choose one of the activities to complete. This is a great gentle introduction to homeschooling and is a lot of fun, especially for families that enjoy reading together.
Heart of Dakota
Little Hearts for His Glory from Heart of Dakota is a full year kindergarten curriculum that includes lessons in Bible, math, reading and phonics, fine motor skills, history, science, music, and art. The curriculum comes with a teacher’s guide that includes daily lesson plans for each subject. The curriculum can be customized by choosing a phonics and handwriting program, as well as a children’s Bible, that you prefer.
This is the curriculum that we used in our first year of homeschooling, and I loved the way the lesson plans were organized. All I had to do was open the teacher book to the right page, and everything we needed to do that day was right there. We quickly learned that we would not be following the book exactly as written, but having the plans as a starting point gave me confidence that I was teaching everything I needed to be teaching.
Online Options for Kindergarten
Schoolhouse Teachers
SchoolhouseTeachers.com is a membership resource for homeschool families. It includes a lot of options for kindergarten. The Kindergarten curriculum box includes a plan to use your Schoolhouse Teachers membership for a full year complete kindergarten curriculum. You can also choose to use single classes in a variety of subjects!
Related Post: Schoolhouse Teachers Review
ABC Mouse
ABCmouse.com is an app for kindergartners that is a great supplement to your kindergarten homeschool curriculum. The app features fun interactive lessons in reading, math, science, art, and more. The games are perfect for kindergartners and the app is simple enough that most kids should be able to use it independently.
Related Post: How to Use ABCmouse Free for Homeschool
Kindergarten Homeschool Curriculum for Reading and Phonics
Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons
Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons is a book designed to make it easy to teach your child how to read using phonics. The book includes a script, so all you have to do to teach the lessons is open to the next lesson and read the script to your child. We used this book during my son’s kindergarten year and he was reading at a 2nd-grade level after about 4 months. This book works!
Related Post: Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons Review
Read Aloud Books
One of the most important things you can do while homeschooling your kindergartner is to read books out loud to them. Picture books are great for this, and you may even be able to read chapter books a few pages at a time. Visit your library regularly to find new books for your homeschool.
When choosing read aloud books for kindergarten, I like to look for classics that have illustrations. One of our favorites is the Winnie the Pooh series by AA Milne. We also read the Beatrix Potter Treasury aloud in kindergarten. My son loved the beautiful illustrations, but I did edit some of these stories for content.
Kindergarten Homeschool Curriculum for Math
Singapore Math Essentials Series
Our favorite kindergarten homeschool curriculum pick for math is the Singapore Math Essential Math Series. This curriculum comes with 2 workbooks, level A and level B, and is designed to take a full year to complete. The curriculum is a great introduction to the concepts and strategies that are used in the Singapore Primary Mathematics series for elementary school.
I love these workbooks because at the bottom of the pages, there are suggested hands-on activities to help kids understand the concepts they are studying. We used many of these activity suggestions to help make kindergarten math more fun!
Related post: Getting Started with Singapore Math
Kindergarten Math with Confidence
Kindergarten Math with Confidence is part of a newer series which features short and simple lessons, and lots of hands on activities. The series includes a student workbook and an instructor guide for parents. The instructor guide has tips and scripts for teaching the lessons. It even tells you what to look for to know if your child is ready to move on to the next unit, and what to do for additional practice if they aren’t quite ready! A new “Math with Confidence” book is being released each year, so the series will continue up through 4th grade.
We also really like the book Addition Facts that Stick, by the same author!
Kindergarten Homeschool Curriculum for Handwriting
Handwriting Without Tears
My favorite handwriting book for kindergarten is the Handwriting Without Tears book Kickstart Kindergarten. I love that this book breaks the letters into groups by how they are formed, and uses simple pictures to help kids remember the order of the pencil strokes. The book includes practice for both capital and lowercase letters, as well as numbers. Kids write letters within gray boxes, which makes it easier for them to make their letters the right size without having to worry about all the lines in traditional handwriting paper.
Handwriting without Tears also offers lots of manipulatives that make learning handwriting fun for kids. You can learn more about those in my complete Handwriting Without Tears Preschool Curriculum Review.
Kindergarten Homeschool Bible Curriculum
The Jesus Storybook Bible
In Kindergarten, we don’t use a formal Bible study curriculum. Instead, we read through a children’s storybook Bible from beginning to end. My favorite Bible for kindergartners is the Jesus Storybook Bible. I love it because it ties every story back to the Gospel. This means I can share the Gospel with my kids every time we read it.
Kindergarten Homeschool Curriculum for Science
The World God Made
I love that The World God Made from Christian Liberty Press introduces kids to science with a Biblical worldview. Kids learn that science is the study of God’s creation, and the units are organized by the days of creation. We used this book as an overview and supplemented it with picture books from the library for each unit. Although the book has a few activity pages included, there are no experiments and these will have to be found separately.
Learning Resources Science Lab Set
The Primary Science Learning Lab Set from Learning Resources was one of our favorite Kindergarten homeschool curriculum picks! The kit comes with all of the tools necessary to complete ten simple science experiments. Experiment cards with step by step directions and related science concepts are also included. Hands on experiments are always our favorite part of science, and this kit made doing them so easy!
Kindergarten Homeschool Curriculum for History and Geography
My World and Globe
The book My World and Globe by Ira Wolfman is a fun introduction to geography for kindergarteners. This book includes lessons about how to read a map and a basic introduction to climate, earth science, and more. The book comes with an inflatable globe and stickers to stick on the globe as you learn about different places. A good companion to this book is Maps and Globes by Jack Knowlton.
Little Passports
We used the Little Passports World Edition to supplement our kindergarten homeschool curriculum for geography. This monthly subscription includes hands-on activities and souvenirs to help kids learn about a new country each month. My kids love getting mail and they really enjoyed the activities included in each kit. This is a great hint to pass along to family members who want to support your child’s homeschool, too!
Kindergarten Homeschool Curriculum for Art
Come Look with Me
The Come Look with Me series includes pictures of famous paintings and questions to ask to discuss the works with your kids. The books also include biographical information about the artists and their paintings. These books make art appreciation very approachable for kids and families. They are a great place to start if you aren’t sure how to include art in your homeschool!
Kindergarten Homeschool Curriculum for Music
The Story of the Orchestra
The Story of the Orchestra by Robert Levine is a fantastic introduction to classical music for kindergartners. Orchestra Bob takes kids on a tour of the history of music. Biographies of famous composers include fun facts about their lives. A CD comes with the book, and kids can listen to songs written by each of the composers. The back half of the book includes pictures and information about a variety of different instruments. The CD also includes tracks to listen to the instruments’ sounds.
Maestro Mastery
Maestro Mastery is a fun matching game where kids can learn about music composers and music history, while they are gameschooling! You can read my full Maestro Mastery game review here!
Where to Buy Your Kindergarten Homeschool Curriculum
Most kindergarten curriculum is available on Amazon, or from the links above. However, you can also purchase homeschool curriculum from the Rainbow Resource Center. They have a huge selection of homeschool curriculum choices, including many that are not available on Amazon. They also have thorough curriculum reviews and helpful resources for choosing curriculum available on their website. And they publish an extensive catalogue that’s available by mail.
Homeschool Facebook groups are also a great source for kindergarten curriculum, especially if you are on a tight budget. You can often purchase gently used options from other homeschool moms for a fraction of the cost of the new curriculum.
You can find more homeschool curriculum reviews here!
