For the 2021/2022 school year, we did kindergarten with my son Yi.

Year overview

Since this was kindergarten, it did not matter to me whether my son Yi actually learned anything academic. But I did want to use this year to figure out how I would approach homeschooling various subjects. I was confident in teaching history and literature, but knew I needed to experiment with math and science to find a good fit.

The fall semester was very experimental. I poked around looking for math ideas, and tried, occasionally, to implement a BSFU lesson. I decided to get more organized in the winter semester, and also added a special topic on Native Americans. Towards the end of winter, I realized that trying to pull math together from internet sources was not working well for me, but came across some print resources that looked like a good fit. For the spring semester, I began trying out the new math resources, and also added Chinese history and literature to the mix. This gave us what I would consider a full load of reading, and for first grade I will only need to add English phonics and handwriting.

Looking back, this was a good year of preparing for school. We eased into a full load over the course of the year. I’m happy with the resources I’ve found, and for the most part Yi has responded well to the readings and activities. I feel like I have a good idea what first grade will look like and how to plan for it.

Chinese

Sagebooks 500

我的老師是火星人 (Mandarin Companion breakthrough level)

周海生 (Mandarin Companion breakthrough level)

We had been using Sagebooks on and off since Yi was three. This spring we finally finished them up, and we started using the breakthrough level of Mandarin Companion readers. Each of these little novellas are written using only 150 distinct characters. Though Yi knew more characters, I decided to start with the breakthrough level since this was his first time reading anything of any significant length. It turns out that Yi was entirely unfamiliar with paragraphs or punctuation, so the breakthrough level was a good fit, allowing us to focus on all these new aspects of reading without being distracted by unfamiliar characters.

Chinese history and literature

寫給兒童的中國歷史 vol. 1 & 2

伊索寓言繪本 published by 風車圖書

中華經典民間神話故事 published by 風車圖書

I believe that only reading, writing, and math are necessary in the early grades, while history and science are optional. However, since we live in an English-majority culture, books and language are our primary way of connecting to our heritage. So towards the end of the school year, I added Chinese history and literature. We will continue with most of these resources when we start first grade in the fall.

寫給兒童的中國歷史 is a 15 volume set of Chinese history which I plan to use over the course of elementary school. We started volume 1 in the spring and made it part way through volume 2. The writing style is literary but still conversational.

For now, it’s still a bit challenging for Yi, and occasionally there are names I don’t quite know how to pronounce. I try to read ahead so I can look up words and find good breaking points. Before reading with Yi, I usually give a one-sentence introduction letting him know what to listen for (“This week we’re going to read about Yao. Listen carefully so you can tell me what kind of leader he was.”), and might also give the explanation of two or three key words if I think necessary. Otherwise I will explain phrases on the fly, and usually we stop half way through the reading to check his comprehension and see if he has any questions.

Yi has been doing well despite the challenge. He can usually tell me something about what we’ve read. I don’t expect he will remember much in 3 months, but at this age I am aiming for exposure, not so much retention. However, since we only spend a reading or two with each historical figure before moving on, it is hard to really build a connection with any one piece of history. Next year I hope to add some sort of biography to supplement this.

Volume 1 was mostly creation myths and mythic prehistoric heroes. We skipped chapters 2 and 3 of the volume, which cover evolution and early hunter-gatherer life. We will eventually cover evolution in science.

中華經典民間神話故事 is a collection of folktales and a handful of famous historical stories (such as 曹沖秤象). Occasionally a story falls flat, but we’ve found most of them interesting and engaging. There are often a few terms I need to explain along the way, but overall Yi has little trouble following the plot. We’ve been reading a story a week, and will continue next year.

Multiple curriculums I’ve looked at assign Aesop’s fables somewhere in the first few years, and since we had a Chinese retelling (translated from Korean, actually), why not? We’ve been reading once a week from 伊索寓言繪本. The retelling is well done and the language easy to understand.

Science

Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding, by Bernard J. Nebel

This curriculum has lessons which are grounded in experiments/exploration/discussion. Instead of me lecturing, the child learns through hands-on activities and reasoning things out. Activities are also low-prep, not requiring any special purchases so far. The suggested activities do a good job of teaching the lesson. Yi has been able to grasp many concepts I did not think him ready for.

I also like that this is essentially a teacher’s guide. Since there is no textbook for the child to interact with, I can teach everything in Chinese as long as I prep ahead of time. Since I am weak in science, I often have to look up the Chinese translation of science vocab used in the lessons. We happen to have this set of Chinese science reference books, which makes it very easy for me to look up the vocab I need. Though Yi is too young to read these books yet, I will often show him the relevant page after our lesson, and he can explain back to me what we learned using the illustrations as a guide.

BFSU recommends numerous books for every topic covered, and we check out what the local library has available. Generally speaking, I have not particularly enjoyed the books we’ve checked out. But they’re free.

Math

First Grade Math with Confidence, by Kate Snow

Beast Academy 1B, 2A, published by Art of Problem Solving

Family Math, Jean Kerr Stenmark, Virginia Thompson, and Ruth Cossey

My goals in math are, in order: 1) to appreciate the beauty and logic inherent in this world; 2) to solve problems with creativity and perseverance; 3) to gain fluency working with numbers.

It took some experimenting before settling on a math routine I liked. While thinking through my goals and approaches in math, I found websites such as mathforlove.com, youcubed.org, mathigon.org, Over Thinking My Teaching, Open Middle.com, and denisegaskins.com invaluable.

After much exploration, we are now using Math with Confidence by Kate Snow and Beast Academy as our main curriculums, supplemented by Family Math by Stenmark and co.

First Grade Math with Confidence is a scripted teacher’s guide for very hands-on math. Super low prep, quick easy lessons, and simple, engaging, meaningful ways of practicing math facts. While Yi was totally ready for second grade material, the second grade book was not yet available. So we took this at a good clip, finishing 9 out of 11 units despite starting in the spring. Since it is scripted, I find it easy to translate on the fly and teach everything in Chinese.

Beast Academy is a comic book style curriculum for students who like a challenge and are willing to think out of the box. Yi has very good math sense, and this curriculum provides a good challenge and encourages him to try different approaches. And he loves comic books. When we started 2A was the lowest available level, but towards the end it became too difficult for Yi. So we dropped down to 1B, which had been published by this point and was at just the right level.

 Family Math by Stenmark et al. is a gem. Turns out that most of my favorite open ended, exploration activities that I’d been finding online are collected in this book published in the 80s. Games like Nim, How Close to 100, etc. are all in the book.

When I have the energy I try to introduce a game from this book every week or two. Other times I will use activities from this book to supplement or entirely replace lessons from our main curriculums. For example, instead of spending a week on bar charts in Math with Confidence, we spent the week doing the Rolling Records activities (rolling dice and working on stats and probability) from Family Math. Before talking about prime numbers and square numbers in Beast Academy, we will do the Number Line Rectangles from Family Math. I try to do these activities in Chinese as much as possible.

Other math books

We have the 1st through 6th grade textbooks of 新加坡数学 . I try to copy out a few pages every week to leave out for Yi. He likes worksheets.

About every other week, we will read some story problems from Primary Grade Challenge by Edward Zaccaro.

We also check out math picture books from the library, such as A Remainder of One, by Elinor J Pinczes, illustrated by Bonnie MacKain, and How Many Jellybeans, by Andrea Menotti, illustrated by Yancey Labat.

Special topics – Native Americans/Tajikistan

Native Americans (Winter Semester)

Tales the Elders Told: Ojibway Legends, by Basil H. Johnston

Lifeways: The Ojibwe, by Raymond Bial

The Unbreakable Code, written by Sara Hoagland Hunter, illustrated by Julia Miner

Morning on the Lake, written by Jan Bourdeau Waboose, illustrated by Karen Reczuch

Tajikistan (Spring Semester)

Orange and Blue: The World of Barzu, by Marina Abrams

The Sandalwood Box: Folk Tales from Tajikistan, by Hans Baltzer

Taste of Sarband: Culinary Histories and Dishes of Tajikistan, by Ellen A. Abdulmuminov

For the first several years, we are focusing on building a good foundation in Chinese. So Western history/literature/geography gets relegated to our semester-long “special topics.”

Ojibwe are one of the main Native groups in our state, so we spent one semester learning a bit more about their culture. Tales the Elders Told is a collection of Ojibwe legends collected by Basil Johnston. Any collection by Basil Johnston would be wonderful. That, and portions of Lifeways were slowly read over the course of the semester.

Though it is not about the Ojibwe, I added The Unbreakable Code, a picture book about the Navajo code talkers, because Yi is a little WW2 buff. During our exam week, we read the picture book Morning on the Lake as a way to wrap up our topic. It is about a grandchild and his grandfather visiting special places on the lake, in the woods, and in the hills.

We have a family friend in Tajikistan, so we spent a semester getting to know the country a little better. Orange and Blue is a long picture book about a Tajik boy and his grandmother, and bread. We read it over the course of four weeks. For the rest of the semester, we read stories from The Sandalwood Box (out of print, but available on openlibrary.org).

I had meant to try more recipes from Taste of Saraband, but we had people visiting for much of spring and I was not very adventurous in my cooking. We did bake non a few times (delicious!), and I hope to try a few more recipes in the summer. The cookbook is self-published, has no page numbers, and a handful of typos. But one can’t be picky when they’re looking for Tajik recipes.