So we are planning on homeschooling the girls and since S.I. would be in kindergarten this year I thought it best to start looking at kindergarten curriculums and seeing what it is that she would be learning in conventional school this year. I’m happy to see that some f the things she would be learning she already know like the concepts of in/out, under/over, open/closed etc… and also things like recognizing her name in print and how to observe things closely and draw conclusions. This last one has been helped greatly by our new house and the bird, bug and butterfly identification books we have which Seda grabs every time she see’s a new bird, but or butterfly. I really enjoy the information I found here and I’m sure I will refer to it often. It’s nice to have some guidelines as to what other kids her age are learning.

Over the next few months we will work on getting some more of the basics down. I got this list from the site above:

• Know their telephone numbers and how to use the telephone;
• Know their street addresses;
• Name all the people in their families and extended families and know what each family member does and enjoys;
• Describe how they get to school and map the route; describe their favorite things, friends, and activities;
• Understand and appreciate the different kinds of families that exist (two parents, a single parent, stepparents, and the like);
• Begin to know something about families in other cultures;
• Begin to know the significance of civic and religious holidays, both their own and those of other people;
• Begin to learn about such national historical figures as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington Carver, Thomas Jefferson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Chief Joseph, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth, and Martin Luther King, Jr.;
• Become familiar with such principles of citizenship as being responsible for their own actions, helping to make group decisions, sharing and respecting others; and
• Start studying geography through such subjects as weather, seasons, and maps.

The list above is fairly good and also allows for us to introduce these topics through reading and science through the study of weather and nature in different parts of the world. S.I. is pretty good with math so far and loves to do math problems. She can add and subtract numbers less than 10, can count to 50 but possibly higher (she recognized and read the number 93 the other day), also she can do some multiplication, usually in word problem format (i.e. If you have three sets of 2 lollipops to give out to your friends how many lollipops do you have.) Needless to say I’m not really worried about the math.