How to Choose a Kindergarten Curriculum Without Overspending

Let’s take some wise words from Maria von Trapp and start at the very beginning — because after all, it’s a very good place to start.

Everyone’s homeschool journey starts at a slightly different spot, but I’m guessing a lot of you are starting at kindergarten. So let’s talk about how to choose a kindergarten curriculum — and here’s the secret: it’s going to be way less than you think.

Let’s take this one step at a time.

The mistake I made in year one

My homeschooling journey began when my son started kindergarten. He’s in sixth grade now, so we’ve been at this a little while.

I was so excited to start something new with him, to begin his educational journey together. So one of the first things I did was go online and look up kindergarten curriculum.

And when I started looking, I got the feeling that I was already behind. It was overwhelming. It cemented this fear that I wasn’t going to give him enough.

That simply wasn’t the case — and it isn’t what kindergarten requires.

So I went and bought five to ten first grade workbooks, because I was convinced my son could do more. (I do love pushing our kids to higher standards — that’s one of the beauties of homeschool, meeting your child at the level they’re actually at.)

But it caused a lot of frustration between the two of us. It made me feel unsuccessful. It made him feel unsuccessful. It caused friction where there didn’t need to be any.

Let me save you from that.

What kindergarten actually requires

A good place to start is your local school district’s website — look up the grade-level expectations there. This is a good baseline.

Here’s roughly the whole list. Coming out of kindergarten, students need to:

• Know their letters
• Know their numbers
• Do some basic math — basic addition, basic subtraction
• Start forming CVC words — consonant, vowel, consonant. Cat. C-a-t. If they’re starting to form those, wonderful.
• Be familiar with the language we all speak, and start decoding how it fits together

That’s it. That’s the ballgame.

Everything else fits into normal life

Anything beyond that — art, history, social studies, geography — can be integrated into your normal life.

As you’re driving in the car, talk about where you are geographically. Most cars have a little map on the screen now. Talk about how your spot fits into your city, your county, your state, your nation, the world. Social studies at this age is really about helping your child find how they fit into the bigger picture.

So much of homeschooling is just taking those ordinary opportunities and talking about them with your kids. It doesn’t have to be a big planned lesson — especially in the younger years. Talk with them about the world around them. Observe things on a walk.

One fall we went on a walk and picked up a bunch of acorns. We brought them home, hot-glued little clothespins onto the acorn tops, made clothes out of felt, and turned them into acorn people. That was our art project — seasonal, fun, and their artistic juices were flowing.

Take the regular everyday experience and push it one step further.

The best thing you can do: read to them

One of the biggest and best things you can do for your child at this age is to read to them. Reading is the foundation of everything.

Without reading, you can’t do math — you can’t read the instructions or the numbers on the page. You can’t do science. You can’t do history. (Maybe you can do a little art.)

And through being read to, children pick up how English works by a kind of osmosis. They’ll notice: every time my mum sees this little mark, she pauses. I wonder what that means? That’s a comma, and they learned it without a lesson.

A few things that helped us:

• Read good books, long books, short books. Variety matters.
• Go to the library every week. You can check out 50 books at a time — we’d nearly hit that number weekly.
• Get non-fiction too. There are wonderful non-fiction books at the library. My kids loved picking out books about different animals or dog breeds, and then we’d sit and learn about them together.
• Track with your finger as you read along the words, so they see the process of reading. Their brains start connecting the sounds you’re saying to the marks on the page.

You’re only shopping for two things

Let’s narrow the search field. You need a math curriculum and a reading or language curriculum. That’s it.

Ask yourself these four questions while you look:

1. Open-and-go, or prep? Do you want something you can sit down and start, or are you willing to prepare before each lesson?
2. Faith-based or secular? Many curriculums have a faith component woven in. Decide what you want, and know which ones are which.
3. Scripted or flexible? Do you want it to tell you exactly what to say, or give you bullet points and let you take it from there?
4. What’s your budget? — which honestly should probably be number one. A lot of families come into homeschooling wondering how they’ll afford it, because it usually means one parent isn’t working full-time. Be realistic about what you can spend.

The programs I’ve used and love

A quick note: some links below are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases — at no extra cost to you. I only ever link to what I’ve actually used.

For reading and phonics:

• Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons — the title says it all. It’s scripted, so it tells you exactly what to say, and it’s open-and-go; you just follow it. Here’s what I found with all three of my kids: we’d get about halfway through the lessons and that was enough of a launchpad. They were already reading at a good level, and I didn’t feel the need to finish the book. Which is a good reminder — you’re the boss of your homeschool. You get to choose what to do in the books.
• Explode the Code — my all-time favorite for grammar and phonics at a younger age. Really funny pictures and examples that engage the kids. It’s an older curriculum but it absolutely still stands. It breaks words into their phonetic sounds, and as kids get older it uses those in sentences, with a good amount of repetition.
  • A disclaimer from my own mistake: when I started kindergarten with my son, the book said lesson one was pages 1 through 8 — so I sat that little guy down to do all eight. That was way too much work for him at that age. By the time my other kids hit kindergarten I’d learned the lesson (and my oldest and I have reconciled). Don’t feel like you have to do every single thing laid out for you.
• The Good and the Beautiful — we’ve moved to this as my kids have gotten older, and from what I’m seeing at the older levels, I would have been very happy using it younger too.

For math:

• Math with Confidence by Kate Snow — I was fortunate to find this first, and I’ve never veered from it. It’s part of Well-Trained Mind Press, who have a lot of wonderful material if classical education interests you. The games built into the curriculum are wonderful, and it’s beautifully colored and laid out. Kate Snow also has a Facts That Stick series — with a couple of my kids who needed more practice, we added the addition and subtraction ones alongside the main curriculum, and it’s mostly games too.

Make math out of what you already own

Especially at the younger ages, you can turn almost any playing opportunity into math.

Sorting was a big one for us. I’d say, “Okay — go get every stuffy you own.” They’d look at me like, are you serious? Can we really do this? Yes. Then we’d pile them in the living room and group them: by color, by size, by what kind of animal they are. Then we’d talk about how many are in each group. Add the green ones and the blue ones together — what’s the total?

We did a lot of this with Hot Wheels cars, too. And a lot of the math brain comes from figuring out puzzles — Lego, Magna-Tiles, Brain Flakes.

Anything can become a manipulative at that age. And using your child’s own toys is far more engaging than base-ten blocks.

The trap to avoid

The trap is buying a lot.

It’s hard, because you get excited in the summer before you start, and you buy a bunch of curriculum — and then by October you’ve learned how your child actually learns, and none of it fits anymore.

Buy less than you think you need. You can always add more as you go. And you are not behind if you add a workbook in November.

One year my daughter started a spelling curriculum that wasn’t working for her. We stopped using it for about a month, and I realized we had to pivot. Around Christmas we started a different one that fit her much better and was far more visually pleasing to her. We only got about halfway through it that year. Was she still learning? Still growing? Still becoming a better speller? Definitely.

If you only do one thing this week

Look up reading curriculums online and download a sample. Most of them let you download a small section so you can see if it’s a good fit.

Then just try it — a couple of days with your child. Notice two things: how do you feel as you’re teaching it? And how are they responding? That’s your real test.

Then buy that one book. The reading curriculum is the most important thing you’ll buy at this age.

Remember

This does not have to be perfect. It does not have to work exactly as you planned.

Homeschooling lets you pivot — in a traditional school setting, you have to stick to the plan. That’s the beauty of this. Use it to your advantage.

Want a place to start that costs nothing? Grab my free Starter Week — a week of homeschool rhythm that’s easy to follow. 💛