Kindergarten Binder - Win!

   The kindergarten binder has been a winner! It's efficient, keeps little things from getting forgotten, and Faith loves it. 

   When it's time for Faith to start school she pulls her kindergarten binder off the shelf and brings it to the table. The first cardstock page has a chart with 93 squares. The Child's Story Bible New Testament by Catherine Vos has 93 chapters. After we read and discuss one chapter she colors a square. Since then she brought home an early reader Bible from Sunday School that she wants to read instead. The 93 boxes won't line up anymore... but that's okay. =)

After coloring her square she turns the page to find her memory work. Bird Talk by Aileen Fisher is her first poem this year. She practices it three times.  

And the beginning of The Lord's Prayer, which is part of her homework from American Heritage Girls this week. That zigzag page underneath the memory piece is a book log. I put it in the daily pages to remind us to write down any titles she's finished.

Then she makes a tally mark for tracking how many school days she's had. 

  The days of the week, today's date, season, and place value with school days page is in a page protector. She does this with a dry erase marker, and cleans it off for tomorrow before turning the page. This was printed from Mama's Learning Corner. I skipped all the kewl weather tracking sheets one typically finds for kindergartners. Somehow marking that it's sunny for 350 days just didn't seem worth it. Areas with normal seasons probably enjoy those more than we do. ;-)

There's a clock on the backside. Faith checks the clock above the refrigerator and fills it out accordingly. 

 

Then we get into the tabbed sections. The first one is phonics. When she practices her Spalding phonogram cards she can color a square. (I made this one with a free empty 100 chart)

 

Under that is a pile of premade handwriting pages that coordinate with her phonogram cards. (Made on the Zaner-Bloser copywork generator thingie-ma-bobber.)

 She reads one short, phonetically controlled paragraph aloud. These are fairly easy for her, but I made her start at the beginning anyway. This is Blend Phonics Decodable Stories by Elizabeth Brown. You can download it for free at Don Potter's blend phonics page.

 

  Then she reads one of the Veritas Press Favorites books to me, and does an activity page to go with it. This day she read about 12 pages of Sammy the Seal, and did a seal dot-to-dot I found on the internet. (Sammy the Seal is her last Kindergarten Favorites title to finish, and she'll start First Favorites volume 1 next week.)

The math tab reminds her to get her Horizons 1 math book off the shelf and do the next lesson. Under the math tab she finds pages from MEP math practice book 1. She pulls those out as she feels like it, usually when all her daily work is done and she's not ready to give up school time. The Goops tab has Goops coloring pages to do after we read that section in her Goops book. When she completes the Goop book that divider will say maps, and have the Legends and Leagues activity pages tucked behind it instead. The little pocket in the back of the binder has random activity pages such as color by number/word/sum/difference, mazes, cutting practice, paper crafts, and other random pages I found free on the internet. When her daily work is done she can get those out anytime she feels like it.

 

Faith loves kindergarten!