The Joy of Teaching – Page 29 of 46

July 25, 2017
by Evan-Moor
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Homeschool Curriculum Guide for Reading Comprehension

Download your free printable homeschool reading comprehension curriculum guide here!

We all want children to be successful readers, and teaching reading comprehension is essential to their success. When you are homeschooling children, creating a reading comprehension curriculum is an essential learning building block.

Before creating your lesson plans, let’s briefly review the definition of reading comprehension. Reading comprehension is understanding more than the words on the page. It is understanding the author’s message and connecting it to something in our own lives.

While the concept of homeschool reading comprehension is quite vast, it doesn’t have to be complicated to teach. In fact, with the right resources, you and your child can enjoy the process of expanding understanding of the world through reading.

Evan-Moor has great resources for teaching reading comprehension for each reading level. Homeschoolers can easily put these together to build an effective homeschool reading comprehension curriculum!

You can choose any or all of these resources to supplement what you are already doing for reading or use them to build your own homeschool reading curriculum!

Warm up
If you are looking for 5–10 minutes of no-prep reading warm-up activities, Evan-Moor has a popular series of books that help kids use their reading comprehension skills in quick daily activities.

Daily Reading Comprehension is organized in weekly units to introduce your child to various reading comprehension strategies and skills.

It is a quick reading activity that can be done in just a few minutes each day with no prep!

These 30 weeks of daily activities can be used to quickly see what skills your child has mastered or might need to review.

Click here for a short video about the features of Daily Reading Comprehension.

Teach
It is important to teach your child to use the appropriate strategy for the type of reading s/he is doing.

Reading fiction and nonfiction requires different types of reading strategies, and teaching both will help your child become a more successful reader.

One time-saving method is to read a fiction and nonfiction book on the same topic – especially topics that your child finds interesting.

Cover of Reading Paired Text - Common Core Mastery Evan-Moor’s Reading Paired Text is a terrific option for your child to practice comprehension strategies and skills while reading fiction and nonfiction material on the same topic.

Reading Paired Text offers ideas and suggested lesson plans to connect the two provided reading selections with engaging student activities.

Reading Informational Text teaches reading comprehension strategies specifically for reading nonfiction. The activities build strong nonfiction reading comprehension skills along with vocabulary, comprehension strategies, and writing activities.

One of my favorite features of Reading Informational Text is that the reading selections are labeled by difficulty. These reading selections have a “reading level.”

This is indicated by Guided Reading Level, which is represented by a letter of the alphabet. Levels begin with “A” and continue through the alphabet as the difficulty increases. This is very helpful, as most grade levels cover more than one reading level.

Practice and Extend
When it is time for your child to practice and extend his/her reading comprehension skills, Evan-Moor has some child-approved resources.

We like to use these reading comprehension curriculum resources for our independent workbox time.

Literature Pockets features inspirational ways to practice comprehension skills and strategies in children’s literature.

Each unit is listed by story or topic, so you can choose the unit that is appropriate for your child. These units can be completed in any order you wish!

The Literature Pockets activities include fun ways to respond to a wide variety of stories such as: Aesop’s Fables, Caldecott Winners, Fiction, Folktales & Fairy Tales, Greek & Roman Myths, Nonfiction, Nursery Rhymes, and Tall Tales.

Skill Sharpeners: Reading is a full-color activity workbook that gives your child extra practice in a fun format.

The workbook is organized by thematic units, so you can select the units that are right for your child.

Each unit also includes a “Test Your Skills” page that can be used as an informal way to assess your child’s knowledge.

My kids enjoy the short stories, and the bright, colorful pages truly do keep the kids more focused!

TeacherFileBox
In case you didn’t know, you can access all of these resources in Evan-Moor’s TeacherFileBox.

TeacherFileBox is a digital subscription to a collection of lessons from over 450 of Evan-Moor’s titles.

Using TeacherFileBox has made our homeschooling focused, simple, and effective. We homeschool in less time because the quality of the material reduces the need for lengthy practice.

TeacherFileBox is also very budget-friendly, with a monthly or annual subscription available. You can subscribe and get the first 30 days free. Or, Homeschool Buyer’s Co-op members can currently save $20 on an annual subscription.

If you would like our free printable homeschool reading curriculum guide, which features the resources in this blog post, you can download it here!

For additional guides by subject area, see Homeschool Curriculum Resources and Guides.

Which of these resources would you like to use most in your homeschool reading comprehension curriculum?

Amy Michaels is a certified teacher with 11 years of elementary classroom experience who is actively homeschooling her own children. Her mission is share the best teaching methods and resources with all homeschoolers. Amy supports parents through her podcasts, webinars, and online training for homeschoolers on her website www.thrivehomeschooling.com.

July 24, 2017
by Evan-Moor
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Meaningful and Manageable Morning Centers

This post is intended for those of you who might be newer to teaching and could use just a few tips about morning routines and centers. We partnered with Evan-Moor to bring you this short video and our best morning routine activities and strategies.

Welcoming Students
We want our students to feel welcomed in the morning, so this is a great time to stand at the classroom door to greet them and start their day the right way. While we are enjoying these short conversations as the students enter, we need to make sure that once they are in the room and their things are put away, they have a predictable yet meaningful morning routine to follow.

That said, we truly believe kids to be curious and social, so we don’t necessarily want this warm greeting to be followed by an entire classroom of quiet, independent morning work each day. But we also don’t want to overwhelm ourselves with planning and prepping for what might only be a 15- to 30-minute timeframe each morning. For this reason, we have always loved morning centers as a way for our students to start the day.

Planning Your Morning Centers
To start, here are two management ideas that might help.

First, if you have a grade-level team that works together to plan, have each person create a morning center to match the month’s focus or theme. Each teacher can then create enough materials for all of the teachers. It’s so much easier to create four of one center than having to come up with all different centers on your own!
Secondly, think about placing your students into smaller groups and planning for a six- or seven-day rotation of centers. This really helps to keep weekend work less overwhelming. (We all know we do it!!) Who needs to worry about changing all the centers when you are already trying to plan everything else for the week? A six- or seven-day rotation gives extra time to find more meaningful and engaging centers and keeps weekend work from getting out of hand.

Our Best Morning Routine Tips
When creating a morning routine, try to focus on activities that engage students and invite them to prepare for their day by sparking their energy and enthusiasm for learning. Here we have pulled together some of our best tips to consider when you are crafting your morning.

Some predictability in your centers is a good thing. Routines often feel safe and welcoming to many students. Keep some of your centers the same all of the time. Independent reading, math fact practice (Bingo, math fact war with playing cards, or even flashcards with friends), and sight word practice can almost always be in your rotation and require very little planning.
Another idea is to use Evan-Moor’s Daily Fundamentals series, which is ideal for morning work. This is a new 2017 title that provides daily one-page practice of reading, math, and language skills. Daily Fundamentals is available for grades 1–6 in teacher’s edition print or e-book formats as well as student books.
Give your students a hands-on option. This is relatively easy to do if you think about keeping things open-ended and focus on math skills. Some quick and easy ideas for review or exploration might be:
- Measurement – Place 10–12 items in a bag for students to measure, and then place rulers and tape measures at the center along with paper and pencils. You could also provide names of larger classroom items (tables, tile floors, etc.) on note cards and add them to the bag. In that case, be sure to add some yard/meter sticks to the center. Change the items or the unit of measurement after all students have rotated through and you instantly have another rotation all planned!
- Mass/Weight Balance Scale – Place weights and several small objects in bags or tubs at a center for students to explore and compare.
- Counting Money – Set up a simple store with items, price tags, and coins/paper money. Students can practice counting out money and making change with their small group.
Make use of technology. Students love the opportunity to take turns on an iPad, research a favorite topic on the computer, or even better, play a game on the SmartBoard. Of course, always have a backup in case technology fails you!
Give children a chance to show their artistic side. Do your art smart students often get the chance to showcase their talents? Provide an art center for students to visit. It might be simple, such as allowing students to complete an observational drawing of a tree outside, a class pet, a plant, or even a historical object that goes with your current unit of study.
Try to have at least one morning center that is review and skill-based that changes for each rotation. If you are learning addition with regrouping, provide extra practice at a center with manipulatives, dry erase boards, and problems to work. Try to think ahead and prepare some of these over the summer if possible so that your rotating centers will be ready to go as you need them throughout the year.

Finally, be sure your students know what they can do once they have finished their morning center if there is still time before the start of your day. We love jigsaw puzzles as one option. Not only are they engaging, but they also encourage children to work together as they assemble the pieces. For a challenge, we like to find a spot where we can leave a larger puzzle out at all times. It might take many days or weeks to complete, but the sense of accomplishment when students work to place the last piece is wonderful!

We hope these ideas will help to get you started on making your mornings meaningful and manageable!! Have any more ideas we could all benefit from? Be sure to leave a comment below to share!

This video and set of tips & ideas for morning centers was created in cooperation with Evan-Moor. This is a sponsored conversation written by us on behalf of Evan-Moor. The opinions, text, and created resources are all ours.

Jill McEldowney and Cathy Henry are neighbors and friends who both have significant experience teaching in the same large and diverse school district. Together, they developed and operate www.thecurriculumcorner.com, a site where busy teachers can find current, relevant, meaningful, and ready-to-go lessons, activities, and resources that fit their classroom structure and also meet national and state standards.

July 18, 2017
by Evan-Moor
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How to Build a Homeschool Writing Curriculum

Download your free printable homeschool writing curriculum guide here!

The goal of any successful writing program is for the student to express his or her thoughts in written form.

It sounds easy enough, but where do you start?

Warm up
One of the easiest ways to get your child writing is to start a journal. Journaling is an easy way for children to become more fluent writers and become creative with their story writing.

If you are looking for pre-planned daily writing prompts, consider using Giant Write Every Day: Daily Writing Prompts. These kid-friendly writing prompts develop critical thinking skills, vocabulary, writing fluency, creativity, and ideas for writing.

The writing prompts can be completed in any order you wish. There is also a quick writing prompt for each month to encourage writing about seasonal topics.

Whatever you choose to do, it is wise to keep the writing time short in duration to keep your child inspired to write again tomorrow.

Teach
When it is time to teach your child how to improve the quality of his or her writing, use Daily 6-Trait Writing to help your child’s writing flourish.

Each weekly unit has daily lesson plans and can be completed in 10–15 minutes each homeschool day.

In weekly units, your child will learn specific writing skills in the areas of ideas for writing, sentence fluency, organization (of their thoughts), word choices, and voice as an author.

The skills in Daily 6-Trait Writing can elevate the skills of any writer. As a homeschooling parent, I greatly appreciate how these focused lessons are so easy to teach—and for my children to understand.

Practice and Extend
As children develop the habit of quick journaling every day and learning ways to improve the quality of their writing, there are some ways to practice and extend their writing skills.

Fun ways to get your child writing are:

Sending letters or emails to family or friends
Asking your child to help write the shopping list
Leaving notes for each other around the house

If you are looking for activities for your workboxes or independent time, there are three Evan-Moor books that we really enjoy.

Take It to Your Seat Writing Centers has full-color activities to help your child practice a variety of writing skills.

We typically do these activities together as our writing lesson. Then the kids do the activities again independently later in the week.

Draw…Then Write is another popular title where the child learns step-by-step how to draw a simple figure and write about the drawing with clear prompts that the child will understand.

While kids are learning how to draw, it is natural for them to use words to describe their drawings. The activities in this book invite children to write about their drawings.

Draw…Then Write is also available in app form, so it is great if your child prefers to work on a tablet!

The last title that works well for us How to Write a Story. My daughter has used this book to develop each part of her story ideas.

She simply completes a page a day in her independent work time. It has really supported her in expanding her writing abilities through her own stories.

No matter what resources you choose, writing is a skill that children will use their entire life. I appreciate how Evan-Moor’s writing resources help children to have fun and continue to develop their writing skills.

Get all these resources in TeacherFileBox!

In case you didn’t know, you can access all of these lessons in Evan-Moor’s TeacherFileBox: a digital subscription to a collection of lessons from over 450 of Evan-Moor’s titles.

Using TeacherFileBox has made our homeschooling focused, simple, and effective. We homeschool in less time because the quality of the material reduces the need for lengthy practice.

TeacherFileBox is also very budget-friendly with a monthly or annual subscription. You can subscribe and get the first 30 days for free. Or, Homeschool Buyer’s Co-op members can currently save $20 on an annual subscription.

If you would like our free printable homeschool writing curriculum guide, which features the resources in this blog post, you can download it here!

For additional guides by subject area, see Homeschool Curriculum Resources and Guides.

July 17, 2017
by Evan-Moor
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DIY Paper Bookmarks

These paper corner bookmarks are simple and easy to make in the classroom or at home – and perfect for a summer reading activity, icebreakers during the first week of school, or a fun classroom activity break. All you need is colored paper!

This paper bookmark craft also works well as a quick lesson in proper book treatment. (No folding page corners of classroom and library books.) Choose any solid or patterned paper.

Directions:

Measure a square paper 3¼ inches by 3¼ inches (you may also use larger dimensions as long as the paper is a perfect square).
Fold paper in half diagonally.
Fold the top point of the first layer down to the center.
Fold each side in to the center.
Refold each side up to the point.
Finally, tuck the two flaps underneath the fold.

For more activity ideas like this, see The Never-Bored Kid Book series, which offers fun and educational activities for ages 3–10.

Click here for the free bookmark activity, which includes bonus paper projects from The Never-Bored Kid Book!

Heather Foudy is a certified elementary teacher with over 7 years’ experience as an educator and volunteer in the classroom. She enjoys creating lessons that are meaningful and creative for students. She is currently working for Evan-Moor’s marketing and communications team and enjoys building learning opportunities that are both meaningful and creative for students and teachers alike.

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July 11, 2017
by Evan-Moor
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Building a Homeschool Math Curriculum

At the end of this post, you will find a link to our homeschool math curriculum guide for you to download and print.

Building a homeschool curriculum for math can be quick and easy with Evan-Moor, so let’s explore some options!

WARM UP
Reviewing math skills is important to help both kids and parents see what math skills have been mastered and which math skills still need more practice.

Yes, you can get out flashcards, but Evan-Moor’s Daily Math Practice provides a 5-minute math warm-up activity for each day of the week. It covers multiple areas of math with zero prep.

Use Daily Math Practice for frequent, focused practice to improve math skills. Students complete five short math problems on days 1–4. The day 5 activity provides more extensive practice and asks students to think critically.

TEACH
After a quick warm-up, your child is ready to learn new math skills. My kids are thrilled with Evan-Moor’s Math Fundamentals.

The lessons and the practice pages are both focused and easy to follow, so it decreases the amount of time we spend practicing math skills.

Math Fundamentals is ideal to teach new math skills to your child. Each unit focuses on a skill or concept and provides math models to help your child learn to solve problems. The math model pages are genius and make teaching (and learning) so simple!

The last activity in each unit uses both the math skills and problem-solving strategies together in one story problem. It is a great way to see if your child can apply his or her new math skills in a real-life story problem.

PRACTICE and EXTEND
Once your child has been taught new math skills, it is wise to help him or her practice these skills in new ways to strength math fluency and confidence!

Evan-Moor has several options that you can use.

Use Daily Word Problems to invite your child to solve math problems in real life situations. One word problem a day is a quick way to build confidence!

The kids enjoy the weekly topics of the word problems, and it is fun to see them excited to complete one word problem a day successfully while keeping problem-solving skills sharp.

If you are looking for colorful, hands-on activities for independent practice, use Take It to Your Seat Centers: Math as assignments for practice and to apply skills in new ways.

Each center activity is listed by topic, so you can easily click on each title you would like your child to practice.

The center activities can be completed in any order, as long as the skills have been taught to the child. Each center activity includes a follow-up activity for your child to complete.

Finally, Building Math Fluency is one of my two absolute favorite Evan-Moor books (the other is Hands-on Thinking Activities) because it shows kids multiple strategies for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

The goal is not for kids to master all of the strategies, but rather to give them options to find strategies that match how their brain naturally thinks about math.

Building Math Fluency has given my kids confidence to solve math problems in more than one way. It also teaches them to check their own work using a second method – just to make sure they get the same answer both ways.

You can use any of these Evan-Moor titles to supplement something that is missing from your current math curriculum.

Access all of these resources as a TeacherFileBox subscriber:

I prefer to access all of these titles for one price per family as a TeacherFileBox subscriber.

Just in case you aren’t familiar with TeacherFileBox, it is the single most valuable resource in our homeschooling! It provides all of our curriculum resources for academic skills, and it saves us both time and money.

TeacherFileBox is a digital collection of lesson plans and learning activities from over 450 of Evan-Moor’s publications. One of my favorite features of TeacherFileBox is that you can browse for lessons by Evan-Moor title.

We print out some titles (like Math Fundamentals and Take It to Your Seat Centers). We often go “green” with Daily Math Practice and Daily Word Problems by just reading the problems on the computer screen and answering on our dry erase boards, on our chalkboard, or orally.

Being a TeacherFileBox subscriber gives me access to all grade levels of teaching resources. Other curriculum resources require you to pay per grade level. However, all available grade levels are included in your subscription!

Your Homeschool Math Curriculum Guide:

We have put together a quick homeschool math curriculum guide for you that shares some additional information about the resources in this blog post. Click here to download your homeschool math curriculum guide!

For additional guides by subject area, see Homeschool Curriculum Resources and Guides.

What questions do you have about building a homeschool math curriculum?

Do you want to know how to use these resources with a curriculum you already have?

Post your comments and questions below, and let’s simplify your homeschool math curriculum!

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July 5, 2017
by Evan-Moor
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Different Children = Different Learners

Differentiated learning is a phrase that classroom teachers use to describe how they modify their teaching to accommodate students’ learning needs. In homeschooling, we all modify our curriculum and lessons daily to fit our children’s learning styles.

As a homeschooler, how can you avoid having to buy multiple curricula for the same grade level if your children learn differently? You can do two things—you can either differentiate learning using the same books, or you can buy curriculum that has multiple levels already included in it. One good example of this is Evan-Moor’s Nonfiction Reading Practice books (available for grades 1–6.)

It’s easy to build a language arts curriculum around fiction, but learning how to read and understand grade-level nonfiction passages is really important, too. This series by Evan-Moor includes 17 topics in each grade level. There are three leveled passages for each topic, with coordinating questions and a writing topic. The topics are on social studies, science, math, technology, and the arts. The topics are interesting and the books are reproducible, so you only need to copy the pages needed for each child. The writing paper has wide, clear lines for easy writing and reading.

I’m going to be using the grade 6 book from this series this upcoming school year with my middle daughter. I plan on using one passage from this book each week. Here is my lesson plan.

Monday: Read passage silently and then reread together. Highlight important sentences.
Tuesday: Paraphrase sentences and write a summary.
Wednesday: Complete comprehension questions that include a mix of response and multiple choice.
Thursday: Complete graphic organizer and prepare for written response.
Friday: Written response.

I’m looking forward to using this book. It will make my life as a teacher easier. I have three children at three completely different grade levels, so it’s a lot to juggle! Books like this series by Evan-Moor make life simpler for me, and I’m very grateful!

Another option that can give more flexibility and save time and money over the long run is to subscribe to Evan-Moor’s TeacherFileBox. A lot of parents find this to be a good solution to meet their children’s different learning styles. There are PreK-6 lessons across the curriculum for a low monthly or annual subscription. (The best deal can be currently found through Homeschool Buyer’s Co-op.) The nice thing about services like this is you can try it out for a month and you even get a free 30-day trial. I think it definitely can be a great thing to check out!

Please note that I did receive a copy of the grade 6 Nonfiction Reading Practice book from Evan-Moor for review, but these opinions are entirely my own.

Suzanne Sniffen is a homeschooling mom of three children. She has taught students ages 3–60 in a variety of settings in the past 17 years. Suzanne has been homeschooling for the past 11 years, after previously teaching in public and private schools. Talking with other parents about homeschooling and how children learn is something she enjoys every chance she gets. She also leads a homeschool chess club and maintains a blog of homeschooling resources. Since her kids were very young, she has been blogging about homeschooling, books, and life at lovetopaint.blogspot.com.

June 8, 2017
by Evan-Moor
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3 Tips for Summer Homeschool Success

Who wants to keep their kids learning this summer, but still have time for summer fun?

Let’s put together a simple plan for summer homeschooling success!

Tip #1: Start with “wake-up work”

“Wake up” the brain when it is time to start learning. We want to ease our kids into learning mode with something fun. Choose a review activity that is something quick and fairly easy for your child to do.

Wake-up work can be a 5-minute story, one math problem (like the ones in Daily Word Problems), or a sudoku puzzle – just make it something your child enjoys doing!

Wake-up Work Resource Ideas:

Who likes colorful activities? Evan-Moor’s Skill Sharpeners series features full color units that include fun ways to review and polish skills that your child has already learned. I recommend completing one page a day (unless your kids are like mine and beg to do more).

I also keep Evan-Moor’s Take It to Your Seat Center activities in one place for quick review. The kids pick one, and it keeps things fun and easy for all of us!

Tip #2: Provide an opportunity for your child to learn something he or she is interested in learning.

Use your child’s curiosity to keep her wanting to learn more for summer homeschool success!

Your child might want to know how to plant a garden, study history, or learn about animals. Child-led learning is a terrific way to keep kids interested in learning more!

Child-Led Learning Resource Ideas

Let your child take the lead on what he learns this summer! Maybe your child likes history, art, or science?

Summer offers us more time, which is perfect for trips to museums, science experiments, and art projects! We often take messy projects or experiments outside in the morning before it gets too hot! Anyone else do that?

Evan-Moor has books for hands-on learning activities to teach or use as a follow-up from field trips, outings, or summer travel! History Pockets, U.S. Facts & Fun, Giant Science Resource Book, and Art for All Seasons work great for this.

Tip #3: Encourage your child to do some creative thinking!

Kids enjoy learning new things, so encourage them to think about ways to be creative or solve problems in a different way.

Evan-Moor has a fun series called Critical and Creative Thinking Activities. There are several units on topics kids enjoy, and my kids are happy to do a page a day (and often ask to do more!).

If your child prefers full-color pages with themed activities, Skill Sharpeners: Critical Thinking is another fun option to consider for grades PreK–6!

My kids were thrilled to find units focused on their favorite animals. They enjoyed reading activities, math puzzles, drawing, and more! It is a great option if you want a fun activity book that will keep kids enjoying learning new things!

You can also get your children curious by asking them questions to guide their thinking if they get stuck. “What would happen if you tried…” or “I wonder how you could…”

Let’s simplify your summer!

By just focusing on these 3 types of activities, summer homeschooling will be focused and fun!

Remember the 3 tips for keeping things simple and fun when you homeschool this summer is:

Tip #1 – Quick and fun warm-up work
Tip #2 – Let children choose what they want to learn
Tip #3 – Invite them to join a challenge or creative activity

More tips on Evan-Moor summer resources:

If you want ALL of these types of activities for your summer homeschooling, then be sure to check out a subscription to Evan-Moor’s TeacherFileBox. It is a lesson plan library where you can search for the exact subjects or skills you need for your child. It is my go-to resource for homeschooling lessons year-round. Currently, the best deal is through the Homeschool Buyer’s Co-op.

If you would prefer to use a single printed book, Daily Summer Activities ($12.99, grades PreK–8) are full-color books that can keep summer homeschool simple!

Each book has 10 weekly study units that cover 10 areas of study with pre-planned practices each day. Your child can do a quick practice to keep learning all summer long!

How do you keep learning fun during the summer? Tell us in the comments!

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May 15, 2017
by Evan-Moor
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Creative Writing Prompts for the End of the Year

Summer is just around the corner, and everyone is antsy…including you. Freshen up your weekly writing routine and keep students engaged with some creative writing topics. There are a range of skills practiced in these prompts, such as: letter writing, compare and contrast, narrative, and persuasive.

Plan a picnic. Think about what you will eat and what games you will play. Make a list of things you will need.
Finish this story: The waves crashed against the sand. I plopped my pack down and spread out my towel. It was going to be a wonderful day. Just then…
Think about your favorite foods and then imagine a new flavor of ice cream that tastes just like them. What would you call your flavor? What would it look like? Write a slogan for it.
Write a story about a door. Be sure to describe the door, tell where the door is, and explain what is on the other side of the door.
Impossible. Think of something people thought was impossible that someone did. Think of something you did that you thought was impossible. Think of something that is impossible now but you believe might be possible in the future. Explain why. Write a story that shows how the impossible might be possible.
Compare summer days and summer nights. Listen and list sounds on a summer day. Listen and list sounds on a summer night.
Compare yourselves to an animal. Write how you are alike and different.
Write a want ad for a good student (review examples of want ads).
Pretend you are a spring flower just about to bloom. Describe the experience.
Write a letter to your mother. Tell her why you love and appreciate her.

Get these ideas and more from Giant Write Every Day: Daily Writing Prompts!

May 11, 2017
by Evan-Moor
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Homeschooling Overseas: How I Built My Curriculum

Ten years ago, I began homeschooling my daughter by accident. She is now a beautiful, clever, imperfect, and soulful human being, and I am proud to have her as a citizen of our beautiful planet.

I began homeschooling my daughter when she turned six years old. As a family, we spoke both English and French fluently, and we lived in Singapore, which was our adopted country at the time. I had no friends or family who knew anything about homeschooling. The only guides I had were my commitment to raising my daughter surrounded by possibilities and my natural intelligence and curiosity to continuously learn.

Singapore provided a large array of educational materials and books. There was also a wide selection of learning materials from all over the world. I created a foundation for her learning and began my quest to seek the books and learning materials we would need. At the start of this expedition, there is a certain sense of excitement in discovering something new, especially when it concerns the wellbeing of your child. However, at the end of two hours of constantly searching curriculums and workbooks, I was swimming in a dread of information overload.

Most of the books offered repetitive and boring exercises until I discovered Evan-Moor workbooks. It was not the cover of the books that invited me to them, but the range of books offered that prompted my first purchase. The Daily Practice range of books covered my foundations in math, reading, geography, language, science, and writing. Although there was a required repetitive pattern in the daily exercises, each day of work brought about a new way of learning the same core concept. This important distinction won us over as the facilitator for my daughter’s learning. It was clear that I would not be bored with the learning materials available to teach my daughter if I was to continue homeschooling her.

The other range we both loved within the Evan-Moor materials was the History Pockets. My daughter loved her active role in cutting, choosing, and pasting parts of the book to retain key factors she was learning within each history topic.

My top Evan-Moor resources are:

Daily Practice (available in math, language, geography, science, handwriting, and reading)
History Pockets

In Singapore, the Evan-Moor books were high-priced. But I found them to be a lot more information-packed, and therefore a good value. If you’re homeschooling overseas, consider purchasing Evan-Moor e-books or subscribing to TeacherFileBox, Evan-Moor’s online lesson library. With TeacherFileBox, you can print or project the lessons that you need and have access to every Evan-Moor title!

In the four years since we last used them, every time I come across Evan-Moor books, I cannot help smiling at the memories they evoke of my daughter and me having fun with learning.

Lara Jay Hequet is a life entrepreneur, certified and qualified in many fields of knowledge. She is a single parent to a fifteen year old daughter who is ‘lifeschooled’ for the last ten years. Together, they travel the world creating life stories and capturing stories of other wonderful people via film and the spoken word.

She is the founder of wowageing.com, a community of people who choose to Live Older instead of growing older. She intends to inspire and support unique individuals and their parents in the art of homeschooling.

April 27, 2017
by Evan-Moor
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Kindergarten Readiness Checklist: What Does My Child Need to Know for Kindergarten?

*Updated January 2022*

Preparing your child for kindergarten can be a stressful experience. With new learning standards, children are expected to enter kindergarten with a higher skill set than previous years. You may be asking yourself, “Is my child ready for kindergarten?”

This is a valid question and a kindergarten checklist such as the one provided below, is a sure-fire way to assess your child’s readiness for this big educational step. Our kindergarten ready checklist covers five main areas of child development and learning skills. All skills on the checklist meet common core standards, and these skills are a good starting point for early educational growth.

Set your child up for success and start practicing some basic kindergarten prep skills that will give your child a strong foundation.

Here is a list of skills your child should practice before entering school in the fall. Print the kindergarten checklist.

Listening/Speaking

Listen to stories without interrupting
Recognize rhyming sounds
Pay attention for short periods of time to adult-directed tasks
Follow 2-step directions
Speak in complete sentences
Make comparisons between objects such as big/little

Social/Emotional

Understand actions have both causes and effects
Start to follow rules and share
Separate from parents without being upset
Speak understandably
Manage bathroom needs independently

Motor Skills

Cut with scissors
Hold pencil correctly
Trace basic shapes
Hop, jump, run, bounce a ball

Math

Count to ten
Identify numbers 1–5
Correspondence counting (one-to-one counting)
Sort similar objects by color, size, and shape
Identify basic shapes and colors
Understand more than and less than

Phonological Awareness and Print Knowledge

Recite the alphabet and identify most of the letters
Identify rhyming words
Identify the beginning sound of some words
Write name
Retell a story

More Kindergarten Resources

Did you find our kindergarten readiness skills checklist helpful?

Visit Evan-Moor’s kindergarten site for recommended activity books and flashcards. These activity books are ideal for preschool, transitional kindergarten, and kindergarten.

For skill practice in subject-specific books, check out:

The Smart Start series for early learners includes Read and Write, Phonics and Spelling, Sight Words, Math, STEM, and Beginning Coding activity books
Social Skills Activities for Today’s Kids helps children learn important rules about friendship and school. The meaningful activities give children a safe space to think about how to handle social situations and provide guidance and suggestions for them to consider.
Homeschool curriculum bundles for PreK and Kindergarten include 11 colorful activity books and flashcards plus a downloadable Teaching Guide for parents.

How-to Videos

For additional tips on getting your child ready for kindergarten, download the self-care and social skills checklist in “Life Skills Kids Should Know Before Kindergarten.”

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