Learn at Home, Grade K

Rating:
Summary: A Great Book
Review: A complehensive curriculum book that truely makes home education an adventure. Clear explaination for the teaching of each subject area is well explained before parents embarked on teaching their children the concept. The weekly lesson plan format targets at all areas of development and suggested activities are fun and meaningful.

Rating:
Summary: Learn At Home is Outstanding!
Review: After two years of research into Home Education curriculum, we purchased Learn At Home, Grade K to Home Educate our child. We compared this curriculum side by side to many other very expensive curriculums and it had everything they had to offer at a more reasonable price. In fact, it was more advanced than some very high priced curriculum. That was three years ago. We have used Learn At Home to Home Educate our child through K, 1st, and 2nd grades. We all LOVE it! It covers six subject areas, plus art and research projects, and reccomends field trips, to give your child a well rounded education. The lessons are right on target with what our local school system requires per grade level. Many times I find that Learn At Home is advanced when compared to what is being taught in our local school. I feel confident that my child is getting a great education. I really like having the lesson plans written out for each week. The teacher suggestions are excellent. These are both great time savers for me which allow me to spend more time with my child rather than doing all the planning work. The books listed in the curriculum are available at our local library. I simply sign online to the library's website, request the listed books, and pick them up when they call to say the books are ready. I plan this out and request the books a week in advance to give the library time to get them for me. It works out great. With all the planning and worksheets already done for me, it makes teaching my child fun, not work. The best part is that my child likes the book and looks forward to doing the worksheets. The only thing we add are Bible lessons by following the read through the Bible in one year plan. There is a Christian Learn At Home book on the market, but it does not have any lesson plans or teacher notes, nor is it as in depth and comprehensive. The pages of the book are preforated and tear out easily. I found that hole punching the pages and putting them into a three ring binder works wonderfully. I make copies of any pages that need to be cut, (this is mostly in the K and Grade 1 book), have my child cut the copy, and paste to the original page. This keeps the book nice. There are a few pages that you will need to make copies of, like book report forms for example. Even with the copies in black in white, they still look nice. Your child can color the pictures on those pages if they want to. We have already purchased Learn At Home, Grade 3 for the coming school year. We really think this is a great curriculum and highly reccomend it!

Rating:
Summary: Week 1 - Answer Key has 2 errors
Review: Answer Key for Seeing Double has the work accept mispelled in syllable portion. The key for Down the Ladder at bottom also has incorrect answer. it shows 999 plus 100,001 equals 101,100. If there are two answers incorrect for week 1, how many incorrect answers are there?

Rating:
Summary: learn at home grade 1
Review: As a new home-school educator (of three children), this book and others in the series has been very helpful. Not knowing where to begin, the lessons plans and ideas set forth give guidelines so you don't have to flounder around wasting time discovering what works.

Rating:
Summary: OK curriculum outline, not complete, wacky organization
Review: First, let me describe the overall structure of the curriculum.
There are six subjects: language skills, spelling, reading, math, science, and social studies. The "school year" is divided into 4 9-week periods. The last week of each period is pretty much for review.
There are many problems. Let me list some of them by subject.
Social Studies: Be scared! The second lesson/day of the first week in social studies tells the instructor, "Introduce the well-known ancient explorers (before the 1300s). Gather information from the library on Vikings, Zhang Qian, Marco Polo and Alexander the Great. Discuss their various achievements. Help your child create a chart showing the explorers, their countries of origin, where they explored, the years they explored and other relevant information. Post the chart for reference." Wow, I challenge anyone to do this lesson in just one day let alone a portion of the day (permitting the rest of the day to go to the other five subjects). The book doesn't give the instructor any help -- you have to research this all yourself. This is typical of both social studies and science. The first 9 weeks of social studies are spent in study of explorers, mostly post-1300s. The last 9 weeks are spent studying the Middle Ages. I don't think this is an appropriate order. To make a long story short, we've ditched the entire social studies curriculum and have replaced it with Susan Wise Bauer's _The Story of the World Vol 2_. It's very logically laid out, and if you get the activity book, it's rich.
Language Skills & Reading: We think that each subject was written by a different person, and they never talked to each other. How else can you explain "prefixes and suffixes" being taught in the 4th week of Reading and "affixes" (meaning pre- & suffixes) being taught in the 8th week of Lang Skills? In week 11 of Lang Skills, the student is to write about a volcano using vocabulary introduced in Science. Problem is that volcanoes are not really studied until the 12th week!
Math: Difficult concepts like multi-digit multiplication get less time than simple single-digit multiplication. This sort of unbalanced approach is throughout.
Overall:
If you are using this book, you will need to do a fair amount of prep work to come up with examples and explanations (ex: story problems to solve, research on Native American tribes, space station Mir). Most of the books suggested for Reading are too easy for our child, so we have to craft different lessons. I don't know how anyone can use this book without a color copier or scanner nearby, because the curriculum lesson layouts are on the backs of worksheets. Also, there are many mistakes in the answer key. Finally, I wish the publisher would list all the areas studied for each subject in the beginning of the book.
Why do we still use this book? Because it is a good skeleton for us to follow. Do not buy this book thinking it be, as it says on the back of the book, "everything you need to teach your child at home." Use it as a tool, not as a toolbox.
Good luck. Homeschooling is not for the faint of heart.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful for Home Schooling Kindergarten Children
Review: I am a mother of two boys (10 yrs. & 5 yrs). We have been home schooling our oldest son for the past two years. This year my 5 year old will start Kindergarten. He is a child who gets very bored with a pencil and piece of paper. Actually, a friend of mine recommended looking at Learn At Home and when I did I fell in love with it. With the book already offering "lesson plans" for each week it was very helpful in planning our next year. This book offers a lot of hands-on activities for the children, so therefore his attention span stays longer with me and what we are trying to learn. The only thing I can say negative is that I found some of the activities a little "elementary" for a 5 year old. All in all I can say that I give this book a thumbs up!!! Actually, not only am I pleased with this book , but all the books I have used throughout home schooling with my other son that was published by American Education Publishing. They are a wonderful publishing company that offers many useful books for home schooling. I hope this will be of some help for somebody out there. If you are home schooling, good luck and God Bless You!!!

Rating:
Summary: EXCELLENT
Review: I have been using the grade 3, 4 and 6 books since 8/99 and have found them to be the best curriculum guides around. They allow for creativity, for mixing and matching and meeting your child's needs and for parent/child cooperation. I am SO GLAD that these books were created!

Rating:
Summary: Great curriculum!
Review: I purchased this curriculum and have been using it to teach my 5 year old son. It is a wonderful curriculum that is very easy to use. Yes, you have to tear the pages out and copy the worksheets but it is worth the time and trouble. I use a three ring binder and page holders (the clear ones with the holes on the side) and slip my pages right in. It is great. The pages are protected and you don't have to punch a bunch of holes in the worksheets. The curriculum is very easy and I would recommend it for anyone who didn't send their child to preschool or anyone who wants to take the year slow and have fun. Each week a new letter and number is introduced. The curriculum offers lots of projects to do and fun exciting ways to learn. I also purchased Learn at Home Grade 1 to add to my kindergarten curriculum. The learn at home series has made it easier for home schooling parents.
Thank you!

Rating:
Summary: Cuts my preparation time waaaaaay down.
Review: I really love this series. It is a homeschool best kept secret. I have been homeschooling my son since he was 2. We sped through the Kindergarten book and are working systematically through the first grade book, which we find much more challenging. I really enjoy the teaching helps, guidance and the week at a glance lesson plans. A word of warning though. . .I do spend a lot on copying; for one, I want to reuse the text with a younger child, and secondly, often pages that are designed for cutting and pasting are backed up onto another workbook page. I keep portfolios of work--so I don't want a math page on the back of a reading page. I also enjoy the book suggestions. My library has an online catalog--so I look a week or two ahead and find most of what I need! Amazon is great too <grin>! If it were not for the reading suggestions, I fear we might have read the same 5 books over and over again! I'm sure that you all know exactly what I mean! I recommend this book fully to any homeschooler struggling with, time, planning, or fearing forgetting something--it is all there!

Rating:
Summary: Cuts my preparation time waaaaaay down.
Review: I really love this series. It is a homeschool best kept secret. I have been homeschooling my son since he was 2. We sped through the Kindergarten book and are working systematically through the first grade book, which we find much more challenging. I really enjoy the teaching helps, guidance and the week at a glance lesson plans. A word of warning though. . .I do spend a lot on copying; for one, I want to reuse the text with a younger child, and secondly, often pages that are designed for cutting and pasting are backed up onto another workbook page. I keep portfolios of work--so I don't want a math page on the back of a reading page. I also enjoy the book suggestions. My library has an online catalog--so I look a week or two ahead and find most of what I need! Amazon is great too <grin>! If it were not for the reading suggestions, I fear we might have read the same 5 books over and over again! I'm sure that you all know exactly what I mean! I recommend this book fully to any homeschooler struggling with, time, planning, or fearing forgetting something--it is all there!