Little House Kindergarten, a free, secular program with resources for preschool and kindergarten, is presented in five PDF books: Parent Guide (covering both preK and kindergarten), Pre-Kindergarten English Language Arts, Pre-Kindergarten Mathematics, Kindergarten English Language Arts, and Kindergarten Mathematics. The program follows a relaxed timeline for preK and kindergarten, working on reading readiness rather than blending sounds and decoding words. Math is less relaxed than reading.
The program combines poetry, coloring, active and outdoor learning, crafts, games, songs, and other creative learning with two daily worksheets for math and language arts. The focus of the program is primarily on math and language arts, but it also stresses the importance of reading “living books” with children to expand learning beyond those subjects. Author Hannah Ward says,
By reading living books and exploring topics through stories, children can absorb information about the world around them in a way that feels natural and enjoyable. Field trips, nature walks, hands-on play, and discussions after reading allow children to connect the dots between what they learn and how it applies in the real world (Parent Guide, p. 4).
It’s very easy to figure out how to use the program from the guide’s one-page explanation. In addition to brief instructions, the 44-page Parent Guide has lists of multisensory activities to teach different skills and recommended reading lists of living books with discussion prompts for some of the recommended series of books.
All four student books have almost 200 pages each and begin with a one-page skills checklist showing what students should learn by the end of each course.
The checklist is followed by the lists of suggested activities that are repeated in the Parent Guide. For instance, the kindergarten language arts book has four one-page activities lists:
- Vocabulary and Background Knowledge
- Understanding Stories
- Write A-Z
- Alphabetical Order
The Understanding Stories list has six activities, one of which reads:
Favorite Parts Collage:
Activity: After reading multiple stories or poems, ask your child to create a collage of their favorite parts using drawings or cut-out images from magazines. Have them share their collages and explain why they chose those moments.
Tip: Encourage them to use descriptive words when sharing, enhancing their vocabulary. (p. 4)
Among the other activities are nature walks, songs, finger play, crafts, body-movement games, sorting, cutting things out, etc. The activities are not scheduled but should be used frequently—I would suggest at least one per day. The “3 Step Daily Learning Guide” says to complete a worksheet each day for math and language arts and also read aloud and discuss a book. It doesn’t include the activities from the lists as daily requirements, except occasionally in preK math, although the activities might be even more useful than the worksheets for learning. Instead, the guide says parents should choose activities “that are meaningful and enjoyable for your family.” It would be easy to just use the worksheets, but the combination of all three types of learning is what makes this a good program for covering preK and kindergarten. The best way to ensure that all three modes of learning happen is to schedule in advance which activities and books you will use alongside the worksheets.
The lists are followed by the Daily Practice Worksheets, the bulk of each book. Students are expected to complete one per day for math and language arts, but eager students might want to do more.
English Language Arts
Pre-Kindergarten English Language Arts
Pre-Kindergarten English Language Arts teaches the alphabet song and uppercase letter identification but spends even more time on other early learning topics that include colors, family members, rooms in the home, parts of the body, clothing, weather, and seasons. The book has a full page of multisensory activities for each of these areas.
About every fifth worksheet is a poem, song, or story. There are poems and songs like “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes,” “You Are My Sunshine,” “The Ants Go Marching,” and “Jingle Bells.” Examples of the short stories and fables are “The Three Little Pigs,” “The City Mouse and the Country Mouse,” and “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” All of these connect with other lesson themes, so for example, “The Ants Go Marching” is learned after students have been introduced to the letter A.
The worksheets are fairly standard with images to circle and color, letters to trace, and pictures to identify. After students have learned all of the letters, learning is reinforced with worksheet-directed activities, such as singing the alphabet song, completing alphabet dot-to-dots, coloring pictures with colors coded by letters, and matching columns with letters of the alphabet.
Kindergarten English Language Arts
Kindergarten English Language Arts begins with vocabulary related to emotions, farms, parts of the body, food, animals, and opposites. Worksheets for these lessons include labeled images to discuss and color, and other multisensory activities are listed at the front of the book.
“Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” is repeated in this book to review parts of the body, but different poems, songs, and stories are taught in the rest of the lessons. As in the preK book’s lessons on the alphabet, the poems, songs, and stories have keywords that link to the letter taught in adjacent lessons.
This course is more challenging than preK since it teaches recognition and writing of both uppercase and lowercase letters. The book includes traditional-style worksheets with a keyword and its image, letters to trace and write, and discrimination exercises where students circle only the letter taught in this lesson. There is less emphasis on the sounds of the letters than on identification. Once the letters have all been taught, reinforcement activities include singing the alphabet song, completing alphabet dot-to-dots, coloring pictures with colors coded by letters, and matching columns with uppercase and lowercase versions of the same alphabet letters.
Math
Pre-Kindergarten Mathematics
Pre-Kindergarten Mathematics teaches counting, identifying, tracing, and writing numbers 1through 10; identifying geometric shapes; and recognizing and completing patterns. Four pages of multisensory activity suggestions relate to these topics. Children learn the numbers by tracing and coloring the corresponding number of items. Lessons for each number explicitly say to use some of the activities, such as tracing the number in salt or sand, walking in the shape of a number, or making numbers from clay or dough. After teaching the ten numbers, worksheets vary, including completing dots-to-dots, coloring pictures by following a number key, matching numbers to groups of objects, drawing the correct number of circles, tracing numbers, coloring the correct number for a group of objects, tracing and coloring shapes (some shape worksheets again suggest using the physical and sensory activities), solving mazes by identifying shapes, completing patterns with shapes, and completing drawings (e.g., draw eyes on a face). Some shape worksheets tell students to search inside and outside the home for items that have a particular shape (e.g., circle, square, hexagon).
Kindergarten Mathematics
Kindergarten Mathematics teaches counting to 100, addition and subtraction (up to 10), reading and writing numbers to 20, skip counting (by 2s, 5s, and 10s), identifying and drawing geometric shapes, learning position words (e.g., over, under), recognizing patterns, time telling (on the hour only) on both analog and digital clocks, filling in bar graphs, and comparing sizes. This book has eight pages of activity suggestions to use alongside the worksheets and living books.
The worksheets are similar to those for preK but usually at a higher level of difficulty. They have children trace and write numbers, complete dots-to-dots, color pictures following a number or shape key, match numbers to groups of objects, work with a 100 chart, solve mazes by skip counting, solve many word problems (with illustrations), learn symbols for mathematical operations, solve problems such as 3 + 3 =, compare sizes of geometric shapes, draw geometric shapes, complete bar graphs, do clock activities, determine patterns (numbers, letters, or shapes), identify positions (e.g., in, on, behind), and complete drawings (e.g., draw the legs on a horse).
Summary
Little House Kindergarten balances the use of traditional worksheets with the use of living books and experiential learning, but it depends upon parents incorporating the read-aloud books and activities.
Note that Sherlock Homeschooling also has a living books program for grades one through twelve.
