Homeschool Books & Resources We Loved: Kindergarten

As a somewhat-new homeschooling mom, I have always felt a lot of pressure to find the right resources to help my little guy thrive! I want him to truly find enjoyment in learning, so I find myself constantly shifting materials in his curriculum until we discover the gems that light him up. Because I know that there are other moms out there with the same struggle, I began to keep track of what we loved as we worked through his Kindergarten year. And bonus… these are not just suggestions for homeschoolers! Many of these books can be rolled into your nighttime routine if your kid attends school outside of the home! All that said, keep in mind that your five or six-year-old may dance to a different beat (yay!), so don’t be afraid to stray away from the norm, encourage their individuality, and find what makes them eager to meet the day with all it’s learning potential! Happy growing, friends!

Extra Note for Clarity: Because my little guy is an October baby, we started the Kindergarten year early and stretched it out over a year and a half. All that is to say this… If the recommendations seem like a somewhat large list for just one school year, it’s because the list actually covers closer to two years of work for us. (That said, this is not our entire curriculum… just our favorites!)

Categories:

• Beginner-Reader Books (Child Reads)
• Chapter Books (Parent Reads)
• Christianity/Bible/Bible Study/Devotionals
• Language Arts (Learn to Read)
• Language Arts (Learn to Write)
• Math
• Science
• History, Geography, and Social Studies
• Time and Money
• Printables
• Extra Resources

Beginner-Reader Books (Child Reads)

To be perfectly honest, my kiddo was a very reluctant reader early on. When given the chance, he would push reading to the end of the list of subjects to cover, hoping that it was nap time before we got to it and maybe he would get to skip it for the rest of the day. But here’s the hope in our story, friends… by the end of Kindergarten he absolutely fell in love with reading and it’s now his first choice every day! So don’t give up if you have a reluctant reader… just find what calls to them personally! For us, two huge things made all the difference…

• Usborne Very First Reading Book Set
• Reading/Writing/Reading Comprehension Spiral Book

Usborne Very First Reading Book Set – This unique book set is set up as “I Read, You Read” meaning that the parent has a page to read and then the child reads a part of the story designated for them (and at their level). So, you essentially read (tell) the story together. My son absolutely loved this approach and it definitely got him enjoying reading time much more! Bonus: The illustrations and story lines were fun and kept him interested as well! I will say that this set is quite (very!) expensive new, so if possible, find a used option like Ebay. I found this complete set at a local thrift shop for $15! Super big score!

Reading/Writing/Reading Comprehension Spiral Book – I actually made this resource after I couldn’t find anything like it. I have it available for download in the “Printables” section below. I sent mine off to a local print shop to have it printed and spiral bound. Basically, you write a fun short sentence that is on your child’s reading level and have them read it, comprehend it, write it, and then draw it. My son found this very entertaining and it actually helped him enjoy reading much more! Plus, I could make whatever sentences I wanted to challenge him as he grew in skill level (igh, sh, ch, sight words, etc)!

Bob Books – My little guy ended up liking Bob Books as well, but mostly he liked that after he finished one, I would have him write his name in the back! I would say these are a good resource to have around because they ease into the reading much more than many of the beginner books out there.

Chapter Books (Parent Read)

• The Boxcar Children series
• Magic Tree House series
• Dolphin Adventure

Easily our favorites, Magic Tree House and The Boxcar Children were two really great series! My son loved the illustrations and story lines in Magic Tree House and we loved watching the movies for The Boxcar Children after we read the books (Prime Video)! To be honest, our (formal) curriculum had a lot of books listed that I just couldn’t quite get him interested in. Since time spent reading together is generally deemed more important than content at this age, this was a perfect way to get him excited about reading time each and every day! Just for kicks, there was another series that we dipped our toes into and he showed some interest… Dolphin Adventure, Dolphin Treasure… but he kept asking if we could go back to MTH and BC, so we ended up jumping back into that. I’m sure we will explore a more diverse range of literature in 1st grade, but for now, this is what we enjoyed most!

PS – We did read The Indian and the Cupboard this year and he loved it, but I found myself editing a lot on the fly. I forgot some of the more mature content in that book and the movie has some language too. Just a heads up in case it’s on your list.

Christianity/Bible/Bible Study/ Devotionals

• Indescribable, Daily Devotional
• YouTube – the Superbook Series

I cannot say enough good things about the Indescribable Devotional series for kids… and truly, I really enjoyed these lessons every day as well! These are well-written, easily applied lessons about God, science, life, your heart, your feelings, your identity, and more! They are short and simple so that your child doesn’t lose focus before the end and the illustrations are fantastic! I have loved (LOVED) this series! And bonus: I think there are two books that follow this first one, so you can keep it going.

On the days when we took a break from the devotional, we substituted with the Superbook series on YouTube and my kid loved it! What I loved is that he was learning Bible lessons and Bible stories! We tried a kid’s Bible at this age, but to be honest, he struggled to stay attentive and really retain anything. So, when we switched over to this learning option, he actually enjoyed watching the stories and would ask for it on a regular basis! Win, win in my book!

Language Arts (Learn to Read)

This is the real meat when it comes to Kindergarten, right? Learning to Read & Write! For this first section, we are going to focus on the resources that we loved while learning to read. That said, games were a HUGE hit for us in this house, so be sure to check out our Printables section (below) for some great downloads that you can use to spark some fun and bring on the laughter in the learning process.

• Get Ready For the Code, Go For the Code, Explode the Code series
• Horizons Phonics and Reading
• My Sight Words Workbook
• Teachers Pay Teachers
• Printables!

By far, my kid enjoyed the Get Ready for the Code series the most! It was a fun, easy approach to learning letters and sounds. The activities in this program were a lot of fun and kept him very interested, all while retaining much more than just simple repetition. It was a very beneficial program for us… especially when I started out with a very reluctant reader. This would be my first suggestion, by far.

As we got further along, we added in the Horizons Phonics and Reading program. I would not have enjoyed this program at the very beginning of Kindergarten because it’s a bit more advanced and I often had to read sentences and words to him, but as he advanced in his reading skills, it became the next level to move up to after the Get Ready for the Code series.

Going into Kindergarten, I did not remember that sight words were a very important part of learning to read, so I found myself scrambling trying to come up with something that would work for us. The best resource that we found, by far, was a printable stack of flashcards that we downloaded off the Teachers Pay Teachers website. We did a simple “Kindergarten Sight Words” search and then found the set that we liked, paid a very reasonable and small amount, and have used them for over a year! The other resource we found, My Sight Words Workbook (pictured far left above), was helpful, but not as great for retention.

Just to drop some final notes on reading, we did order the Hooked on Phonics Learn to Read program and my son enjoyed watching the videos. I would say this was a great resource, we just didn’t use it as much and so we didn’t put it top of the list. Lastly, I would note, I did not use the Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons program, but I have had several friends absolutely rave about it, so it’s worth looking into if you’re researching reading programs.

And finally, games – games – games! Repetition was key in our house, so we often took letter flashcards on runs (while little guy was in a stroller) and he would pull out a letter and tell me the sound, or we would flip through sight word flashcards while waiting for an oil change. We did phonics matching games often because my kid loved them. All of these homemade resources can be downloaded in the “Printables” section below.

Language Arts (Learn to Write)

• Reading/Writing/Reading Comprehension Resource
• A Reason For Handwriting K
• Handwriting Without Tears, Letters and Numbers for Me

Learning to Write! What a huge part of Kindergarten! While most programs go for either Handwriting Without Tears (far right in picture) or A Reason for Handwriting (middle), we opted to play with both. Granted, we did spread our Kindergarten program over a year and a half, so there was time for both, but we genuinely enjoyed both approaches. If I had to choose one over the other, I would definitely lean towards Reason for Handwriting because it uses three lines instead of two, giving my kid a very clear picture of where each letter should start and end (vertically, at least). The third resource pictured (far left) is our homemade Reading/Writing/Reading Comprehension workbook and you can download it in the “Printables” section below. We had it spiral bound and then I would write a fun sentence and he would read it, comprehend it, write it, and draw it. Because he enjoyed this practice so much, we rolled it into our curriculum quite regularly.

Math

• Horizons Kindergarten Book 1

Okay… So, here the deal on math: Friends, there are a ton of math programs out there for this age and this was perhaps the most challenging space to find a good fit for us. We went through two. We started with Math-U-See, which uses a lot of hands-on tools, like manipulative blocks to learn counting by tens and such. It’s a highly reviewed math program, but my kid was just not taking to it at all. We eventually switched over to Horizons Math and he did beautifully! Took right off and is even somewhat advanced now in this area.

Because I could tell that he was advancing faster than the worksheets, I also added in a ton of homemade math worksheets on the side. We worked on adding in the single digits, tens, hundreds, and up to thousands before we finished Kindergarten. We were rolling over numbers and more! Don’t hesitate to add whatever you think is best to any program that you pick. So, all of that is to say this … My recommendation is that you really research your math program and then find what works best for your kid’s learning style. There are truly so many options!

Science

• Big Book of Why? (series)
• Usborne Beginner Science series
• Berenstain Bears Big Book of Science and Nature
• My Body Book by Teacher Created Resources
• Carson Dellosa Child-Size Human Body Bulletin Board Set

Science… probably our favorite subject in Kindergarten because there is just so much to learn about the world around us! So, bear with me as I share some of our (many) favorites! It’s just so hard to choose!

Our formal curriculum used the Usborne Beginner Science series books and we fell in love with these! I am not permitted to share examples of the accompanying worksheets that our curriculum provides, but if you order the Sonlight’s Science K, you get all the really great activity sheets plus an instructor’s guide and more! We genuinely enjoyed the science program VERY much!

After my kid fell in love with the book, National Geographic First Big Book of Why, I started hunting more of them down at thrift stores. There are several “First Big Book” books in the series (First Big Book of Animals, First Big Book of Oceans, etc) and although these weren’t my personal favorite, they were a huge hit for him, so we explored these more and more throughout the year.

A rollover from our Pre-K year, we still enjoyed the Berenstein Bears Big Book of Science and Nature. Then, when my son showed a particular interest in learning more about anatomy, we ordered these fun charts, Carson Dellosa Child-Size Human Body Bulletin Board Set, off Amazon and ordered the book My Body (Teacher Created Resources) which walks you through creating your own personalized full-size poster of your child and then copying, coloring, and pasting each organ where it goes and learning about all of them. A fun hands-on activity!

The great thing about science is that you can explore many, many things! It’s truly a very flexible and fun subject to explore! For instance, when we planned to take a trip to photograph the milky way, we did a short study on planets and downloaded a Teachers Pay Teachers “my universe” resource and set of worksheets, plus watched several videos in YouTube. When we went to the beach, we ordered shell identifying guides for that area and then identified and learned about the creatures that lived in them! When spring and summer came around, we read about seeds and flower parts in the book, From Seed to Plant, and then we found as many kinds of seeds and flowers as we could, came back home, drew them and dissected them to identify all of the parts! Science is a very open and diverse area at this age and we loved exploring whatever his current interests were in a fun and fact-filled way!

PS – If you’re studying the rainforest, check out our rainforest model under the “Printables” section below and you can snag our rainforest animal flashcards!

History, Geography, Social Studies

I’ll be the first to admit that we really struggled in this area. Here’s why: The formal curriculum that we chose for Kindergarten History was too advanced for my little guy, so about mid-way through the year, we finally gave up and had to explore other options on the fly. We did some studying of state history, in our case Colorado, via YouTube, and then we ordered various books on Amazon to learn about the pilgrims, King George, George Washington, Lewis & Clarke, and other early American history lessons. Once we wanted to move on from that a bit, we explored the book pictured above left, Beginning Geography, and my kid had a lot of fun with that resource! The book has various activities to understand landforms and continents and develop entry-level map reading and drawing skills. It was quite fun, actually, and he learned a lot! We also dabbled in the book pictured on the right, My Story, which is a Christian-based approach to Social Studies, but to be completely transparent, we did not get very far into this one before our Kindergarten year was over. We may explore it more deeply in First Grade.

Time and Money

Towards the end of our Kindergarten year, we incorporated a lot of time and money counting lessons. Although we had worked on understanding money values all throughout the year, it wasn’t until his math skills had reached a certain level that we started working on actually adding money together. When that time came, these inexpensive little flashcards were an excellent resource! I found mine at a thrift store, but you can also find them at Dollar Tree and other stores! Again, Teachers Pay Teachers (website) was a huge win for both of these subjects (time and money)! We found lots of really, really great worksheets that were inexpensive and downloadable. They lasted for weeks in our curriculum and the resulting retention of concepts was fantastic because these worksheets are designed by Kindergarten teachers, so they know how to keep them hooked at this age! Lastly, when learning time, my son enjoyed this cute little clock (Tock the Learning Clock) that we found on Amazon. It speaks and tells you the time as you move the hands. More than anything, just incorporating these lessons daily, even asking at random times what time it was or how much money I have in my hand, was super beneficial.

Printables

Please Note: These printables are our personal collection of homemade resources and games. They are NOT professional resources by any means, but I’m happy to share them with you. You can click on each link (under the preview) to download the resource. Resource descriptions are provided under the preview. Enjoy!

This is a small collection of alphabet bingo cards that we used for letter recognition and letter/sound association – in other words, you can play bingo by announcing the next letter or the sound it makes. We opted to laminate our cards, cut them out, and use flat marbles in our game, but if your cards are laminated, you could also use dry-erase markers instead.

For the deck of cards that you will need for calling out letters/sounds, you can download and cut out the playing cards below to shuffle and use as your stack OR just pick up a pack of alphabet cards at your local Dollar Tree or other location.

These cards can be laminated and cut out to use in combination with the Alphabet Bingo game above, OR as flashcards for letter and sound recognition, OR as Go Fish! cards if you print duplicates.

One of my frustrations with store-bought alphabet flashcards is that they often give a picture clue (“A” flashcard with an image of an apple). While this is great when initially learning, as my kid advanced, I needed to be able to test his ability to know which card/sound matched which letter on his own. So, I created this file of A-Z images and then cut out each picture flashcard individually and left the letter by itself. I would shuffle all of the pictures and lay out the letters A-Z on the floor and let him match the pictures/flashcards to the correct letters. He absolutely loved this game and the retention progress was excellent! As always, we did opt to laminate before cutting so that the flashcards lasted all year.

If you refer to the header for this printables section, you’ll see an example of a completed Coloring Game sheet on the far left. This game was meant to first – work on letter recognition – and second – work on sound recognition. In other words, when we first started using this, I would say, “color the letter G blue” and he would find the “G” and color it blue. This can be used with the capitals, lower case, or both, to work on letter recognition. Once we had advanced, we moved to the following instruction, “color the letter that makes the sound (insert “g” sound) blue,” and he found G and colored it blue. This was just a fun twist on practicing phonics that we enjoyed.

When my son was first learning basic addition and subtraction (up to 10), we used these sheets to place small fun erasers or flat marbles in the boxes and learn the concept of adding or subtracting. Such as, in the first sheet the problem 3+1 would look like this : 3 erasers on top row, 1 eraser on bottom row, then we add them together to get the answer. In the second sheet, the math problem 3-1 would look like this: place 3 erasers in the boxes, then take away one, count how many are left. This visual helped him tremendously.

This was a huge resource for us when it came to combining reading, writing, and reading comprehension. I would write a sentence (at his level) and he would read it, write it, and draw it (practicing comprehension). He really enjoyed this assignment and it allowed me to combine all three focuses into one activity on really busy days! Win, win! PLEASE NOTE: If you plan to hole punch this resource, you can use the file above. If you plan to have it spiral bound, I suggest that you use the one below this paragraph. 🙂

This was a huge resource for us when it came to combining reading, writing, and reading comprehension. I would write a sentence (at his level) and he would read it, write it, and draw it (practicing comprehension). He really enjoyed this assignment and it allowed me to combine all three focuses into one activity on really busy days! Win, win! PLEASE NOTE: If you plan to hole punch this resource, you can use the file above this one. If you plan to have it spiral bound, I suggest that you use this one. 🙂

If you plan to study the rainforest and would like to make a rainforest model (see picture), these are some downloadable flashcards for your project! I did laminate them before adding them to the model.

This was a resource that we used early on just to practice writing the appropriate capital or lowercase letter next to its counterpart. It was more for making the connection of which capital goes with which lowercase letter, not particularly for writing practice.

Extra Resources

As you have probably already figured out, I’m a huge fan of thrift stores and bargain shopping when it comes to resources for our home classroom! When I drop notes here about Extra Resources that we enjoyed in Kindergarten, please keep that in mind. I would not encourage anyone to pay full price for these resources because they were just used here-and-there as extras/add-ons and I usually picked them up for a few dollars each second-hand!

The Exploring Creation series is a God-based Science program and we enjoyed using the books to simply dive a bit deeper into various topics that we studied throughout our Science lessons. I liked the way that it took simple Science lessons (like our lesson on seeds) and applied a lesson about God as well. We only used this resource as an add-on, not our primary science resource.

We used Hooked on Phonics Learn to Read as an add-on because my son really enjoyed the fun videos.

I found a Scholastic Children’s Dictionary for less than a dollar (very clean copy) at the thrift shop and we have used it here and there to learn dictionary skills as well as exploring word definitions and letter/sound associations.

And if you find yourself in need of some great worksheets for any topic you choose, I will always go back to recommending Teachers Pay Teachers (website) because I have found a great assortment of activities, flashcards, worksheets, study guides, etc on practically every subject I researched!

Wrap-Up

So, here’s my wrap-up friends… One of the things that I have learned the most about homeschooling (as we go into our fourth year) is that there is so much joy in exploring how your kid learns and where their interest lies. When I get hung up on sticking to something that doesn’t work just because I’m trying to dot the i’s and cross the t’s, our progress and our enthusiasm truly suffers. Just remember that Kindergarten is a great time to explore and have fun and that above all, you’re already doing a great job!

You got this mama! Believe in yourself and have fun! Take that extra day to venture into the park and learn about the world around you! Enjoy each other! There will be good days and really (really) hard days… we alllllll have them, I promise! But just keep on keeping on and it’ll all work out. Blessings on a beautiful Kindergarten Homeschool Year!

xo Shannon

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