Memoria Press Kindergarten {Review – Part I}
Hello friends! As of January 2019, I have an affiliate account with Memoria Press. I am working to fix all my links, but it is a work in progress! So, while I work on updating things, please do use my link if you’re off to buy!
2013-2014 was our K4 year and our main curriculum has been the Memoria Press Classical Core Curriculum for Kindergarten. (I cannot believe we are already halfway through the next year, these memories seem like yesterday!!) These Lesson Plans are written out for one year. At this point we are within a handful of weeks to completetion, possibly days. This year follows our K3 year with the Memoria Press Junior Kindergarten and prior to that Tot School with various preschool printables and Sonlight P3/4.
Please head back to read my several part review on the Memoria Press JrK Curriculum if you’re interested. JrK is written as a 2-day week for 33 weeks, recommended for the general 4-5 year old range.
Also, for your information and a side note, Memoria Press is in the process of releasing a leveled pre-JrK program designed for special needs. The plan, to my knowledge, is “to unveil the first three levels of the new special-needs classical curriculum packages this summer: Readiness Leves A, B, and C.” (Update: These three levels are now available and listed on the Memoria Press Website, more levels to come in the future.) Level C is comparable to Memoria Press Junior Kindergarten but adapted for special needs. (I have opinions on this one to share soon… feel free to ask me more.) Both Level A and Level B will be “pre JrK”. For all three levels, there is an online list of readiness skills in fine-motor, gross-motor, oral language, social/emotional, and cognitive areas, so one will know where to begin Levels A, B, and C. Seek to encourage delight, wonder, basic skills, and a love of stories while strengthening your child’s ability in each area. Level A will be suited for children approximately ages 2-3, Level B ages 3-4, Level C ages 4-5. (For more severely challenged children, these levels correspond to mental ages.) Each level has a separate book list and skills list. (And FYI, I hear in the forums that Level 1 and 2 are in the works and soon to be released in the Simply Classical Leveled Curriculum for Special Needs!)
*Now back on task!*
Memoria Press Kindergarten Lesson Plans are written for a 5-day week for 33 weeks. My original copy is is comb bound, and the newest release is with a blue spiral. I’m purely ecstatic about Memoria Press moving to spiral bind their lesson plans!!!
Products from Amazon.com
-
Price: Check on Amazon
-
Price: $15.95
-
Price: Out of stock
-
Price: Out of stock
-
Price: $4.89
-
Price: Check on Amazon
-
Price: Check on Amazon
-
Price: $18.95
The Kindergarten plans are with a week on a two-day spread so everything is clear and well seen. Having it in a spiral, now I can flip it back and do the half a week at a time without worrying about the pages coming out and that is delightful. The plans could essentially start at any time of year with a few tweaks to when you use which Enrichment week. As the plans are written they are for a Labor Day week start date (beginning of September), early October Christopher Columbus theme, late October for pumpkins, late November Thanksgiving, three weeks of a Christmas theme, and in my opinion three weeks of nocturnal reads for January, and then a groundhog’s story for early February. Lastly, on this same schedule, it takes you onto an Easter read at the end of March or beginning of April, with spring reads that then take you and your student through May. Following this schedule loosely we still had plenty of breaks and time off as we chose or needed. Personally, we had a skills hiccup that we opted to spend more time on and as of now we are and only [ETA: ended up] three weeks off from “our plan”. This is no bother to me and I am very satisfied with our progress in the Memoria Press plan!
During this past year, we have covered Phonics, Reading & Printing (handwriting/penmanship), as well as part 1 (of 2) in Beginning Arithmetic, Bible Stories, and prayers; 33 weeks of poetry, art, music, recitation, literature and related science and social studies topics. Essentially every day consists of Recitation/Memory work, Phonics, and Math; while one day per week also includes copywork, literature, or social studies, science, and/or music, art, poetry. Be it review or new material, Memoria Press Kindergarten introduces students to the Alphabet (upper and lowercase letters) and Numbers from how to identify them and write them. We then continue on to learn to read from CVC, sight words and decoding with both short and long vowels. As well as, the concepts of single-digit addition (up to 6), subtraction (from 6), pennies, dimes, nickles, counting 1-100, telling time to the whole and half hour, and lastly a basic intro to fractions and ordinal numbers.
The meat of this program is definitely reading, writing, and arithmetic with the icing of recitation, art, poetry, literature and other Enrichment. The Lesson Plans suggest what to read when and can be enhanced with the Kindergarten Enrichment Guide. My lesson plans are comb bound, as I mentioned previously now spiral bound, and the Enrichment Guide is a perfect paperback meant to last.
It was near the beginning of May when I first penned my first partial post (above) in an effort to share my thoughts in review of the Memoria Press Kindergarten Curriculum Lesson Plans for One Year and Curriculum program. A little chaos set in as we finished our kinder material, jumped into some summer material for fun, continued with our TOS reviews, and of course, we welcomed a new baby brother into the mix! Yet as we are collecting our materials to continue into our year of Memoria Press First Grade Curriculum in a K5 and PreK3 2014-2015 year, I want to make sure to share our thoughts on our 2013-2014 year.
Lesson Plans of 33 weeks begin each 5-day week with an Opening Recitation. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are all of a new weekly recitation found in the appendix (also available to buy separately now for those so inclined!). Tuesday is Arts Recitation and Thursday is Poetry Recitation. The Kindergarten Recitation (M/W/F) covers facts across the spectrum of subjects from the alphabet, to planets, counting, days of the week, months of the year and more. There are cardinal directions, coin-money details, President names, oceans, continents, and even more.
The Kindergarten Curriculum is written with the intent of educating “reading ready children, those usually 4-6 years old with the ability to count to ten, print their names, recognize most letters, rhyme words, and segment sounds. The primary goal of this curriculum is learning to read.”
Thus, Phonics is an important part of the school day, too. The program as I used it was the 2013 version utilizing SRA Phonics for supplemental reinforcement of phonics skills. We were not a fan of this expensive workbook in our home and changed at half the year to Christian Liberty Press’ Adventures in Phonics series Book Level A (reprinted with new covers for 2013 – Level B has also been reprinted and we have already ordered it for our current year when we finish with Level A. I assume Level C will be reprinted in the future.) I’ll gladly share more on that book if you’re interested, but for now – back to Memoria Press Kindergarten Phonics. The 2014 version now includes Spelling Workout and Core Skills Phonics.Â
Oh, wait… that’s a discussion for tomorrow…
Lastly to mention of the Lessons Plans for One Year is mostly a repeat of what I said in reference to the Junior Kindergarten Lesson Plans as well. Opening up you have a checklist of all your book needs both in text and consumable as well as reading books. The reading list is marked as optional and it is possible for you to replace books, but the Enrichment and the Literature schedule is developed around these. And in my opinion, it’s the best part of the program!
I received a portion of this product free for the purpose of reviewing it. I received no other compensation for this review. The opinions expressed in this review are my personal, honest opinions. Your experience may vary. Please read my full disclosure policy for more details.Â
Make sure to check out the parts of my Kindergarten review in posts to come!
Part I – Lesson Plans
Part II – Recitation & Phonics
Part III – Math
Part IV – Copybook & Memory
Part V – Enrichment
Part VI –Â Conclusion
You might also be interested in Junior Kindergarten.
Part I – Lesson Plans
Part II – PhonicsÂ
Part III – Math
Part IV – Poetry
Part V – Prayer & Devotion
Part VI – Crafts
(No spam, I promise. Just creative madness ramblings, reviews and life-stories, with quilting and cross stitch inspiration in between!)
17 Comments
Pingback:
Pingback:
Pingback:
Pingback:
Pingback:
Pingback:
Pingback:
Pingback:
Pingback:
Pingback:
Pingback:
Pingback:
Pingback:
Pingback:
Pingback:
Pingback:
Pingback: