March 1st, 2010 
admin Most children start to learn to read at kindergarten but they are also learning lots of other things to do with communication. They are still increasing their speaking vocabulary, which is very important. As the more words a child can say the more they should understand when you read to them. This is the same when homeschooling kindergarten.
When introducing phonics keep it simple and try not to teach the alphabet sounds, just teach the phonic sounds. These are what the child needs so she can read, not the alphabet sounds. There is no relationship between the alphabet sounds and phonic sounds. They only help to confuse the child.
I like to use the Montessori way of teaching as it combines listening, feeling and speaking. And the kids love it, which helps. Maria Montessori uses sandpaper letters and the kids love tracing the letters. First you start off saying the phonic sound then the children trace the letter while saying the sound. After tracing a number of sounds the children start to make up words.
A very simple system and one that works really well. For example we will use the word ‘bag’. Start teaching the vowel ‘a’ first, then move onto ‘b’ and ‘g’. Maria Montessori likes to join the consonants with the vowel so you will get the children to trace ‘ba’ and ‘ag’. Now it is time to bring in new letters like ’i’ for ‘big’ and ‘t’ for ‘bat’
After the children can say all the phonic sounds place all the letters on the table and say one word ‘bag’ and see if the child picks the correct letters in the correct order. That is the Montessori method in a nutshell. You just keep adding new phonic sounds and words everyday. The advantage with this method is the children learn to write while tracing the letters. Homeschooling Kindergarten made simple!
For more information and advice visit http://www.homeschoolingkindergarten.com
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Well I didn't start homeschooling until a lot later, but I can tell you what kind of math I did in public school kindergarten. I, personally, was ahead of my age mates and already playing with multiplication and very small division. And I understood more complicated patterns and concepts than they were teaching in class, but I can tell you what the class worked on to at least give you some ideas before other HSers answer.
We did counting EVERY DAY. I hated it, but it was good for some kids. We'd count to 100 every day by 1's, 2's, 5's and 10's. In our math books we'd do a lot of pattern recognition… Things like seeing a line of red circles alternating with blue triangles, and having to either draw or pick a red circle that goes in the blank after the blue circle. We did shape recognition as well, and patterns with numbers. I don't remember if we did addition and subtraction that early or not, but I'm going to guess that we did single digit stuff because I remember doing double and tripple digits in 1st grade. I say just start from the beginning and move ahead at his speed, not the speed of other homeschoolers. If he wants to multiply and talak about greater-than and less-than in kindergarten andif he's ready for it, let him.