The Whole Year: Kindergarten

Kindergarten, the whole year, on one shelf. Kindergarten is one workbook per subject, twenty minutes a day, and a lap full of books. That is the whole plan. The math and reading workbooks on this shelf are the floor; the read-alouds are the ceiling, and the ceiling matters more this year. About two hundred dollars for the workbooks and the books, and you own every page.

How to use it: Ten minutes of math, ten of letters and sounds, one science or geography page a couple of times a week, then read aloud until they wander off. Mercy Watson and My Father's Dragon are the first chapter books most five-year-olds sit through; The Boxcar Children and Charlotte's Web are for the spring, when they can. Steve Jenkins' animal books are the science, and nobody will call it that.

Two more things: the custom full grade is where we build this same year around your actual child instead of a grade level, and the $49 map is the first step of that. Not sure this is the right shelf? Five questions will tell you.