Kindergarten Homeschool Curriculum — Free Templates & Daily Schedule
Kindergarten is the first formal year of homeschool — but formal is relative. A strong Kindergarten day at home is usually 30 to 90 minutes of seat-work, mixed into a longer day of read-alouds, free play, outdoor time, and helping with real-life tasks. The core skills to cover across the year are: recognising and forming all 26 letters and their sounds, blending CVC words, counting to 100, writing numerals 0–20, simple addition within 10, calendar and weather, shape and color naming, and listening to age-appropriate literature daily. Programs commonly used include All About Reading Level 1, Singapore Math Essentials, and The Good and the Beautiful Kindergarten. For free options, Easy Peasy Getting Ready 1 and Khan Academy Kids cover the same ground with no cost. A typical Kindergarten week is four short academic days plus one field-trip or library day.
Below: a sample daily schedule you can copy, a term-by-term sequence for the whole year, and printable practice for every skill on it.
A sample Kindergarten homeschool daily schedule
Copy the shape of this day, not the clock times. What matters is that the academic work happens in three or four short bursts of 15 to 20 minutes, early, while attention is cheapest — and that the long blocks either side of it are genuinely protected. Total seat-work here is about 55 minutes.
| When | Block | What it looks like |
|---|---|---|
| 8:00 – 8:30 | Slow start and morning basket | Breakfast, then calendar, weather, the day of the week, a song or rhyme, and one picture book together. |
| 8:30 – 8:50 | Phonics — 20 minutes | One letter sound or blending focus, read a few CVC words, add one new sight word to the ring. |
| 8:50 – 9:10 | Maths — 20 minutes | Counting out loud, hands-on work with counters or blocks, then a short written or drawn task. |
| 9:10 – 9:25 | Handwriting — 15 minutes | Letter formation, writing their own name, or copying one short sentence. Stop before frustration. |
| 9:25 – 10:30 | Outdoor and free play | Unstructured, ideally outside. This is doing real developmental work — it is not the gap between lessons. |
| 10:30 – 11:00 | Read-aloud | A stack of picture books or the first chapters of a longer story. The single highest-value block of the day. |
| 11:00 – 12:30 | Lunch, chores, real-life maths | Counting cutlery, measuring for a recipe, sorting laundry. Kindergarten maths lives here as much as at the table. |
| Afternoon | Rest, then theme time | Quiet time, then art, science, nature walks or a library trip two or three afternoons a week. |
If a block collapses, drop it and carry on the next day. A Kindergarten year has a lot of slack in it — consistency across the year matters far more than finishing any single day.
Kindergarten scope and sequence — the whole year
Four terms, four subject strands. Terms are quarters of your own year, not a school district's calendar. Move on when a skill is secure rather than when the term ends — the order matters much more than the timing.
| Term | Reading | Maths | Writing | The world |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Term 1 | Letter names and sounds for all 26 letters; hearing beginning sounds; rhyming. | Count to 20; recognise and write numerals 0–10; sort and compare; name 2D shapes. | Pencil grip; writing their own name; forming capital letters. | Calendar, weather, the seasons, family and home. |
| Term 2 | Blend and read CVC words; first 25 sight words; retell a familiar story. | Count to 50; write numerals 0–20; addition within 5; copy and extend patterns. | Lowercase letter formation; copying a short sentence with a capital and a full stop. | The five senses; animals and where they live. |
| Term 3 | CVC fluency; the digraphs sh, ch and th; around 50 sight words; answering who/what/where questions. | Count to 100 by ones and tens; addition within 10; subtraction within 5; measuring with cubes and hands. | Writing their own short sentence, with a drawing to match. | Plants and growing things; weather patterns. |
| Term 4 | Reading simple decodable books independently; beginning comprehension. | Addition and subtraction within 10; naming coins; time to the hour; 3D shapes. | Two or three sentences of news or story, spaced and punctuated. | Community helpers; simple maps and directions. |
Working on the phonics strand? The CVC words guide, digraphs guide and Dolch sight word lists cover Terms 2 and 3 in detail. For the maths strand, see subitising and number bonds.
Printable practice for every skill above
Free worksheets, sorted by the strands in the sequence. Print what you need for the week rather than working through a book front to back.
Kindergarten worksheets
The whole year's practice in one place, sorted by skill.
OpenPhonics worksheets
Letter sounds, blending, CVC words and digraphs.
OpenSight word worksheets
The high-frequency words that unlock early reading.
OpenHandwriting and writing
Letter formation, name writing and first sentences.
OpenAddition worksheets
Addition within 5 and within 10, with pictures and number lines.
OpenTelling the time
Clock faces to the hour, for the last term of the year.
OpenFrequently asked questions
How many hours a day should Kindergarten homeschool take?
Around 30 to 90 minutes of actual seat-work, split into short blocks of 15 to 20 minutes each. The schedule above totals about 55 minutes. The rest of a good Kindergarten day is read-alouds, play, outdoor time and helping with real tasks — that is not filler, it is where a five-year-old does most of their learning.
What should a child know by the end of Kindergarten?
Broadly: all 26 letters and their sounds, blending and reading CVC words, a bank of common sight words, counting to 100, writing numerals to 20, addition and subtraction within 10, naming 2D and 3D shapes, and writing a short sentence with a capital and a full stop. The year sequence above spreads these across four terms.
Do I need to buy a boxed Kindergarten curriculum?
No. Kindergarten is the year that is easiest to assemble yourself, because the skill list is short and well understood. A boxed program buys you sequencing and saves planning time, which is worth real money if your week is tight — but a phonics program, a maths program, a library card and a stack of printables covers the same ground.
How do I teach reading in Kindergarten at home?
Systematically and in small daily doses. Teach letter sounds before letter names in practice, move to blending two- and three-sound words as soon as a handful of sounds are secure, then add digraphs and a small set of sight words for the irregular high-frequency ones. Ten to fifteen focused minutes a day beats an hour on Sunday.
Is Kindergarten compulsory if I homeschool?
It depends where you live — compulsory school age is set by each state, and in some it begins at five while in others it is six or seven. That changes whether Kindergarten counts as a reportable year for you. Check your own state's rules before you plan the year; our state-by-state homeschool pages are a starting point, not legal advice.
Last verified 21 August 2026 — Kuraplan editorial. Next stage: choosing a homeschool maths program. Coming from Pre-K? See preschool homeschool.