Kindergarten with Kahlen–Thanksgiving and more

Four weeks later…Oh well, I guess I’m not perfect after all ;)

Here’s a little recap of what we’ve been doing. Make sure you check out our fun Thanksgiving activities at the bottom.

Our main curriculum - Tapestry of Grace Year 1:

We’ve been moving forward from Creation through Noah’s Ark. For this activity, I printed two sets of animals. Kahlen cut out one while Nate glued the other one on. Then she had to find the matching one and glue hers near his. Simple for her, but a good way for them to work together.

Then we discussed the Tower of Babel and made a Ziggurat with paperboard boxes

(The finished product)

We moved on to the patriarchs after that, but I don’t have very many pictures. We made a travelling table and then had an indoor picnic co-op. We’re also working on an ancient Israelite costume for our end of the unit party in January.

Fun Stuff:

On a whim two weeks ago, we went to the Butterfly Pavilion. I have a membership good through January. It’s about an hour from our house, and we were only there for about 2 hours, but it was still worth it. The kids had fun and so did I. Nate was not happy that he didn’t get to hold the tarantula that they have there, but you have to be three, and he’s definitely not.

Thanksgiving:

We’ve done a few fun crafts related to Thanksgiving. We’re having a co-op feast on Monday and will have a little lesson about why we celebrate Thanksgiving. To prepare, we made woven placemats (which I don’t have any pictures of, oops) and bonnets/headbands

One of my friends posted this cute turkey craft, which we did yesterday. Turned out pretty cute, I must say :

We’re also starting a thankful book. I took a basic composition book and mod podged a piece of fall-ish paper to the front along with their handprints. We’ll write some things we are thankful for inside and then pass it around during our Thanksgiving feast on Thursday and Friday with family. It will be a neat record of what we are thankful for right now. Then we’ll pull it out every year and continue to write things in it. I’ll have to add the baby’s handprint next year, probably on the back cover.

We’re still plugging through Math U See Primer, First Step Reading, and Handwriting Without Tears without incident. In math, we’ve started actual addition, which she was very ready for, it’s almost to easy for her :) She’s getting more interested in reading, which I love love love. I’ve gotten her a couple beginning readers from the library which she’s been able to read almost by herself, hooray! We haven’t been stressing the handwriting as much because she gets lots of practice in other places, like her reading book, but that’s going pretty good too. I’m trying to get her to write her name in proper case more often, but she forgets a lot and just writes it in all caps.

I’d love to hear what’s been working and not working for you! Leave me a comment or come link up with me at HomeSchool Creations!

Also, anyone have any great ideas for Christmas Advent? This is what we did last year, and I’m thinking of something similar, but not exactly the same for this year. I got sucked into Pinterest, so you can check out my current ideas there if you feel so inclined. Once I get everything all finalized, I’ll try to blog it in hopes that someone else can use it too :)

~S

Linking up at:

Kindergarten with Kahlen–Creation (ToG Week 4a)

My poor neglected blog…I really want to be posting a recap of our school week every week, but so far it hasn’t happened. I have all the pictures taken and ready, but the blogging just has been a low priority lately.

School has been going really well for the most part. We’ve been able to keep on schedule (a tad modified because of vacation) and have enjoyed the challenges of kindergarten while trying to keep the tot busy. Good thing he’s a sleepy head and I can usually just put him down for a short morning nap while we focus on school. If that doesn’t work, then we do some school while he naps in the afternoon. She doesn’t really need a nap anymore the majority of the days. I can still get away with having her do room time for up to two hours if I need a nap (growing a baby is tiring!), but we can also just do school for that time if we choose.

As we progress into “real” school instead of the preschool that we’ve been doing, I am more and more pleased with my choice to homeschool and the methods that we’re using. I realize that when I was homeschooled, we did so much that was not “normal” even in homeschooling circles. It never felt like public school recreated at home. It was school, sure, but not some rigid, overly structured thing that took over our lives instead of being part of our lives…okay, more on that in my Educating the WholeHearted Child review.Enjoying the zoo on a "school" day.

Anyway, here’s a peek into our schooling so far. Some of this is actually from this week and some is from weeks prior.

Our main curriculum - Tapestry of Grace Year 1:

We are sticking with the plan of using Tapestry of Grace at half speed. So far, we’ve mostly been talking about Ancient Egypt, but we have just moved into Creation and will move through Genesis from here. Year 1 focuses on the books of Moses.

One of the projects we did for our creation week was to make a creation book. I actually don’t have as many pictures as I though for this week. Here’s the first day:

For each day, she had to copy my words as well as glue something down like this light/dark or for day 4, we had a bunch of clipart of birds and fish as well as a large blue paper for the water. (I’ll look for my documents and hopefully post them…I think they’re on my old drive that was starting to crash so I replaced it)

It was a big task, but she did great. It did take us all week, though.

We’ve also mummified apples:

Made a salt dough map illustrating different land forms:

Made a salt dough map of Egypt:

And excavated a pyramid:

Reading/Phonics:

We started out using Explode the Code and The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading, and it was working okay, but then I got a product for review from TOS which I like much much better. It’s called First Start Reading, and I’ll be posting my full review soon. In the meantime, know that we have really been enjoying it and will continue to use this as our primary reading/phonics curriculum for this year.

Math – Math U See:

We whizzed through the first 8 lessons of MUS, but we did every worksheet anyway, just so she would get the practice writing her numbers and doing as the paper asked her to do. We’ve now completed lesson 9, which was about place value of tens and units. This one was challenging for her, and we spent a long time on it, but I feel like she finally got it and it was worth it to spend this time since so much depends on her really understanding this concept.

Handwriting – Handwriting without Tears:

Overall, we’ve been liking this program. This is definitely the part she likes the least, but I feel very strongly about her having good handwriting, so she just has to do it. Because she doesn’t enjoy it, we’re not very far into the book. But I don’t have a schedule or a specific goal in mind, we’re just going to work on it and get where we get. She was going to do it with daddy every evening, but that wasn’t working for a variety of reasons, the biggest one being she wasn’t in school mode by that time of day and it was extremely hard for her to concentrate. So, we’ve incorporated it back into the main part of the day, and it works great. The other thing that I’ve found that works for her is to give star stickers for the ones on each page that are perfect. Depending on her mood and level of frustration with that letter, I sometimes will give her stickers for ones that she tried hard on but are not very pretty.

Other Stuff:

We still haven’t found a good Spanish program or rhythm for piano lessons, but with the work that we are doing and life circumstances what they are, I’m okay with that. I will be reviewing a Spanish Jr. program soon as well, so if I like that, we’ll go with it.

That’s all I’ve got right now, I’m really going to try and be more faithful about posting a recap of our week going forward. It’s fun to be able to look back and see what we did, so it’s just as much for me as anything!

~S

Linking up at:

2011-2012 School Year – Kindergarten & Tot School

*This is basically a repost of my curriculum plan posted in March*

After talking to some other mommies and looking at things online and a whole host of other things, we’ve decided that Kahlen is ready to start Kindergarten in the fall. She will be very young for it, as she’ll turn 5 in December, but it will be our third year of school already, with doing Kitchen Table Play and Learn with Hubbard’s Cupboard, and RRSP / Letter of the Week this year.

I’m glad I already had a plan picked out before I found out we we’re having a third child in February, otherwise I might feel a bit (more) overwhelmed. As is, I think this should work out just fine as I truly hope to have everything completely planned, purchased, and printed by the time we start school in 4 weeks.

Main curriculum: Tapestry of Grace, year 1

A friend of mine found this curriculum and I was surprised at how much I like it. The more I look at it, the more I like it, in fact. It’s a classical education model. It’s a bit of a stretch for Kindergarten, but I think we can make it work. We’re going to stretch the first year out over two years instead, which will make it more reasonable as far as workload.

The main thing that we like about this curriculum is that it’s super-flexible as far as what assignments you do and don’t do. Since this is a classical curriculum, all grades are included with the initial purchase, so I can change what we’re doing to something more advanced halfway through the year if I need to.

The other thing I really like is the subjects covered, specifically Bible in conjunction with History and Geography. I like the literature aspect too, and I have already checked that I can get most of the books from the library, yippee!

Math: Math U See

We got a chance to look at this one at the homeschooling fair that we went to. Hubby remembered this from his childhood; he used it in preschool, and remembers all that he learned using it. After that, he went to a different school and doesn’t remember much math until college. That was recommendation enough for me. That, and I like it too. It’s very hands-on, which I think will be good for us.

Handwriting: Handwriting without Tears

I looked into several handwriting programs, and I like the looks of this one. Also, it’s inexpensive, even better! Hubby said that he’s going to do it with her in the evenings, because his handwriting could use some help too ;)

Reading: Explode the Code & The Ordinary Parent’s Guide…

I looked at several books about teaching children how to read, and finally settled on this one. I think it’s a good match because the lessons are short, hands-on, and require not very much prep work from me. They are more interesting than some other books I saw, and more complete as well. As for a workbook, we’re going to try Explode the Code and see how that goes. It’s very black-and-white, but I think it’s still the best because it’s basic and yet covers what it needs too.

Spanish: Unknown…

I decided about, oh, a week ago, that I would like to start Spanish this year as well, but I don’t really have a plan about it yet. Any cheap ideas? I might just get some flash cards or something of that nature and do that twice a week.

Piano: Alfred’s Basic Piano Prep Course

We started using this book last year, but she really wasn’t ready for it. She struggled with everything about it, so I didn’t push it. We’ll try again this year :) Nate might even join us since he’s already shown much more interest in actually learning how to make music than Kahlen ever has.

 

Tot School:

Nothing really definite yet, actually. I’m waiting to see what he is capable and interested in doing. I know we’ll be doing Tot School Printables from Carissa at 1+1+1=1. Also, after reading several posts from Carissa about Montessori At Home! I purchased the download version. I figured for $7.95, I couldn’t really go wrong. I don’t know how much we’ll implement this year, since he’s young and a boy and not all that interested in organized activities yet. And, frankly, my attention will mostly be on Kahlen as we start Kindergarten and try to get in the swing of an actual curriculum. I’m also reviewing Before Five In A Row for TOS Homeschool Crew, which is chock-full of great ideas for this age. Watch for my review soon!

All that to say, we’ll probably mostly focus on tot trays with toys that we already have and worksheets occasionally from Tot School Printables with a few extra things thrown in occasionally.

Well, that seems like a lot quite enough to try to get through. The best part about homeschooling, though, is this is totally flexible and we can change it anytime if it’s not working for us! I’m also on the TOS Homeschool Crew for this year, which will provide us with many new things to evaluate and play with and fit into this plan.

So if we’re starting Kindergarten, does that mean we’re “officially” a homeschool family? Nah, we already were that…

~S

Preschool Corner / Raising Rock Stars – C is for Caterpillar

Kahlen is 4 years, 3 months

Okay, new plan. I’m starting this post right now, when we haven’t even done the unit yet. Here’s my plan sheet for the week, we’ll be starting this one on April 4th, so I have it scheduled to post on April 8th, at the end of the week. I’m hoping maybe it will keep me motivated to fill in an otherwise empty post!

Cc Plan Sheet

“Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing to the Lord.” ~ Colossians 3:20

We memorized this verse a year ago with the Hubbard’s Cupboard 2’s curriculum. She had a helpful song to go with it which you can go get here.

Cutting and taping her long verse

 Writing our word for the week, “in”

 “Getting ready for C” Notice she needed the help of the counting bears today :)

Vocabulary words in their card holder after she cut them all out.

 Practicing writing C’s. You can’t really tell in the picture,  but she decided to hook them all together, which was fine with me as long as she didn’t dawdle (She’s a *HUGE* dawdler!)

C is for Caterpillar, of course. Click on the image above to be taken to Confessions of a Homeschooler, where I got all these printables.

Playing the caterpillar game Caterpillar counting numbers. This one she used pompoms for.

  Caterpillar puzzle. I took my cutting system from Creative Memories and cut a bunch of different shapes out this time to mix it up a bit.

 Size sorting.

  Bottlecap letter matching. Of course, caterpillar has several duplicate letters, so we had to use some lowercase letters too. Surprisingly, she was okay with that.

Both kids enjoyed making pompom caterpillars, although Nate was sure it was a tongue depressor that must go in his mouth. He was fine once I put glue on it and showed him the pompoms.

What have you been doing for your preschooler? Come link up at Homeschool Creations! Interested in learning more about my curriculum choices? Check out this post about my plan for the year.

~S