So, after a sloooow start last week due to sickness, we were back on track this week!

  Thing One worked through the practice lessons in his A Reason for Handwriting K Workbook. I think he wasn’t thrilled with this, but next week we’ll get into making actual letters, so maybe he’ll be more excited about that? He has to learn to write, and I have heard good things about R4H from lots of places – including a preschool teacher. So we’re trying it out. I think it’ll be fine, most kids aren’t fans of writing because it takes time and concentration.

Math-U-See is AWESOME. Boy, do I with someone had explained Place Value to me this way – I might have understood what was going on! We worked in Lesson 9 of the Primer this week, as well as throwing in some extra worksheets from Lessons 1-8, which we mostly skipped because they were just counting. We did do a few last week to get familiar with the Math-U-See format and blocks. All I have to say about Place Value is this: Thing One really GETS IT…and now I do too! lol It is visual, verbal, and hands on – what could be better for boys?!

  SPACE! We talked about space last week and then this week too. We learned about what the word “orbit” means. Thing One can now explain how the Earth orbits the Sun and the Moon orbits the earth. Want to get the template for our Sun-Earth-Moon Orbiting craft? Click here: Sun-Earth-Moon Orbiting Craft to download the PDF template.

  I gave Thing One the “Big Picture” of where HE is in the world using a “Me on the Map” type flip-book I made.

It ended up being the perfect visual for him to learn from and actually begin to SEE where we are in the world. Now we can use it as a beginning to our 7 Continents Study!

  Our Letter of the Week was the Letter A. So we had some fun with that as well.

  I’m also including a Number of the Week now as well. I thought it would be a fun way to work on Number Words and also reading (some of the CVC words in our poems he can read for me), as well as rhyming words – which he loves.

AMAZING cutting job – I had to glue it and save it because it REALLY says a lot about his progress in this area.

   We’re working on making an Alphabet Art Wall (well, it’s the coat closet door really!) Thing Two and I did the lowercase a. Both have apple seeds glued on them for remembering the “a” sound.

We’ve also been working through our reading with Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading. I don’t really take pictures though, it is kinda a focused Mom and Thing One time. He also gets to have some “review” time with Daddy as much as we can fit it in (or remember!) in the evenings. So far…okay. He likes it, but because of his speech issue the difference between short e and short i are really hard for him (and me to tell he’s making the right sound), as well as many consonant sounds.

That’s some fun from our official first week of Kindergarten! Time to prep for next week…