Ironic Adventures
   

Weekly Wrap Up {RRS Letter M}

Well, it has been…a while…since I’ve had any time to devote to blogging. There are many changes going on in our lives right now. It happens. Hopefully the changes of the past few months {and those in coming months} will be fruitful on all fronts.

In the mean time, we’re back at school, which is lending some calm to our days. And, we’re in our NEW school room! Here is our week in photos.

Thing Two’s Preschool Activities

Thing Two’s activities came from the usual places: Raising Rock Stars Preschool (I use several of the Kindergarten RRS activities with him as well), Animal ABC, Letter if the Week Preschool, and also some of the Letter of the Week K4 activities too.

Kindergarten with Thing One

For Micah, I recently realized, we are actually into -mostly- 1st grade level work. But we’re still working on counting up to our 180 “official” days of Kindergarten. So, do with that what you will. At some point I guess I’ll have to figure out his grade, but for now we don’t have to report to the state of Washington until he’s 8. I am tracking our days/hours (as they require) NOW so I am in the habit of good record keeping for later. I’ll just keep going at whatever pace he sets academically until I have to officially label him in a grade for our state in a couple years.


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Weekly Wrap Up {RRS Ll}

Thing Two’s “Rock Star Board” as he so rightly named it – We’re using the Raising Rock Stars Preschool (RRSP), Raising Rock Stars Kindergarten (RRSK), and also Animal ABCs all of these are from 1+1+1=1.I think I was just as excited as Thing Two when I told him I was getting some Preschool ready JUST for him. I’ve been trying to reuse LOTW with him this year, but because he saw it all last year when Big Brother was using the program (and in fact did most of it along with him), he was pretty bored with most of the activities and themes. I’m still throwing in some LOTW PreK & LOTW K4 activities for Thing Two, as well as lots of other printables I find or make for him, but it is so nice to change it up with the new! Hopefully the repetition of weekly activities in the RRSP/K and Animal ABCs will not bother him.

The boys did so well memorizing their Bible verse this week that I have to show them off…SO proud of him!!! Thing Two can say the verse, but seems to have become camera shy.

Here’s some shots of Thing Two’s activities:

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Our Thanksgiving fun week!

Thing Two’s Activities came from 2 Teaching Mommies Dragon pack.


Thing One…Kindergarten.
Some Thanksgiving Day fun for everyone! Pumpkin Pie counting and Pilgrim Fractions came from Homeschool Creations. The Hundred’s Chat activity which came from 3 Dinosaurs. The turkey counting/tally counting came from…

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Kindergarten Week 2

IMG_0201 Because there are different subjects and concepts to cover for Kindergarten, I haven’t themed our weeks as easily as I did for Preschool. Part of this is simply because I am not following whole curriculum for everything, so if anything is matched and themed, it requires lots of planning and work from me. I love planning and creating, but life is full right now (good full, but very full!)

This week we worked on our handwriting with A Reason for Handwriting. We worked on the lowercase letters: o, a, and c. I don’t know why, but this is REALLY a challenge for both of us. We are doing a lesson a day, but I don’t feel like his letters are very good (in these pics I have helped guide his hand quite a bit to help him get the feel of making the letters on the lines). I tried repeating the letter “o” two days in a row for more practice, which resulted in tears and complete disinterest! I guess we’ll go through the whole set one lesson a day – he’ll get better as we go, and we can always repeat before moving to the next level.

He did write his own name on these sheets with no or very little help.

IMG_0204  IMG_0247

IMG_0205 IMG_0249  Fun worksheets to go with the letters. He likes working on these, but they are really just coloring!

Thing One is really, really enjoying Math-U-See. It is his favorite box of the school day (if you’re curious, I’d say handwriting is his least favorite). I’ve even added some number building into our Calendar Time routine: he is building our days in school number.

IMG_0206 IMG_0244 Building with the Hundreds Place this week! Lots of fun “knocking on doors” to “see who’s home” in each Place Value’s “house.” Such a perfect way to introduce Place Value! Especially to my hands-on, easily distracted, boy!

IMG_0207 Learning about the 7 Continents this week.

IMG_0250 Playing “Inch Long Lizard” – A file folder game to introduce and practice measuring with inches.

IMG_0252 Working on rhyming words with a file folder game. We are using The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading for a phonics program, but I don’t often take pictures of that time because it is a very focused time.

IMG_0256 IMG_0259

Our Number of the Week was Two. So we learned about the parts of our bodies that we have 2 of – hands, arms, legs, feel, ears, eyes. You can get our Shape Person Printable Template here: Shape Person Craft. I printed the shapes page on construction paper (you’ll have to cut it to 8.5″ wide to fit in your printer) in different colors so the boys could mix and match their body parts in different colors!

IMG_0305 IMG_0308 IMG_0309 We also made a letter Ee Poster to add to our ABC “wall” (it’s actually a closest door). We use elbow macaronis to decorate.

Teach Me Tuesday at Preschool Powol Packets abc button

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Our Place in Space (Kw1)

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

IMG_0131  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.

IMG_0154 IMG_0158 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?!

IMG_0102 IMG_0144 IMG_0104  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.

IMG_0178  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.

IMG_0170 IMG_0171 IMG_0172 IMG_0173 IMG_0174 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!

IMG_0126 IMG_0128  Our Letter of the Week was the Letter A. So we had some fun with that as well.

IMG_0129  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.

IMG_0167 AMAZING cutting job – I had to glue it and save it because it REALLY says a lot about his progress in this area.

IMG_0163 IMG_0176  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…

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