K Adventures: Forest Animals (w5)

June 8, 2012

We started a really fun and cute unit on Animals of the World using the book All About Animals of Around the World. We learned about the names and shapes of the 7 continents and now I was to have some fun with habitats and animals.

We discovered Forest Animals this week, and found forest animals to add to our animal wall (we’re using the animals from COAH’s Animals of the World to make this wall). I have the book Beginning Geography, which has a small unit on animals from each continent, so we are using that to tell us which continents have which kinds of habitats. I will also be putting together a Antarctic unit myself, so we can do a week on the beloved Happy Feet penguins. All About Animals Around the World does animals of the Arctic Tundra, but not Antarctica penguins (no ocean animals either). Sad!

We sponged painted trees and put a bee hive in them, and a big bear stealing some honey (this craft came from the fabulous book I mentioned).

I guess Thing One’s hive is falling out of the tree. And he insisted bears were purple. But he also doesn’t like coloring – to is is just a wonder this bear is colored at all! He’s so creative, hahaha.

The Forest animals unit had lots of other fun activities, but they were more Thing Two’s speed, so you’ll have to check out the Tot Adventures post on Forest Animals.

I have to be honest, Thing One was NOT into doing anything this week. Except his math. He really loves his math stuff…a lot. This is great, but I need to find way to make everything else more fun for him. He participate in what I had planned, but he really complained a lot. I discovered he doesn’t like to color (his words – not mine!). Which is a bit disastrous since most activities in the K area have some kind of coloring component to them. But he like to paint – so I guess we’ll just paint instead of use crayons! I really need to work on finding more hands-on (non coloring) activities for him.

We worked on three lowercase letters this week, one was the letter b for Bear, which was neat since we were talking about bears for our Forest Habitat. We painted our art page for the letter b, and I got another wonderful rainbow animal fro12 m Thing One. He even painted a berry tree for his bear – now that was impressive – I didn’t think he would get that into it. I guess paint is a good motivator for him.

The boys played a domino game of the letters m, w, p, d, b, t, and f. They enjoy doing games together. I think I should find more ways to make games out of reading. We have a bare-bones book for reading, which really still like, but it doesn’t seem to be the right fit for us. I think Thing One really needs more stimulation for learning than black and white words on paper.

I have been looking at the PAL Reading Program by Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW), but we can’t swing the price tag at the moment. It is not badly priced (very reasonable in my opinion), but it will still have to wait. Mostly because they recommend All About Spelling in conjunction with their reading program, which is just under $100 and that I know we can’t handle right now! But you don’t have to use AAS, but I am sure it is paired for a reason, and I have heard wonderful things about AAS (and AAR…but IEW seems to have a totally different approach to reading, which after researching seems a better fit for my kid).

Working on his beloved MUS. I don’t have anything negative to say about this curriculum. Worth every penny! We’ll be finished with Primer in August/September and be moving on to Alpha. Sooner, if he had his way….he would do math all day, every day! I sure hoe his enthusiasm lasts. I think this program will ensure it does. I think I would have understood math much better had it been taught this way when I was in grade school. Thing One is reading off random numbers all over the place in the hundreds with ease.

Kindergarten Week 2

May 4, 2012

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.

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.

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!

Learning about the 7 Continents this week.

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

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.

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!

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.

Our Place in Space (Kw1)

April 27, 2012

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…

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