Winter Kindergarten Thread! - Page 3

[frugalmama]

We're still working away - dd is going through a phase of refusing to write at all right now which is very frustrating. She will trace letters sloppily, which is what I'm settling for right now. Math she's thrilled with, and reading is going by leaps and bounds. She's 2 readers away from finishing all her K readers, so I've been trying to give her more reading practice. Right now we're working our way through the Little Bear stories and so far she's only need few words. I guess we'll go ahead and start on the first grade readers as well - she could probably read them now without help.

We're working on Daisy Girl Scout stuff every week - right now she's working on the Welcome to the Daisy Flower Garden program and growing carrots from seed as a part of that.

I'm working on getting the last of the materials we'll be needing for 1st grade next year and putting our lesson plans into my format.

[kgianforti]

We completed our tepee village and will begin learning and acting out Indian life using our little village. American History is a hit!

I'm still waiting for our Singapore 1b (HIG and textbook, I already have the workbook) materials to arrive! So we've been using the Challenging Word Problem book and my big girl has declared her undying love for it. I'm never allowed to throw it out no matter how old she gets! LOL!

Our Astronomy study is moving along. I'm going to purchase the solar system foam ball craft kit from Wal Mart because she wants to make a mobile. I figured we could learn about a planet while painting a craft ball. I am going to order Noeo Chemistry I soon as well.

My big girl has one more book to read before reaching her Pizza Hut BOOK IT goal.

And we started back through the New Testament Bible stories.

[citymagnolia]

kgianforti, where did you get the tipi kit? I think my girl would love that!

We've been homeschooling/unschooling for a few months now and things are finally coming together, as far as establishing a (loose) routine, balancing DD2's needs/demands with the time I need to spend 1-on-1 with DD1. DD1 just turned 6, DD2 is no quite 4, so I'm  kind of doing kindergarten with both of them right now.

We do a journal page every morning after breakfast. They both have their own unlined, over-sized notebooks and drawing/writing supplies. They choose a picture to draw and I help them write a couple of sentences about it. Sometimes I give DD1 a topic so I can tailor her sentences towards recalling things we learned the day before. Other times they choose their own subject to journal about. DD1 does the calendar every morning. She fills in our activities and appointments for the week, counts down the days to whatever she's excited about, and whatever else comes up.

I just started doing a weekly topic, too. Last week we studied the rainforest, but mostly focused on Chico Mendes, who is her hero. I thought that would be a good one to start with. This week we are going to learn about some local birds. We're going tomorrow to a bird observatory at the nature preserve here and I thought we'd choose three birds to learn about their nesting and feeding habits, make bird feeders with their favorite seeds, stuff like that.

I'm still unsure about how much of a curriculum I want to follow. I think tonight I'm going to order Singapore Math, partly to give me a better idea of where she's at with those skills, and also to give us a little more focus in that department. I feel like reading and writing come up naturally throughout the day but I want to make sure she's being challenged in other ways as well. So far she loves "homework"--any activity I give her, pretty much. She loves to pretend to be her older cousin. He hates homework, so she pretends to moan and groan and then "resigns" herself to sitting down to the homework. I have to be his step mom or his teacher and "force" her to do her school work. lol! Whatever works is fine, and I want to take advantage of and encourage her enthusiasm for schoolwork.

I love reading what everyone else is doing. Keep posting!

[kgianforti]

I found the tepee kit at Rainbow Resource: tepee kit.

It's cute, nothing super duper fancy but it worked. We acted out different activities that would go on in an Indian Village using our tepees.

Did you use a placement test before ordering Singapore Math? It tends to run ahead of the "grade" listed on the cover.

[kgianforti]

BUMP!!!

[Red Pajama]

I'm homeschooling my twin boys for kindergarten this year.  This week we've learned how to make paper snowflakes and cut hearts, raced toy cars and timed them, ranking the times, measured items using unifix cubes, centimeter cubes, and a tape measure, wrote simple addition problems using dice,  worked on letter and number formation, painted, finished up a unit in the phonics readers on short vowels.  We've also played a ton of UNO, went to the library, played in the snow and skated on the patio (thanks, ice storm).

There is no theme, just the work we do each day. If I were more organized, I suppose there'd be a theme. 

[kgianforti]

Noeo Chemistry I came via UPS this past week! We will begin on 2/21!! It looks really fun and exciting!

My big girl has been making heart collages.....lots of heart collages. They are very cute!

We've been plugging away in everything. About to complete Sonlight Science K next week. We restarted Singapore 1b and are zipping through it. My big girl is very happy to be back on the SM bandwagon.

Today, we are going to put together our Solar System model. I bought a foam craft ball Solar System kit from Wal Mart and we've been painting each planet as we have been learning about it. Except Pluto, my big girl decided to turn Pluto into our moon and we'll attach it to the Earth. We also have read alouds and probably more heart collages. That's about it!

My small girl has started using scissors. I need to get another pair for her now!

[KimPM]

Originally Posted by kgianforti 

Noeo Chemistry I came via UPS this past week! We will begin on 2/21!! It looks really fun and exciting!

Today, we are going to put together our Solar System model. I bought a foam craft ball Solar System kit from Wal Mart and we've been painting each planet as we have been learning about it. Except Pluto, my big girl decided to turn Pluto into our moon and we'll attach it to the Earth. We also have read alouds and probably more heart collages. That's about it!

Let us know how the Noeo chem goes.  Is it a lot of experimentation?  My DS loves that, except that frankly, I'm not always up for it all the time.

Funny about Pluto turning into the moon...we had a similar thing happen (I think) with a set of solar system stickers we put on his wall.  I setup a small grayish looking thing as our moon, but later realized it could have been Pluto.  But that gave us a chance to discuss whether he thought it was the moon or Pluto and more details about those.

As for us, today DS wanted to start doing piano again, and he just jumped right in and was doing quite well :)  It's been months of no activity at all with the piano.

We also got HWT yesterday and I really have to hold him back from doing too much of it at once.  I was surprised that he loves to write so much :)

We also got a few Explode the Code books.  I wasn't going to get any phonics, being that he's such a good reader already.  However, I was reading something about children possibly hitting a slump later on if they miss some key advanced phonics details.  He seems to like the book we started on so far.

[kgianforti]

Noeo Chemistry I includes 5 or 6 of the Young Scientist Kits and incorporates them into lessons. There are also experiments using every day household items. It includes pre-made reproducible notebooking pages for "class" and for "labs". I'm going to begin copying some and putting them into a binder. There are also a BUNCH of books. And a molecular model set (which dd is VERY excited about! LOL).

I am very happy about this program from just looking through it!
 

Originally Posted by KimPM 

Let us know how the Noeo chem goes.  Is it a lot of experimentation?  My DS loves that, except that frankly, I'm not always up for it all the time.