SPRING Kindergarten Thread

[kgianforti]

Since Spring is (slowly) approaching, I thought we could start a new thread!! Our K year ends in May too so we are coming to an end of our K year in just a couple of months!

This week is our SPRING BREAK week!

My big girl has been moving along steadily. We LOVE Noeo Chemistry I and just bought a new microscope (Thames and Kosmos TK2). We will complete Rod & Staff Bible this month and Singapore 1b next month. I have BJU Bible Truths K5 for our next Bible study and we will work in the 1b IP book before moving onto 2a of Singapore. We are going to start reading about Pocohantas in history. We also have to get to Pizza Hut soon since we have 2 reading awards to use up from January and February.

And I'm planning a "Grandparent's Kindergarten Graduation Party" at the end of May. We'll have snacks, tables set up with projects on them, my big girl's room will be set up with our Indian village and probably a summary of where she is at. It should be fun!

What is everyone else doing? When does your K year end??

[Mittsy]

This is our spring break week too! We just switched DD, who will be 6 next Fri., from OM K to Little Acorn Learning for the remaining bit of her K year, she really wasn't liking the introduction of academics in OM. We just started horseback riding lessons for dd last week, ds(4) insisted on pony rides so he could go too, dd is starting Daisy Scouts we have her first meeting tonight. I'm looking into joining another hs group that has more social stuff going on, also looking into music and nature classes for dd, and we're waiting to hear back from a waldorf co-op. That's everything that's new here. Our K year will end in June.

[astra]

We have been studying the oceans and ocean life. But we are about to start something new. I haven't really decided what yet. I am thinking we will probably keep schooling through the summer. After homeschooling for preschool last year we did no sit down work all summer, and it was so hard for us to get back into the groove of things. 

[dubatatamama]

Can I join in?

So we are just about to finish up Saxon K with DS and we are both really enjoying it!  I ordered Saxon 1 for next year, but may do some of it over the summer if he requests to.  We are also really liking our membership to IXL.com. We use ETC for phonics, spelling, and handwriting practice. He likes most of ETC, but is not as fond of some of the pages where he has to write a lot, so we take it very slowly (like 1-2 pages a day)

We just finished up a unit study on robots (DS' choice) and he really loved that!  We read a lot of books, made a robot out of cardboard boxes, duct tape, and a whole lot of washers/nuts/bolts.  DH and DS made a bristlebot (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUSTXUis_ys )which was really cool!

So that's what we've been up to!  I love to read what everyone else has been up to!

[limette]

We're pretty much done. DD1 sped through her stuff way faster than expected so we'll be spending the rest of the season outside playing, gardening and farming.

[dubatatamama]

Oh, and kgianforti, LOVE the graduation party idea!!  So cute!

[Greenmama2]

Oh a new thread. Nice. I've been away, both from MDC and from home. Two weeks away and we've been home for five days so we are just starting to find our rhythm again. Actual school runs calendar years here (well, Feb to Dec) so really DD is not quite two months into her K year (and she is in the cut-off grey area so could have started in Feb or waited till 2012). I've been thinking of her as K for at least six months though so I start to get confused when people ask me about it. I keep reminding myself it doesn't really matter

We've been using Singapore and occasionally Miquon for ages but we made a foray into a curriculum used by the schools here recently. I thought DD would like it because it was more colourful than the SM workbooks we use but it was a total flop. Thank goodness we have better choices available :) So DD is about a third of the way through SM 1B and I think we'll just keep doing what we were. It was working well, the only thing I need to change is to stop thinking she needs to do every question on every page because usually she doesn't (need to).

A month or so before we went away we added in ETC 2.5 because she asked for some practice to help her "read books with small writing like you". So we've done a couple of pages since we got back and I want to stop. I really don't like it, it seems dry and many of the picture hints to the words just don't fit our cultural lexicon. In fact we come across quite a few words DD doesn't know which would be fine (vocabulary) except they are often things I'm in no hurry for her to learn (surprising amount of violent terms, but maybe I'm just prudish about that).

We also started Song School Latin before we went away and DD really enjoyed it. Haven't got back to that yet, baby steps.

DD has been doing lots and lots of science. She seems to be on a mission to watch every single Magic School Bus episode ever made (on youtube, we don't have a tv) as well as needing me to read at least one MSB book or chapter book a day. We downloaded the MSB iPad app last Saturday and she played that until she'd memorised every fact in it. By a great coincidence of timing our local co-op class had a chemistry workshop last Tuesday run by the CSIRO (government scientific body, I think the US one is called National Science Academy or something similar), so we've used an entire bottle of vinegar reproducing their self0inflating balloon experiment since then.

Gosh, I wrote a lot without realising it. Nice to have a new thread.

[onyxravnos]

hi all! we are just finishing up Om kindy for the first year (planing to repeat it next year)  and just started sonlight p4/p5. going very well really.

[frugalmama]

We're still plugging along, haven't been doing much actual schoolwork, but DD has been reading tons and tons. We managed to get signed up for Scholastic Book Clubs, and it's become a great source of cheap books for her to read. The selections are great too!

We need to buckle back down to bookwork this week - I am hopeful that we manage to do so.

[Greenmama2]

Bump!
Would love for this thread to be resurrected. Does anyone have anything interesting to say about their Ker?
Of course it's not actually Spring here. DD is loving watching the leaves start to turn and looking out for mushrooms.

[frugalmama]

We're here, still plugging along. Attempting to get on a schedule so that DD stops sleeping until 2 or 3 in the afternoon and staying up until 5 am - it's just not working for the rest of us. So we're dipping our toes into scheduling, a la Managers of their Homes. Since we have a set school time, we are getting more done.

DD is still reading tons and tons and I can barely keep up with her with books.

We're also going to start working on some Girl Scout stuff every week to earn Patches. We do Girl Scouts on our own, and we haven't been doing much.

I've been gathering books and supplies for next year for 1st grade and getting everything ready for that.

[kgianforti]

I have all of our books for next fall bought and shelved. We will continue with some stuff we are currently using but I have the next levels of other things waiting.

We have April and May left in our "K" year!

My big girl has been plugging along with everything. We are on a nice schedule that is working well.

She absolutely LOVES Noeo Chemistry I and I'm so glad I went with it. I wasn't sure but it was definitely the right decision!

[Greenmama2]

Oh, I'm tempted by Noeo. We love BFSU but well, perhaps I'm just too lazy for it

We signed up for mathletics with the discount our home ed association organised & DD finished the K curriculum before going to bed tonight...We signed up this morning!

[kgianforti]

We are going to work on Noeo Physics I then Noeo Biology I when we finish Chemistry I. I am very pleased with the whole thing so far. I like that it's scheduled but flexible and I can add my own stuff in. My big girl likes notebooking and the experiments. This curriculum definitely receives praise from us!

[KimPM]

Originally Posted by kgianforti 

We are going to work on Noeo Physics I then Noeo Biology I when we finish Chemistry I. I am very pleased with the whole thing so far. I like that it's scheduled but flexible and I can add my own stuff in. My big girl likes notebooking and the experiments. This curriculum definitely receives praise from us!

I guess you are going by their schedule of one subject per year?  I was thinking of getting all 3 then doing one subject per month or week.  Now that you have the program, what do you think of that idea - do you think it would work?

[kgianforti]

I've heard of people doing that with two of the programs. I figured we would go that route if boredom becomes apparent but so far it's been a blast. We aren't faithfully following the schedule...we took two weeks to do one week so we could dig deeper into atoms before moving onto molecules. And I added projects (we made a foam plate model of an atom, for example). It's a 36 week program and I would like it to last until March of next year.

If you do a rotation, I think it would be easy to find the "transition" weeks in the schedule. For example, we just finished atoms/molecules (week 2) and started the Scientific Method (week 3). Between week 2 and 3 would be a good time to switch to another topic imo. I'm not sure how working all three at once would go. It seems like a lot to juggle. Maybe try 2 programs then add the third in if you see the need. It does come with a lot of books! And add in your own projects too. My big girl is younger so she really enjoys the extras I put in.

We used Sonlight Science K prior to Noeo and that touched on all sorts of topics, which led to the discovery that my big girl really like Chemistry.

HTH!

[KimPM]

Originally Posted by kgianforti 

I've heard of people doing that with two of the programs. I figured we would go that route if boredom becomes apparent but so far it's been a blast. We aren't faithfully following the schedule...we took two weeks to do one week so we could dig deeper into atoms before moving onto molecules. And I added projects (we made a foam plate model of an atom, for example). It's a 36 week program and I would like it to last until March of next year.

If you do a rotation, I think it would be easy to find the "transition" weeks in the schedule. For example, we just finished atoms/molecules (week 2) and started the Scientific Method (week 3). Between week 2 and 3 would be a good time to switch to another topic imo. I'm not sure how working all three at once would go. It seems like a lot to juggle. Maybe try 2 programs then add the third in if you see the need. It does come with a lot of books! And add in your own projects too. My big girl is younger so she really enjoys the extras I put in.

We used Sonlight Science K prior to Noeo and that touched on all sorts of topics, which led to the discovery that my big girl really like Chemistry.

HTH!

Okay, thanks for the tips, that is very helpful!