August in Review

I'd have to say we've had a wonderful first month of Kindergarten. I love that we started a bit earlier than our local public school so I have some flex time for a longer Christmas break and or some day's off near the end of the year.

 

Lacing Cards, Math-U See practice, Alphabet Writing Review, Snack Time, Alphabet Order Review

We spent the first week doing mostly alphabet and number review to reacquaint ourselves with everything we learned last year. We went right into all our curriculum and the girls are doing really well with everything.  They love art, singing, and our fun activities, and put up with the worksheets that round everything out.  They've started gymnastics once a week for an hour and it's a great outlet for their energy.  It's also been wonderful for them to work on their flexibility, coordination, and ability to follow directions from someone other than me.

 Practicing first names with capital and lowercase, A Reason for Handwriting Letter Worksheets, Number Writing 0-9

Both girls are slowly but surely improving their handwriting.  This is still by far the area that gives them the most frustration.  I'm having a bit of trouble getting Avalyn to hold her pencil correctly, and she's all about being quick and sloppy so it's something we'll have to keep working on.  I'm hoping that repetition is the key though so along with their handwriting worksheet each day I have them write their names and numbers once a week as well as put their name on the top of everything they are working on.

Math-U-See Worksheets & Review

Math is continuing to go really well, and it's still almost too easy for them.  They know their numbers up to 100 from last year, can count by 10's and recognize and write their numbers pretty well so I'm continuing to plug along with 2 lessons each week since everything is still basic counting 1-10.  It almost feel silly at times, but I'm hoping this is just giving them a great base for math and that they will just stay ahead as it gets harder.  I might get an extra workbook that goes over time, money and some other simple things to give them something to learn that they don't already know.  At least they are loving their math and haven't complained about the fact that it's easy and they think it's fun... so I'm just going with it!

Family Night

I feel so blessed to have some of our family close by.  Every week we get together with my parents (Gama & Pop-Pop) and my sister and her hubby (Aunt Stacey & Uncle Matt) for family night.  We all have dinner together and then we take turns planning the activity for the night.  We've done everything from playing at the park, having a Wii tournament, playing board games, having a bon-fire with s'mores and sparklers, to a family swim night.  It's always a lot of fun and I'm so grateful for the memories we're making for the girls.

This past week it was the girls turn to plan our family night.  When I asked them what they wanted to do, they each immediately had an idea.  Avalyn wanted to start the evening with a tea party.  She REALLY didn't want the boys to be there, but when I said that wasn't an option she finally agreed.  She wanted to have mini shaped grilled cheese sandwiches, and drink lemonade in little tea cups (becuase only old people drink tea.)  Brinley decided that after the tea party we should all watch a movie.  We learned about penguins last week for science so they decided we should all watch March of the Penguins together. 

Gama agreed to the night and got to work with a surprise concession stand for the girls to work at.  We were all ordered to go outside after dinner while the girls helped Gama get setup and even I didn't know what they were doing.  When they finally opened the back door we were greeted by adorable little girls donning aprons and announcing free snacks.  There were drinks, popcorn, candy, and two kinds of rice crispy treats.  The girls said that everything was free, but tips were accepted which made us all laugh.  They made $3.31 each and excitedly added it to their piggy-bank.  We all got our snacks and snuggled up together to watch our movie while Brinley narrated and commentated, which was better than even Morgan Freeman in my opinion!   Overall, another great and successful family night!

Overcoming Frustrations

For the past two weeks we've been working on lines for art class.  We learned about diagonal, vertical, and horizontal lines.  We discussed what parallel and perpendicular were and pointed out all the different types of lines around the room.  We also practiced making patters with the different types of lines using markers and colored pencils.



For our big art project last week I *thought* I picked the perfect line art project to combine our cutting and pasting practice with our knowledge of different types of lines.  The idea was to cut lines of different thicknesses out of construction paper and then cut and paste them into three different sections to make diagonal, vertical, and horizontal patterns.  This would have been great, and was just fine for Av, but the inner perfectionist in Brin reared it's ugly head again.

Once we implemented our star chart last year we didn't have any more perfection frustration.  The girls really embraced the idea that they just had to try their best and worked hard to get that sticker.  I haven't printed up any new start charts yet this year and I think without that reminder Brin is starting to get frustrated again when she feels something isn't done as good as she wants it.



When I walked over to see how they were doing and saw tears dripping onto her art project becuase she couldn't cut straight enough... I decided to just shelve it and move on.  We came back to it the next day and I reminded her of our virtue of the week "Self-Control" and told her that it was her choice how to react, and this is just something for fun and to learn how to cut so it doesn't have to be perfect.  With a day's break, and a little help from mommy cutting some straight less uneven lines, Brin was able to finish her project without any tears.



I'm glad we went back to it and I had her finish it away from the stress and frustration of the first day. Instead of using our star charts moving forward for the rest of our subjects I've decided to let them get a stamp for good attitudes without frustration. We've only done it for a few days, but so far they are LOVING the stamps and a quick reminder gets them focused on where their attitude should be.

A Day in the Life of Our Kindergarten - Part 2

Yesterday was A Day in the Life of Our Kindergarten - Part 1 where I went through the overall schedule of our day.  Today I'll share the details and breakdown of a typical day of school...

For calendar time we talk about days/weeks/months/years.  The girls take turns marking our day and then counting how many days we are into the month.  They have to say the day correctly, "Today is Wednesday, August 15th 2012" and then they say what yesterday was and tomorrow will be.  We then sing our days of the week and months of the year songs.  The person who didn't mark the calendar gets to go outside and tell us what the weather is like.  Living in Southern California it's usually just hot and sunny so I plan to change our weather area a bit so it's more than just the actual weather, but seasons, etc.



After our calendar time we go into song and movement (one of the girls favorite times of the day.)  I choose an old Sunday School song that we sing and do the hand motions to, and then M/W/F we do a movement song as well where they get to follow directions and dance around the room.

We then sit down and have our Bible time (in my eyes the most important part of our day) where we go over our virtue of the week and then I read a passage from the Bible that covers that virtue and ask questions to the girls about what we've read.  Once AWANA starts we'll do their weekly Sparks lesson and memory verse Mon-Wed and focus more on our Bible lesson that teaches the virtue on Thurs-Fri, but we'll review the virtue and talk about it all week.

After Bible we do our handwriting worksheet and whatever activity I've planned to round out our day.  Sometimes it's an extra writing activity, shape & pattern builders, or even a game.  Sometimes it's more art related like lacing cards, drawing, and other times we work with numbers. I try to keep this fun and very hands on though.


First day of school: Dancing for song and movement time. Reviewing our lowercase alphabet recognition with Confessions of a Homeschooler's K5 alphabet tree.  Math-U-See worksheet. Virtue of the week. TYCTR phonics lesson. Handwriting alphabet review.

After our snack we do our Math-U-See lessons.  I started the girls in the primer book, and although they are way ahead of where it's starting I want to make sure they have the foundation they need to move on.  I'm doing 2 lessons a week for now until we get to point where it isn't so easy and then we'll move to a lesson per week.

We do art next and work on things like cutting, pasting, and basic art terminology.  We do projects about once a week using different mediums.  After art we do our language which happens to be ASL since my brother is deaf and we want the girls to be able to sign to him.  We review our alphabet and then each week we learn a variety of vocab words that correlate with the letter we're working on.

This ends the time in our schoolroom and we head to the family room to do our phonics and reading snuggled up on the sofa.  Now that the girls are advancing in their reading I'm doing their phonics lesson separately so I really know what they are individually learning and they can't help each other.  Whoever goes first comes with me to do their reading lesson and the other one stays and uses their leapfrog TAG reader or our Britannica science pen to read on their own.

After I've finished with both of their phonics lessons we read a few library books together.  We always start with the science one they picked out from the library and do a few pages of that and discuss it together before reading a few books for fun. 


First Day of School: Cutting practice. Name handwriting practice. ASL Alphabet flashcards. Snack time.

Linked up with "Day in the Life" Week at the Not Back to School Blog Hop over at iHomeschool Network.

 

A Day in the Life of Our Kindergarten - Part 1

Do you ever wonder what those of us who decide to homeschool do with our day?  I can tell you it's not all soap opera's and bon-bon's.  In fact, I didn't sit down for more than 20 minutes of "me time" all last week.  It's actually a lot of work, but the rewards of watching your kids learn make it more than worth it.  While I may not have much time to myself, we do have much more time as a family which I feel is one of the biggest perks!

Here's a schedule of what our typical day in Kindergarten looks like...

6:00am - Daddy is the morning person in our family, so he gets up with the girls and makes them breakfast. Sad for me (I'm SO not a morning person) they have always been up at 6am on the dot raring and ready to go. They spend a little daddy time helping him, reading with him, or just hanging out in the morning. 
8:00am - Daddy leaves for work and I get up and start my day.  The girls are allowed to play or watch some TV during this time while I shower, dress, and do my Bible study.
9:00am - The girls have to pickup the downstairs and then get dressed while I make myself breakfast and get everything together that we need for school.  The rule is, if it's not picked up and put away by school time, it gets taken away to the time out toy bin for a week.  Surprisingly they always get this done! :-)
10:00am - Pledge, Prayer, Calendar Time, Song & Movement, Bible, Handwriting, and Activity
11:00am - Snack
11:15am - Math, Language, Art, Phonics, Science, Reading
12:30pm - Lunch
1:00pm - After lunch the girls are free to play while I use this time to check email, blog, and do any lesson planning I need to for the next day.  I prep any crafts we have and figure out my schedule for the rest of the day. I then use this time to get some of the housework done, work on any of the photo sessions I have for clients, take the girls out to play, run errands, go to the farmers market, or get things together for us to leave if we have plans for the afternoon or evening. 
4:30pm - Our days where we don't have to be somewhere I usually get started with any pre-dinner prep I have to get done and then make dinner.
6:00pm - Daddy's home and it's dinner time!
7:00pm - The girls get to spend some time with daddy and then at 7:30 it's showers and getting ready for bed.
8:00pm - We try to get the girls in bed by 8:00 and then the evening is our down time to relax, watch TV, read and just spend time as a couple.  I often do my photography work during this time while we hang out together in the family room.
11:00pm - This is my goal bedtime, but it doesn't always happen.  I try to be good about it though becuase it definitely catches up to me if I don't.

Our afternoons and weeknights are pretty busy as well.
Monday - Library
Tuesday -  Bible Study, Family Dinner
Wednesday - Gymnastics, Farmers Market, AWANA
Thursday - Crafts and dinner with Nana - Date night for mommy and daddy every other week
Friday -  Family Movie Night

I firmly believe that our schooling takes place just as much out of the schoolroom as it does in it.  For this reason, we do lots of hands on learning as we go about our week.  We learn about science as we explore at the park, cook together, or just talk through things the girls are interested in.  We learn daily Bible lessons as I regularly bring up Bible stories and verses that support the behavior the girls should have.  We learn to read as we're out places and I ask girls to sound out words they see, and we learn math as the girls help me decide what the best deals are when we're grocery shopping or at the farmers market. Overall though, they learn how to behave and act respectful when out in public, and how we need to treat others with love.  I value our time in the schoolroom, but I value teaching them life lessons they wouldn't get anywhere else if they weren't with my husband and I learning them on a daily basis.

Check back tomorrow for the details and breakdown of our typical school day. A Day in the Life of Our Kindergarten - Part 2.

I love seeing what everyone else considers a day of homeschool, and this week is "Day in the Life" Week at the Not Back to School Blog Hop over at iHomeschool Network.

 

Rainy Days

I was given some great advice by a wise homeschool mom when I first started on this adventure. She said to make sure I enjoyed the little moments and to make time for special memories amongst our schooling. She said one of the things here girls still remember most from their early homeschool years was taking a break on a rainy day to cuddle together under a blanket with a cup of hot cocoa and a good book.

So today, when I woke up to the sound of rain on my window... I decided to do just that! I asked the girls to get everything cleaned up and then instead of heading into the school room I told them to go wait quietly on the couch for me. I warmed up some hot cocoa on the stove and brought it to them (with squeals of delight) in their new princess mugs they got for Christmas.

I downloaded The Wizard of Oz onto my Kindle Ap and we all snuggled under a blanket drinking our cocoa while I read for over an hour about the amazing adventures of Dorothy. It was everything I was promised and more! The girls were great and listened intently, and we got to just be us, together, making memories we will never forget! I can't wait for more rainy days in the years to come and am so thankful I listed to those wise words and let myself just stop and enjoy the moment!

Oh and as a bonus... my sweet little Brin lost her 2nd tooth today!

A good idea... gone bad

So I had this fabulous idea to have the girls help with their thank you notes this year. I made little forms that allow them to fill in who the card it to, what they got and are thankful for, and then their name at the bottom. I planned to cut these out and have them paste them into cards we make during craft time on Friday. It's obviously been awhile since we did school and I've forgotten how frustrated they get with free hand writing... especially with all lowercase... and on just a small line. So yesterday after the girls struggled and huffed and tried their best for over an hour to form words and leave spaces between them (which didn't happen.) They are barely legible and after each doing just 2 notes and almost 10 left to go... I called it a bust. I'm thinking I'll just write them this year and have them sign their names at the bottom. I'm sad it didn't work out, but I don't think I have the patience to sit through another few hour of this, nor do they. Waaaah Waaahhhhh!

Busy Busy

Well haven't we just had a busy few weeks. Last I wrote we were finishing up our school and trying to get ready for the girls big 5th Birthday Party. We had a great get together with all our family and the girls enjoyed celebrating their birthday Alice in Wonderland style. We had a Tea Party Brunch since breakfast foods are their favorite and the girls got to wear their costumes I made them for Halloween. Av was the Queen of Hearts, and Brin was Alice. They were both so excited and enjoyed every minute of it!

To decorate I had hanging lanterns and curly cues, a this way/that way/wrong way sign, I painted the roses red, had and Alice book out, and covered the table with playing cards and mini tea sets. I also enlarged some of the images I took of them in their costumes and had those around the room. For brunch we had hashbrowns, fruit salad, coffee cake, bagels and cream cheese, mini pancakes with eat me signs, egg strata, mini fruit and yogurt parfaits, drink me signs on the cups with a variety of juices, and the girls choose a donut tree instead of cake. It was fun, whimsical, and definitely Alice inspired!



The girls in their costumes blowing out candles, opening presents, and enjoying their sprinkle donuts. We have always sung to them separately so they can each enjoy their birthday as individuals. They love it and get excited for that bit of attention.



A few of the images I got at their costume photoshoot. They had so much fun and enjoyed posing and pretending to be the evil queen and sweet Cinderella.







More to come on what we've been up to!

Neglect

My poor blog has been neglected for the past few weeks. We unfortunately had our first case of the sickies that knocked us out for an entire week. The girls both got really high fevers (up to 104) for 3 days along with headaches, and a cough. It pretty much kept us from school for the entire week and once Friday rolled around I too was feeling a bit under the weather so we just watched way too much TV and tried to rest. I can't feel guilty about that though becuase I rested enough to keep whatever it was from coming on and I was 100% by Monday! Horray!!!

Last week I decided to do Monday Funday with games and reading since it was Halloween and then do Wednesday through Friday school. Here is a recap of some of our recent activities!

Shhhh! Don't tell anyone I let them stay in the PJ's one day. I'm really good about us getting up and dressed every day before school... but it was our first cold day of fall and they were so warm and cozy in their fleece PJ's so I let it slide! ;-) Activities - Putting their alphabet in the correct order, Lacing Cards, Letter Find, and Making Numbers as I call them out.


Writing worksheets, Missing Numbers, Spelling Recognition, Shape Tracing, Word Ladders, and simple Addition. For our Cubbies lessons we've been going through creation. As an art project I drew up the first 3 days of creation we had learned and they colored them with marker while I read Genesis 1.

Reward Day!

The girls finally filled up their star chart for doing a few weeks worth of activities with good attitudes and no melt downs. That chart really was the key to getting past Brin's perfectionism and is continuing to work well! As their treat I decided to take them out to get Ice-Cream. They hardly ever get Ice-Cream so it truly was a treat and they enjoyed it so much! After that I asked them if there was anything else they wanted to do and they said they would love to go to the park, so we spent the afternoon at the park where they ran around playing with a group of other girls they met. I'm so glad we were able to make time for that and that they felt rewarded for their hard work in school. Now I just have to figure out what they'll get in a few weeks when they finish their next chart!

Day in the Life

I feel so blessed to have found a wonderful inexpensive online PreK curriculum at Confessions of a Homeschooler. I've been able to take her worksheets, ideas, and lesson plan schedule and tweak it to best fit our needs. I love the way she lays out her day and so I thought I would share my take on it which is very similar. We do 2 hours of PreK on M/W/Th, and the girls go with me to Bible Study on Tuesday's where they have a 3 hour program for the kids. Friday's have become our Friday Funday where we play games (learning games) and then read for about 45 minutes.

Our normal daily schedule looks something like this:

9:30 - Cleaning Time - The girls are given a 30 minute warning and they have to have the downstairs picked up and ready to go. Since the playroom is shared with the schoolroom we can't have it messy for school so they have to have it cleaned. If they aren't done by school time then I take away whatever has been left out. So far it's worked like a charm and they have yet to leave it messy.

10:00 - School Starts

• Pledge
• Prayer
• Weather Chart - We open the front door and go outside to check it out each day.
• Days of the Week - We talk about what day was yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Then we talk about the date of each day on the calendar. We sing the day's of the week song, and then the months of the year song.
• Letter of the Week - We go over the letter of the week on the white board and talk about the sounds that letter makes. Then we review a few words that start with that letter. We switch between singing the alphabet song and the vowel song.
• Music & Movement - Each day I play one of the songs from the CD I downloaded Songs Kids Really Love to Sing which is a collection of church songs. The girls love dancing and doing the motions to the songs. On Mon/Fri we do a movement song from the CD Kids in Motion. This is the same CD the girls gymnastics coach used so they were already familiar with some of them and just love it!
• Bible - Since the girls are in Awana Cubbies we use their Cubbies book as their Bible curriculum. We read through the lesson and then I put the verse cards up on the wall each week. Every day we go over the verse of the week as well as the Apple Tree Review verses. We spend one day doing the Apple Tree Activity and another doing the Bible Reading off to the side.
• Writing - Since this is where the girls seem to struggle the most we make sure to do a writing activity every day.
• Sight Words - Last week we began learning sight words. We review our sight words every day and I add the ones we have completed to the white board so we can review those as well.

11:00 - That usually takes us about an hour so we break for our snack around 11:00.

• Math - We haven't done much focus on numbers in the past so we do some sort of number practice or recognition each day.
• Reading/Phonics - As we prepare for the girls to begin reading we work on our phonics, sounds for our letter of the week, and word building.
• Language - We spend every day working on a few Spanish words as well as Sign Language words for our letter of the week. We learn the words on Monday and then review them for the rest of the week.
• Art - We don't do art every day, but I try to include something at least 2 days a week. Sometimes it's cutting or pasting practice, motor skills activities like lacing cards, painting, or when I'm feeling adventurous a full blown craft I've prepared for us to do.

11:45 - 12:15 - This finishes us up with our school activities so we sit down for at least 30 minutes each day to read together. We go to the library every Tuesday after Bible Study and the girls pick out 5 books each and I usually grab a few extras for us to read throughout the next week. I've just begun going through chapter books with them so we either read the next few chapters in our book, or they each pick a few of their library books for us to read together. We bring the books into the living room and all curl up on the couch together to read. This is one of my favorite parts of the day and I'm loving this time with them! I've started pausing in our reading to have them read the sight words as I pass by them. They don't love this so I usually do this for just the first book so they can begin to get familiar with those words as we read.

12:15 - Lunch! I make us all lunch and we sit down together and eat and then they are free to play, read, color, or go outside if the weather is nice.

A few of our recent activities: Math worksheets, Write the first letter of the picture, Word Ladders, Writing Worksheets, Sight Word recognition, Number Puzzles



Number worksheets, Sight word practice, Fill in the Missing Number, Cutting Practice, Snack Time, Shape and word tracing, and Letter Worksheets

Week 2 Letter Review

This week we focused on the letter E and did another week of letter review. Since I didn't do a year of letters before this I felt they needed one more week of review on the full alphabet before we moved on to other activities. We will continue to focus on a letter each week so they can get better at writing, understanding the sound each letter makes, and learn the Spanish and Sign Language vocab for each letter. We had another great week, and here are some of the activities we did.

We worked on tracing our full alphabet as well as numbers 1-9. We worked on our numbers and making patterns with our colored wooden beads. We practiced cutting as well as gluing when we did our art project of the week. We worked a lot on letter recognition, especially our lowercase letters. I called out letter and the girls had to find them on their alphabet tree. This was great for me as well because it pointed out the letters they need extra attention on. We also worked a lot on phonics and finding letters that matched pictures by sounding out the picture word.




The girls feel much more comfortable tracing their letters, but they need to begin working on writing them as well. While they are willing to happily write their uppercase letters, they are a bit more reluctant and have a harder time with lowercase. Luckily the star chart was a good reminder to try and do their best and we didn't have any meltdowns this week! Lowercase E is a hard one though so they will need lots more practice on those small curves. I wanted to get their vowels done first though for phonics and reading so I didn't focus so much on the lowercase letters not being very good. They'll get better as they learn to write more letters and time goes on.




We worked more on number recognition, writing lowercase E's with dry erase, making letters out of play-dough, duplicating patters with our shape blocks, and more phonics letter recognition matching letters to pictures.



We ended the week once again with Friday Funday. After our usual pledge, day's of the week, weather, and song time we went straight into games and then reading. It was another great week and things went really smoothly. They have already learned so much and gotten better at their letters and I'm excited to see how much they grow as the weeks unfold!

Star Chart

I've been thinking long and hard about what to do with poor little Brin and the difficulty she has trying to be perfect. It seems like no matter what I say it doesn't get through and she's still so very hard on herself when what she's capable of doesn't meet up with her standards. After having a frustrating morning again on Monday before school even started I decided I had to come up with something to help her. I want her to realize that all I care about is that she tries her best. I don't care if what she does is right or wrong, or even good/bad/perfect, I just want her to try it and not get frustrated when it doesn't come out right.

We talked through the fact that everyone has to make mistakes in order to learn and get better. The best ballerinas didn't just walk onto stage and dance perfectly. They had to try, fall, mess up, and fail but with lots of hard work and practice they eventually got better and didn't mess up as often. But even with all the hard work even the best dancers still make mistakes. She understands... but still couldn't be content with that principle applied to her even after we prayed about it together and gave it over to God. I'm hoping if we continue to talk about it and pray about it, that she'll begin to change her thinking.

It seems that drawing, art, and writing are her hot buttons which really cause her to melt down. I came up with a sticker chart to try to help keep her focus in the right place. The idea is that you don't have to do something perfect or even right... you just have to try your best and have a good attitude and not get frustrated. If you can do that then you get a star for each activity of the day. When the start chart is filled there will be a special surprise at the end!



So far it seems to be working well. Whenever she started to get frustrated she would say, "Mommy, I was going to get upset but then I saw my chart and remembered to be calm and try so I could get a star! Praise the Lord and lets hope this continues to help her do well and get through her day without those frustrations pulling her down!