Reflections on Kindergarten

Well, here we are, at the end of our kindergarten year.

Our plan was to sort of hang loose this year, try to figure out what works for us, in terms of schedule and curriculum, and basically just try to have fun. You're only five years old once. 

I think we've succeeded in general. We're going to be schooling year round, so that opens us up to being pretty flexible (with regards to scheduling,) next year. My husband and I are discussing the possibility of schooling four days a week. I've found curriculum (Heart of Dakota) that I think is going to be a good fit for us. L likes it, and it's totally do-able for me.

We had set one hard and fast goal for L this year, and that was to have him reading fluently by the end of the year. I'm happy to say that we've met our goal. As nearly as I can tell without formally testing him, I think he's reading at about a second grade level, and is happily devouring Pokemon books. It's been a pleasure to watch him progress. Frankly it's been sort of a nice confidence booster for me, too, since it means we've managed to scale this first real hurdle together.

We've also managed to (mostly) stay the course this year in spite of several major illnesses and a few deaths in our family. I've realized that given certain ongoing situations, (chronic illness of loved ones, my husband's weird work schedule,)  we need to be sure that we're building lots of flexibility into our plans, so that we can be available without feeling  like we're neglecting school. (This is where the four day week may come in for us.)

We're going to be schooling during the summer, but we're going to hold off on the formal curriculum, and "unschool." I've written before about L's extremely narrow set of interests, which generally center around one or two topics, to the exclusion of everything else. He's recently made sort of a breakthrough, though. He's asking questions about random things, like how flies eyes work, and "what are mummies?" This is huge for me, and in order to encourage it, I'm going to let him lead us for the next couple of months.

So that's where we are right now. We've overcome a few bumps, and we're currently struggling with some others, but with God's help, I think we do this homeschool thing.

Thanks for sharing the journey with us.

Week in Review: Teeth

This week our topic was teeth. Here are some of our tooth related activities:

We used some tooth brushes and chattering teeth from the dollar store to practice our tooth brushing technique.

This marshmallow tooth game from Teaching Heart was a big hit.

We painted with toothbrushes.

We brushed the "plaque" off of hard boiled eggs.

We discussed which foods might make your teeth "happy," or "sad."

We gave an apple a cavity, and watched it decay. The kids drew their observations day by day.

If you're looking for some links for a dental related unit, here's a few to get you started:

Teaching Heart's Dental Health Unit (Many of the ideas above came from here.)

Oral B Teaching Tools

Here are some of the books we used, (via an affiliate link.) :

Curriculum Choices for First Grade

There are few things most homeschoolers like more than researching, buying, discussing, and recommending homeschool curriculum.

I'm starting to think about next year, and thought I'd lay out our situation, and do a little crowd sourcing to find out what you all would recommend.

Next year L will be 6, and in the first grade. He's bright and has a good memory. He's reading some. No War and Peace or anything, mainly Dr Seuss books right now. He's not exactly resistant to school, but he isn't enthusiastic about it either. (I've mentioned elsewhere previously that he has some special needs, ADHD, and possibly something like high functioning Asperger's. He has a very narrow range of interests, presently limited to Pokemon and Mario Brothers. He will tolerate learning about other things, but that's about it. I can't manage to work up much enthusiasm, no matter what we're learning about, or how. I think he sees school as something he just has to get through every day, like tooth brushing...) He doesn't mind workbooks.  He does have a fairly short attention span. I'm not wanting more than say, two hours of sit down work a day. (Attention span aside, I'm sort of a less is more person anyway. I still want most of his time free to be a little kid at this age.)

This year I have put together unit studies out of books, and things I've found online. The "typical" five year old probably would have had a lot of fun with them, but L has just plodded through them. I don't want to go this route again next year, because it's hugely labor intensive for me, and he doesn't particularly seem to enjoy them  anyway.

As much as it goes against the way *I* would want to learn, and *I*  thought I'd be teaching, I've concluded that a more traditional, out of the box curriculum might be a better fit for L. The time saved by my not trying to plan a bunch of activities he's not even into can hopefully spent doing something more productive with him or V. (You know, productive like doll tea parties, and Pokemon battles.)

I've heard a lot of good things about My Father's World, and that's what I'm looking at right now.

What would be your suggestions for a serious little six year old fellow? It needn't be an all in one choice, I'd be interested in hearing about suggestions for specific subjects too.

Homeschool Week in Review: Doctors & Nurses

Last week we had a light week, on account of my being out of town Tuesday and Wednesday. Our topic was doctors and nurses.

We spent a fair amount of time playing "hospital." I had picked up a pretend doctor's kit on clearance at Target a while back, along with some cheap band aids and bandages. The hats, mask, and nurse's vest came from Michael's, and the scrub top from Goodwill. We talked about what the various instruments were for, and when they might be used. My kids are lucky, neither has spent any time in the hospital since infancy, so they were unfamiliar with some things.

We relied heavily on the awesome Doctor and Nurses Preschool Pack at Homeschool Creations. Both kids enjoyed the activities in the kit, and I found the range of activities suitable for both 5 year old L, and nearly 3 year old V.

L and I worked extensively in a math workbook this week. He likes workbooks, and they're an easy plan B on weeks like this one when I'm short on time, or energy, or both.

He read me several Dr Seuss books, which I loved, and we started reading The Magician's Nephew, which is the first book in the Narnia series. Somehow in spite of being a voracious reader my entire life, I've never read that series, so I thought it would be fun to do together.

Valentine's Day Unit

I normally write about our homeschool week after the fact, but I thought I'd write about my plans instead this week, in case anyone was still looking for Valentine's Day ideas.



Below is a picture of our sensory bin. I had it about halfway finished when I saw the bins at 1+1+1, and Counting Coconuts. I ended up borrowing some of their ideas.

Some of the contents of ours are:

flower petals

feathers

pom poms

heart shaped beads

felt hearts

red plastic letters

plastic heart bracelets

We'll be doing some scavenger hunt type activities, like "find two kinds of red hearts," " find something fluffy, and something hard." I'll also be doing some color sorting with V.

After reading through the excellent list of Valentine's activities at Counting Coconuts, I set up a lacing activity with beads and pipe cleaners. I also pulled out red and white Unifix cubes to work with this week, red wooden beads and laces, fake flowers for V to arrange and pretend with, and dot stickers as a fine motor activity for V, who by the way loves stickers.

We're going to talk about different kinds of love, the love a parent has for their children, love for a pet, love for a friend, the love God has for us.

We'll be making handmade Valentine's Day cards as a crafty activity.

To practice writing, we'll be filling out the to and from sections on ready made cards, and writing a "love" letter to a favorite person of L's choosing.

We'll be doing some math and pattern activities with conversation hearts candy. The kids never seem to get tired of "candy math."

I printed out some of the printables from Confessions of a Homeschooler to use as well.


Below you'll find some of the resources we'll be using this week.

Bird Unit: Chicken Week

Last week was chicken week here, and frankly it was a dud. The kids and I spent the entire week sick with a virus, first them, and then about the time they got better, I got sick.  About the only school related thing we managed was reading several books about chickens.
That's how it goes, sometimes, right?

Bird unit: Week 2 Owls

This week our focus was on owls. We had several interruptions in the routine this week, namely the passing of our dog, and a morning doctor appointment. We didn't get to everything I had planned, but here are some of the owl related activities we did do:

We dissected a synthetic owl pellet. It was a neat experience, but not quite the same as a real one. Someday we'll do a real one.

Afterward, L drew a picture of the pellet and it's contents.

L did some bird related puzzles.

He laced a homemade owl card. (Easily made from the cardboard backing from a notebook, a sharpie, and a hole punch.)

Below are some of the resources we used this week:

Bird Unit, Week 1: Penguins

This week was our first week learning about birds, penguins specifically.

At the beginning of the week I set up a little "learning center" with the materials we were going to use. I used a project board to make a little display. I put pictures of penguins, the Spanish word for penguins, and little library pockets to hold some math manipulatives. I figured we'd add to it as the week progressed, mounting L's work as he completed it. (Sort of like a huge lapbook.)

Here are some of the activities we did this week:

Goldfish math. We added and subtracted goldfish crackers. (You know, because penguins eat fish...)

Penguin math game, from Lapbook Lessons. (We got several other activities from there also.)

L and I drew some penguins.

L decorated a bird feeder, (barely visible in this lousy picture,) and we hung it in the front yard. (Clearly we don't have penguins in our yard, but I though we could observe our native birds.)

We used a yard stick to measure the relative heights of various types of penguins on the wall, and then compared them to the kids' heights. (Didn't get a picture of this activity.)

L practiced spelling and handwriting on a chalkboard.

L and I also spent several hours putting together a 300 piece puzzle together. Although it wasn't bird related, I thought I'd mention it, because he was so proud when we got finished.

He's able to do 100 piece ones by himself, but this was pretty challenging for both of us. When we finished, he asked what the puzzle had to do with school. I told him he had learned a little about not giving up, and he agreed.
Below you'll find some of the resources we used this week:

Christmas Cards from the Kids

This morning the kids made their own Christmas cards to give to their favorite people.

5 year old L's cards.

Nearly 3 year old V's cards. (A self portrait, and a monster and a heart, in case you were wondering.)

I'm going to let them dictate the messages to me. I'm sure they'll be interesting. ;)

These were easy and fun for the kids to do, and what grandparent wouldn't be smitten with them?

Homeschool Week in Review: Mexico

The week I decided to change up the lesson plans, and go in a totally different direction.
Our focus this week was Mexico.
We talked about how L's great grandparents came from Mexico, and how they spoke Spanish. We also talked about "abuelita in Heaven," the kids' maternal grandmother, who was bilingual. We practiced a little Spanish with Boca Beth.
I really wanted to try cooking some Mexican food with L, but he's so incredibly picky that our choices were pretty limited. We ended up making quesadillas together, and sampling a few treats from the Mexican section of our local grocery store. (The sodas were yummy. The cookies, not so much.)
We studied an atlas, to see where Mexico is located in reference to us, and L tried his hand at map making and flag drawing.
We also did the usual amount of reading this week. L is devouring Dr. Suess books these days. We've been taking turns reading them, with him reading the simpler ones, and me reading the more challenging selections.
We also took a little field trip to the zoo this week, and it was a really nice break in the routine.
Next week I think we'll be continuing with the Mexico theme.

Christmas Homeschooling Resources

The month of December is going to be devoted to all things Christmas here. We started school extra early this year, in order to have an extremely laid back December.
I've been searching for fun, meaningful Christmas activities, and thought I'd share a few links early enough that you have time to make your plans and gather materials, if you decide to use any of them.

A Blessed Christmas: A Unit Study Approach to Studying The Symbols of Christmas at Easy Fun School

Lots of Christmas Resources at Teachers First

The Symbols of Christmas: A Unit Study from Heart of the Matter

A huge list of Christmas activities and lessons at Easy Fun School

Holidays Around the World Unit at Mrs. Nelson's Class

Printables and directions for several neat Advent activities at Tired, Need Sleep

Christmas Symbols Lapbook at 1+1+1=1

An almost overwhelming amount of Christmas ideas at Hubbard's Cupboard. (I love the ice cream cone Christmas tree.)

A cute, flame free, toddler friendly, alternative to an Advent Wreath at Pre Kinders

Have any great, Christmas related links to add to the list? Please leave them in the comments section. :)

Week in Review: Halloween & Flexibilty

This week, we continued with our Halloween theme, making decorations out of a neat old activity book from the 80's.

We did a little Candy Corn math, which was a hit, particularly the subtraction part, since it meant L got to eat the candy.

We read and re- read our favorite Halloween books, with an ever increasing amount of help from L, as he learns to read more and more words.

Other than that, we did a lot of workbook work again, at L's request.

Although I did virtually a whole year worth of planning over the summer, I think it's time for me to re-evaluate our lesson plans in light of what we're actually doing here. I planned the year with minimal workbooks, and lots of fun hands on stuff. As it turns out L loves doing workbooks, and isn't much into a lot of the things I thought would be fun. I have to keep reminding myself that part of the reason we wanted to homeschool was to tailor the learning to his interests. Although we're not going to only do workbooks, it looks like we are going to be doing a lot more of them than I had planned, and lighter on the "fun" unit studies.

So that's our week in review, and somehow I didn't manage to take any pictures of us doing anything fun this week, but we did have fun. Just not the kind of fun I'd planned.  

Homeschool Wrap Up: Halloween

This week we did sort of an anything goes Halloween unit. Here are some of our theme related activities:

The kids finger painted some bats. Finger painting is still one of L's least favorite things to do, but we've made some progress in the he will participate, (with some coaxing.) This time, he even seemed to be enjoying himself a little once he got into it.

V, as usual, ended up with at least as much paint on her body as she did the paper. That kid loves paint.

After seeing several Halloween themed sensory bins around the web lately, I constructed this one, full of bugs, and bats, and other "spooky" stuff. After the initial novelty wore off, the kids didn't play with it much. I confess, it didn't seem all that interesting to me either. As they say on Twitter, it was a #fail. I may lay off the sensory bins for a bit, and reintroduce them later.

L spent a good bit of time playing with the ghost games I made last year. (If I could add any info to last year's post, it would be that if you're going to go to the trouble to make something like this, you should definitely laminate them. V kept trying to peel the stickers off.) I'm sorry to say that I didn't save a copy of these last year to pass along. In the future, I'll be sure to.

V had some fun with Halloween stickers. I'm going to call that practicing fine motor skills. ;)

Below you'll find some of the resources we used and enjoyed this week.

Week in Review: Bats

This week's homeschool wrap up is going to be little more than a list of books we liked. Our topic this week was bats, and we read a lot of books about them, but otherwise didn't do much that was topic related. Our routine this week was generally that we read books,  and then worked in workbooks. This was L's choice. He's been begging to do workbooks. (Who woulda thought?) I feel a little bad for deviating from the fun plans I had, but truly, we had a nice week.

The kids played with the same fall themed activities as last week, with the addition of some black play doh, and a bat shaped cookie cutter. (I picked up a set of small, metal, Halloween themed cookie cutters at Hobby Lobby for a couple of bucks. They're the perfect size for play doh.)

Week in Review: Pumpkins

Our theme this week was pumpkins.

The picture above shows some of our pumpkin activities for the week: lacing, pumpkin counters, orange play doh and pumpkin cookie cutters, an eye spy bottle, a home made letter matching game, and a baby pumpkin.

I saw this post at ABC and 123, and used their idea to make the letter matching game. I did the alphabet in order, and also several words like "pumpkin," and "orange." Both kids enjoyed playing this throughout the week. (I picked up the magnetic wooden letters at Dollar Tree, in case you don't already have some.)

This set of fall themed lacing cards from Scholastic has been been included in several themes lately. Last year, L wouldn't have been able to do them at all. They're too easy for him now, (although still a challenge for V.) I'm thinking I may get some plastic canvas for L to start sewing on, to up the difficulty factor.

The kids love any excuse to play with play doh, and enjoyed making play doh pumpkins.

There were several pumpkin related activities we didn't get around to this week. We're currently operating as a one car family, and due to my lack of planning, (oops,) we didn't have several supplies. We'll just do them later in the month.

Although not pumpkin related, I finally got around to implementing this awesome idea, so my WordWorld obsessed kids could "build words."

Another non pumpkin themed activity the kids loved was the Cheese Its alphabet board from The Activity Mom.

We also did our usual mishmash of workbooks, handwriting practice, and so on. I'm having a hard time finding workbooks that suit L, all of a sudden. The kindergarten ones seem too easy, and the first grade ones seem too hard.

By the way, since you're here reading about pumpkins, go check out this great post full of pumpkin related activities from Welcome To Our Wonderland.

Below you'll find some of the books we enjoyed this week.

Week in Review: Apple Week

This week we learned about one of L's favorite things: apples.

Here are some of the theme related activities we did.


I switched out last week's "pumpkins" for "apples" this week, and the kids continued with the tweezing activitiy.

L worked on an apple themed lacing card. He's gotten so much better at stuff like this. It's awesome.

He practiced writing some apple related words of his choosing.

We did the sort of obligatory apple printing. In the future, I'll be sure to pay a little more attention to what I'm doing. I thought I was pouring tempera paint for the kids, but it was acrylic paint. Oops. They made quite a mess. I was able to salvage everything except V's beloved Kai Lan shirt.

We ate lots of apple products. L is shown below, happily eating apple slices, apple Cheerios (yes, I know, that one was a stretch,) dehydrated apples, and drinking apple juice.

I made homemade apple scented play doh, as shown in the top picture. I must have done something wrong though. Although it smelled good, the texture was way off, nearly impossible to knead. I'm putting the home made play doh in the craft fail category.

I saw this post at Welcome to Our Wonderland, and borrowed her idea for the apple scented sensory tub. I put oatmeal, cinnamin, some small sand toys I found on clearance at Target a couple of weeks ago, and some teeny fimo clay apples in it. V's had a lot of fun making "pies" and making messes.

L and I spent lots of time reading. By the end of the week, he was able to read a good bit of Ten Apples Up on Top to me, which was pretty exciting for both of us.

To be honest, we've been a little lopsided here lately, very heavy on the reading, and pretty light on most of the other stuff. I'm trying to keep the momentum going though. He's excited about reading more and more, and for now, I'm going to roll with that.

Below are some of the resources we used and enjoyed this week.