Kindergarten Curriculum Review

I can't believe we're half way through the year. I still feel like we just got started. I wanted to go over the curriculum plans we made back in August because so many things have changed since then. We've learned what works and what doesn't. I've realized that I want school to feel like it is something we would do together anyway. I don't want it to feel like we separate school life from regular life.

We start our day with scripture reading. We've been using Discover the Book of Mormon from bookofmormondiscovery.com. So far Kendi likes it. We have started with their Book of Mormon ebook that I've printed off and instead of buying the church's Book of Mormon Stories to go with it we just watch the movie clips on lds.org. Kendi loves watching the movie clips and it gives us some variety in our day. My favorite part about Book of Mormon Discovery is the scriptures they pick for young kids to memorize. We go over all her memorized scriptures twice a week and her current verse everyday. Sometimes we play games with them too. I was very willing to pay their price of the book just for the scripture verses alone. It would have taken me a lot of work to read through and find those perfect scriptures. We adapt their lessons plans a little bit and only do about one page a day. If Kendi were reading and doing them on her own she would probably go through more. I like to slow down and talk about it and answer questions with her too. We also add a journal entry at the end of every unit study. We take the memory verse and insert Kendi's name wherever applicable and she writes it in her journal and draws a picture of how that scripture applies to her. The only thing I wish were different is having projects similar to the Faith in God program, but Kendi will be doing that soon enough so I guess I can wait.

Next, we usually do some reading aloud from the classics or The Friend. I used to do this last, but then Kendi knew that home school time was almost over and would keep asking if we were done yet and wouldn't want to read very far. Now, since we do it earlier in the day, the kids have come to love it. Right now, we are reading Dinotopia and just finished The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I let the kids draw, color and keep their hands quietly busy while I read. They will stop to look at the pictures, but they pay much better attention and they keep quiet longer when there hands are busy. I enjoy this time too.

Next, I try to get a reading lesson in before we take a little break. Something I came across since the plans we made in August is the book How to Tutor. Kendi was hating Explode the Code. How to Tutor has a great reading program outlined in it. I can't even explain the difference it has made with our reading lessons. I read through the short lesson plan and then we talk and write on the white board together. Kendi helps me make flash cards of all the new words and we play games with them. It teaches a little bit of grammar along the way. She is learning so much faster now that when I pull out the Family Literacy Readers, she enjoys reading from them. She loves to show us how fast she can read. No more phonetically sounding things out. How to Tutor has taught her that letter combinations make sound combinations and she learns words in chunks. It has really sped things up. Kendi knows about 400 sight words. Just yesterday Kendi mentioned to me that she tries to read every word she sees.

After our daily break is when we switch things up from day to day. Some of Kendi's favorite things to do are Big Book of Play and Find out science projects, I Love America, Part One history lessons, National Geographic magazine (we look at pictures and find the countries on the globe or map), Safety Kids and Standin Tall. For Christmas Kendi got Imagination Station art books by Mark Kistler and some art supplies. We will be spending a lot of time on art and she is soooo excited about it.

We are not using Early Bird Kindergarten Mathematics at all anymore. Kendi did not like it. I have ordered MathUSee - Alpha, but in the past have mostly done math in real life situations. You can check out our Great Math Adventures. I'm planning on using the math books more starting January and incorporating the real life situations to coordinate with what she learning in the books.

Kendi wasn't loving A Reason for Handwriting so we have slowed it down to doing lots of activities and a video clip with every letter. After she learns a new letter, then anytime we do a writing assignment like journal entries or writing letters to friends, she earns a bean for the bean jar if she writes each one correctly. Right now I feel like we don't even need the handwriting book. Her handwriting has improved a lot and it isn't because of the book, but it's nice to talk about each letter.

There are a few things that I mentioned back in August that we are not using at all right now. The science book Our Father's World has been put on the book shelf with other pictures books. It's fun to flip through and read with the kids, but I don't plan lessons around it. We've also taken a break from singing primary songs in Spanish. It was fun, but we just don't have time for everything. I hope we get back into it next year.

Now that the holidays are over and life is not so hectic I hope we can do more field trips and service projects. I also hope Kendi can start her Kids Club too, but we'll ease into that one.

Happy New Year. We're excited for it. Make it a good one.

Grebe Rescue

Today was a day that made me especially glad we homeschool. We woke up to a little bit of snow this morning. Snow was not the only thing that fell out of the sky. A very large flock of Grebe were migrating and ran into the storm and it literally knocked them down. They were all over town this morning. Apparently, they need water to take off again so they were stuck here. The DWR had been up all night gathering birds. My parents woke up to one on their deck and another on their roof and when they looked across the street to the horse corral there were dozens more. My dad called us to come help and we got there just after the DWR showed up. They let us help gather them up.

This lady was so nice to the kids. She told us all about the birds and how she'd been working all night. I was glad to see a female DWR officer out in the field because all through high school I thought I wanted to go into Wildlife and Natural Resources. In college I found out that the field was full of environmentalists and females usually end up behind the desks which was the opposite of what I wanted to do. Props to her. I think if I ever wanted to pursue that field again I would want to go more into Search and Rescue.
They are taking five truck loads down to Quail Creek to let them go. It would be fun to look more into this type of bird that I think is called a Grebe since we had a great experience with them.

We are taking a break next week until January, but I'm sure the kids will be begging to do school stuff. I've got Kendi making beanies for her friends so that will hopefully keep her busy.

Math with Christmas Lights

Lately, Kendi has been focusing on mastering number writing and understanding how double digits are written. This is the first Christmas we have spent in our house and we weren't sure we had enough working Christmas lights to put up outside. I didn't want to repair lights unless I knew I needed them so we decided to measure how much we would need. I know there is a lot more math involved in putting up Christmas lights than this, but having her practice writing double digits is just what she needed right now so that is all I had her do. As I measured she wrote down the numbers. It really helped her learn how a number like forty five is translated into 45.

I feel like I'm becoming one of those crazy homeschool moms that make everything into a learning lesson. There is definitely a balance to how many questions to ask and how many things to point out to a child throughout the day. I learned that when an opportunity arises, instead of jumping all over it, it is better to give just enough information to make her curious and start asking the questions. Sometimes I still can't help myself. A couple of days ago it was snowing so bad that we were running to get in the car to go home. As we were running I shouted to Kendi, "Look at these snowflakes, they really look like crystals!" No one else seemed to care as much as I did at the moment.

Crossed by Ally Condie

I must say that it felt strange to read modern literature after reading so many classics. It felt extremely short, it was easy to read and I understood every word which is not what I'm used to anymore. All in all, it is a good book, I really did enjoy it and I wouldn't mind my kids reading this when they are old enough to be interested which is hard to say about a lot of modern literature lately.

I try not to spoil any of the books when I review them, but I must say a little about the ending and I'll be careful. It kind of bugged me. In this book, the characters go to extremely great lengths and then in the end they don't seem to be very careful about their choice. Everything they cared so much about that kept them going doesn't seem to matter in the end. I'm sure what happens has a lot to do with how the last book is going play out, but what happens here doesn't seem logical to me, but maybe it's just me. Haha, that seems very vague, but if you've read the book I hope you know what I'm talking about.

Standish of Standish: a story of the pilgrims by Jane G. Austen

I wanted to read a historically accurate account of the pilgrims during November. I knew there were stories of Squanto, but I couldn't find any the were free so I kept digging for something to read. I came across this book. It didn't have very good ratings and the one review said that they didn't care for this story. When I first started reading it, it was hard to get into. It was kind of like reading Shakespeare, you have to read it for a while to get used to the language. Then I started teaching Kendi from the I Love America history book about pilgrims. Comparing the writings made me realize how accurate this book must be and all of a sudden it became fascinating to me. This book was written by a direct descendant of the pilgrims who had still lived in the area and had heard the stories of the pilgrims at the feet of her ancestors.

Then as I was reading about so many different people and their characters, I remembered that my sister had found some ancestors who had come to America on the Mayflower. All of a sudden I wanted to know to whom I was related. So far some of the people had been described as dirty and unrefined, strong and trustworthy, and even some genteel nobles. So I pulled out the pedigree charts and found out that I was a descendant of John Alden and Pricilla Molines (Mullins). They were about 22 and 16 years old, respectively, when the arrived and are famous for their love story whom Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (also a descendant of theirs) has written a poem about, called The Courtship of Miles Standish. I can imagine that because John and Pricilla had a large posterity that many people can tie themselves back to them.

I don't know if it's because it is Thanksgiving time or if it is because I'm related to these people, but I found this book excellent. I've never understood the pilgrims until now. The actual feast lasted three days and didn't happen until about a year after they arrived. The women under the direction of Pricilla, who was noted as a great cook, served up the feast. The pilgrims provided all the vegetables that they had learned to grow from the Natives back in the springtime and the Indians provided venison, quail, and clams for meat. The Pilgrims were surprised that Squanto spoke English, he preferred to live with the Europeans and moved in with them as soon as he could, along with Hobomok who remained loyal to the Pilgrims even when the rest of the Indians grew intolerant.

There were indescribable tragedies that set the people of the Mayflower apart from future coming pilgrims. They started with 106 people and only about half of them made it through the first winter. Some blamed the poor conditions of the boat they sailed on. They were not on good terms with the Captain of the Mayflower who basically begged for some pilgrims to help him sail back to England. Even after all they had been through to establish a new life in a strange land, none would go back with him. I'm really glad I took the time to read this book. It was worth it to me.

The Wizard of Oz

I was really excited when I found this large picture book version of The Wizard of Oz at a used bookstore. The large artwork made it especially interesting. On the front of the book is has the original authors name, L. Frank Baum. I was very disappointed to open it up at home and find that it was really a condensed version. I always try to stick to originals as much as possible. In the end, the kids loved this book. It was perfect for young children. This story is very different from the movie we've all seen. The kids were riveted the whole time. Whenever we do long read alouds, I let the kids color or draw or do something quiet because they listen better and for a longer period of time. Kendi had just gotten a new Christmas coloring book that she was ecstatic about, but it didn't keep her from coming over and looking at the pictures and hanging on to every word. I really like the message of this book, "There's no place like home."

Ripple with Skip Bo Cards

This is how Kendi learned her numbers. We started playing this game a few years ago. It's called Ripple and you play it with Skip Bo cards. I can't find the original rules anywhere and we've been playing a simplified version with the kids for so long that I don't remember all the correct rules.

We start by mixing all the cards in the middle of the table. Then we each make two rows of five cards. We line them up because the object is to find matching numbers on the top row and the bottom row. When we first started Kendi didn't know names of numbers or what they looked like, but it only took a few games for her start learning them.

Each player turns over two of their cards. Make sure they are not two that are supposed to match. Then you just take turns picking cards from the pile. If a card you pick up matches one of your numbers you put it on the corresponding spot and turn over the card that has been sitting there. If that card you just turned over matches another card then you keep going, like a ripple effect. If you pick a card that you don't have then you decide to either keep it in a spot that doesn't have either top or bottom card turned over yet (possibly starting another ripple) or you put it in your own discard pile and then your turn is over. You can take cards off the top of others' discard piles if they match one of your cards instead of drawing from the middle. Someone wins when they have matched up all their cards.

Sorry about the silly faces. Pictures always look so good on the camera phone. By the time I see it blown up on the computer screen its too late to take another one.