Week 2

Epi Kardia - Week 2 - Ancients I
Earlybird Kindergarten Mathematics (Match and Sort)
Classical Conversations - Cycle 1 Week 1

Monday - Happy Labor Day!!

While most people are taking a holiday or a day off, we hit the day running. Well, not really running, we slept until we woke up, but then we did some school. All weekend Miss E kept asking me when we could do more home school. LOVE IT!! We are also trying to establish a routine, so I felt that doing school today would be beneficial in the long run anyway.

We read Genesis 17-19 and worked on our new memory verse, Matthew 7:12. We reviewed our verse from last week, too. (I'm amazed at how well and fast my kids memorize things.)

This week we start our Classical Conversations (CC) memory work. We are going to be memorizing the timeline, science cards, math, and English. We'll pick up everything else next year. Little man was even getting into it with us.

Math today we talked about objects that are used together.

In History this week we are still talking about Egypt. We re-read Bill and Pete Go Down the Nile. As I read we talked about what is real in the story and what was made up. After we read, I got out the globe and we found where we lived, Africa, and then Egypt. I printed off a blank map of Africa and we compared it to the globe. She pointed to Egypt on the globe and I then asked her to point to Egypt on our printed map. She found it and then I had her color just Egypt. Geography lesson done. We also read Exodus.

This week in science we will be talking about reptiles. For fun we read Yertle the Turtle.

For English/Phonics, we reviewed the letter sounds that we have learned.
In her Lexia program last week, I observed that she is having trouble with rhyming words and syllables. This week we will focus on the rhyming and will do syllables, next week. I found this folder game Space Rhymes and we talked about rhyming words. I figured out, more than half way through our lesson, that she did not understand what I meant when I said beginning and ending sounds. We've got some work to do. I have another activity that we will use later this week helping with rhyming. (I have printed off a lot of folder games from www.filefolderfun.com.)

PE was time in the pool.

**I have found that Miss E and I get a lot more done when Little Man is sleeping. He, however, does not always take a nap for me AND I cannot wait until the afternoon to start our school work. A few weeks ago I got my hands on the Letter of the Week program from Confessions of a Homeschooler. Along with the other fun things I already have available, I'm going to start giving him activities from here to do, too. He is only three and I'm not interested in doing anything 'formal' with him, so maybe this will be a way to keep his hands busy while I work with his sister. Really the only times I need something for him to do is during our math and phonics time because he can sit with us during all other teaching times.

Tuesday
I'm quickly experiencing the highs and lows of teaching school. For being so excited over the weekend, we are having a slow start to the rest of the week. In fairness, I had a workshop with my Bible study this morning. The kids just played, there was no teaching, no lesson, just full on play while I was at my workshop. I brought lunch with us so the kids could eat on our way home and then we would do some school. We got through our Bible reading (Exodus 20) and the review of our memory verses. Then I started reading Adventures in Ancient Egypt. I was sitting between both kids and their heads leaned on me and then began to get heavy. I read about half the book and asked if they were done. Miss E turned on the couch, laid down and feel asleep. She never takes a nap anymore. Little man moved the floor and he was out. I had to wake her up for her gymnastics class. (We won't talk about how the rest of our evening went.)

So, we got our reading in and our PE.

Wednesday
Bible - Genesis 20-23; Memory Matthew 7:12
CC memory work
Calendar

For History we finished reading Adventures in Ancient Egypt. Because we need samples of work to show our umbrella school, I'm going to create a little worksheet for her to fill in. We will work on that later in the week. Both kids really enjoyed the book. I'm going to have to look for more of these books for later lessons.

For math we talked about objects that do not belong to the set and we worked on sorting and classifying objects based on a specific attribute, ie. sorting school supplies and toys.

For science we read About Reptiles, The Journey of a Turtle, and One Tiny Turtle. I found a unit on reptiles here. (I really like homeschoolshare.com and have gotten a lot of ideas for things we will do in future weeks.) Miss E worked on a few of the worksheets. She worked on her fine motor skills to help the reptile find food, she matched three snakes that are exactly the same, and determined the starting sound of three reptiles. Good review and practice of things we have already done. We had fun painting the shell of a turtle, too; the idea came from here.


English/phonics is the toughest time of day for us. I need to find something that will keep her interest. She needs work on penmanship but she gets board and distracted. I did break a pencil in half to help her hold her pencil more correctly but she does not like physically writing her letters, name, or numbers. She does like to work on Lexia right now so that is building her vocabulary.

We read a little poem from Poems and Prayers for the Very Young and we talked about the Family from A Child's Book of Art.

We had a really busy day making up for not doing what I had planned on Tuesday. I have some rearranging to do for next week, but I think overall, the day went well.

Thursday
Bible Genesis 24-25; Memory Matthew 7:12
CC memory work
Calendar -- we watched Signing Time: Days of the Week
We started our day outside to enjoy the cool morning. Actually, Daddy is going to have to work late tonight so he took the dog and the kids out this morning. I used the sidewalk chalk and made a little game emphasizing letter sounds with the letters we have learned, 'M' 'A' 'T'. I called out a word and Miss E stood on the letter that word began with. Then she got out the chalk herself and practiced writing her letters. I think this is a lot more fun then writing on paper. When we were done she rode her bike and jumped rope. PE done!!

When we came inside we read our Bible and worked on our memory work.

I asked Miss E what she wanted to work on and she said her English. Today is a review day, I got out our letter hearts and we started putting together words with the letters m, a, and t. I also printed off letter tracing from here. She did not fight me today when we practiced our letter writing. Maybe there is something to the presentation, colorful is more fun than black and white. Little Man got to work with us with Do.A.Dots.

We re-read Exodus and then worked on the worksheet I made about ancient Egypt. We had to reference back to Adventures in Ancient Egypt a couple of times. I just re-read the sentence that had the answer I was looking for. I used a highlighter and wrote in her answers and then had her copy my writing.

We also read a poem from The Aesop for Children. The history portion of our curriculum has us read some form of poetry everyday.





We finished Chapter 1 in Math today. She did an assessment today matching and sorting different objects by different attributes. She also got some practice with the glue stick.













We finished our turtle craft. I did not give any direction other than telling them we were finishing our turtles. I did tell them what the different pieces where and they just put glue everywhere and stuck things wherever they wanted to. Abstract art at its best!

For Science today we finished talking about turtles and then read two fun stories about snakes, Verdi and Crictor. And that wrapped up our day.

Friday

Bible Genesis 26-28; Memory Matthew 7:12
CC memory work - this memory work is not going as well as I had hoped it would, persistence is key so we will keep plugging along next week.
Calendar 

We finished our unit on Egypt by reading Tutankhamen's Gift.
We also read a poem from Poems and Prayers for the Very Young.

Wrapping up reptiles this week, Miss E wrote a little story about snakes. Here is her story:

Snakes are different colors. Some are green. They crawl around and around, sometimes on the ground and sometimes in trees. They like to eat leaves.

We read About Reptiles again and then I also asked her to tell me what she knew about reptiles.

Some reptiles are snakes. Some reptiles are alligators. Some reptiles are turtles. Some reptiles are lizards. Reptiles eat leaves and meat. Baby reptiles hatch from eggs and are left along with no mother to protect them. They like hot weather.

The last thing we did with reptiles was sort animals into reptiles and not reptiles. I used one of our Zoonooz magazines and cut out pictures of different animals. I also used pictures from here and had Miss E do the cutting. Once she had them sorted I had her glue her answers onto the grid. She is an expert in sorting. 

For English/Phonics we talked about the letter 'S'. I again used The Letter of the Week copy pages and Do.A.Dot pages for both kids. 

We also did this little project, we took glue, made an S and covered it in sand. Fun stuff. 

Literature for the week:
Bill and Pete Go Down the Nile by Tomie dePaola
Exodus by Brian Wildsmith
Yertle the Turtle by Dr. Seuss
Adventures in Ancient Egypt by Linda Bailey
About Reptiles by Cathryn Sill
The Journey of a Turtle by Carolyn Scrace
One Tiny Turtle by Nicola Davies
Poems and Prayers For the Very Young selected by Martha Alexander
A Child's Book of Art selected by Lucy Micklethwait
Crictor by Tomi Ungerer
Verdi by Janell Cannon
The Aesop for Children
Tutankhamen's Gift by Robert Sabuda

Outside blog links/favorite sites.