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.

  

1000 square feet

So, I don't even have two weeks under my belt, but feel I should share how we are doing homeschool in our little condo. There are 4 of us in our One Thousand Square Foot place and over 9 years worth of junk. I'm an avid reader so I have several bookshelves full of books and my husband is a collector of computers so, he has several computers and tons of parts. There are very few empty spots in our house. I really hate clutter, but right now clutter is my 'normal'.

Taking on the call to homeschool also brought on this massive need to find a larger house. We've been house hunting for awhile now and have not found the place that is for us. Well, we did find a place that we thought would be ours but the Lord has other plans. So, we are waiting and looking and praying and looking and...

In the meantime though, we have to go with what we have. My 'school' room is the hearth in front of the fire place. Thankfully we live in a part of the country that does not get cold enough to warrant a fire, ever. Everything is organized in Thirty-One totes. I have organizing utility totes for everything. Right now, I'm pretty organized. The curriculum we chose is literature based so I'm always ordering books. Thankfully most of the books will be used again if we stick with this curriculum for 1st grade, so we will save a little bit of money, but will sacrifice room in the process.

We do school at our kitchen table with most of our reading done on our couch. We do a ton of things at our kitchen table, so it is never set up for any one purpose for long. I'm constantly moving things off the table to some other flat surface and then back again. I find that we take several breaks throughout our school time so I can get the table reorganized. Currently the clutter around the table does not bother my daughter too much. For that I'm very thankful, one of us distracted by clutter is enough.

The start of our day...

During our history lesson...

The end of the day...

What you do not see in any of these pictures is our little freezer we have in the corner of our dining room. It is the flat surface that collects everything that does not go to the floor.

I know that if we had a larger house with a room that had a door that closed for our 'school' room that we would not use it to do school. However, having a room to put everything, having a place to have our supplies out and easily accessible would be wonderful. In time, until then our 1000 square feet will always be evolving to meet our current needs.

Week 1

Epi Kardia - Week 1 - Ancients I

Earlybird Kindergarten Mathematics (Match and Sort)







Day 1:

We learned a lot today.

We started our day off with Bible. We read Genesis 1-3.
We also did the calendar. We talked about today's date, along with the days of the week.

For History we read Bill and Pete Go Down the Nile. I got out the globe and we found Egypt and talked about it being located in Africa. I drilled Miss E later in the day about our book, and with a few prompts she got it. We also read the story Noah's Ark. Miss E and Little Man started a craft, we'll finish it later this week. (Later in the week never happened.) The craft idea came from mamajennblogs, but I googled the animal picture outside of her recommendation. We also read Psalm 105:1-7.

 For English we just worked on writing her name and we read A You're Adorable. She has been able to write her name for some time now, so we are just working on making the letters the same size. I'm not sure how to deal with how she holds her pencils. Little Man just likes to do what we are doing in his own way.

 Math is Miss E's favorite time of day. She would do several lessons all at once if I would let her. I love that she is loving math. Our lesson covered matching two objects that belong to the same set. One of the things that I'm really liking about Earlybird Kindergarten Mathematics is the vocabulary usage. In today's lesson we talked about two items being 'exactly the same'. Since her momma has a math background we expanded our lesson to talk about the items that are similar, too. Okay similar on the level of a kindergartner, but she gets it. It is really cute to hear her explain two objects as being exactly the same or similar and why.

Each week we have memorization work. This week we are memorizing Matthew 19:14.

Physical Education is required by our state. She has gymnastics on Mondays so she had a great 'work-out'.

Day 2:

Day 2 of each week will be a light day. In a few weeks we will start Bible Study Fellowship so she will be getting 2 hours worth of instruction on this day each week.

We started our day with our Bible reading: Genesis 6.
We also did the Calendar.

Today we had a fun morning with friends, we will record most of our time as physical education.

When we pulled into the garage after our play date, Miss E asked if she could do more work with the animals that are exactly the same. (She wanted to do more math!!) So, I got the van unloaded and we worked on math...


In math we matched two objects that belong to the same set. So, again there are things that are exactly the same and then things that are the same in different positions. In her workbook she had to explain the pictures using words 'These items are exactly the same.' or 'These items are similar because...' or 'These items are the same but...' Working on vocabulary.

She also did a little more work on writing her name. I'm just trying to get her to form her letters in a straight row and to make the letters 'correctly'. And we worked on our memory verse.
We also started working with a reading program called Lexia. She was not too happy about having to follow the directions and quickly learned that the program will give 'helps' if she answered the questions wrong long enough. Someone will be sitting near her the rest of the week while she works on Lexia.

1 hour of gymnastics will fulfill the requirement of PE for the day will put her over the required limit for the week. Not to mention that we played in a kiddie pool at our Friend's house.

Day 3:
We started our day off with Bible, reading Genesis 4-8:19.
We also did our calendar.

Then we moved on to math. Our math lesson matches two objects of the same color. We also talked about different shades of the same color. In her activity she was supposed to sort and match based on color and then with outfits.











 I did some leg-work a few weeks ago looking for things that I could have Little Man do while Miss E is working. I came across this activity from Confessions of a Homeschooler. I had everyone working for a few minutes, it was great!

 I was supposed to have a meeting with my education specialist with our school but it got cancelled. I already had childcare lined up, so we enjoyed a little impromptu play date. The kids played hard for at least 2 hours. Playing on the slip 'n slide and then just running around. Good way to get in the PE credits. (Not to mention the bike ride they did after Daddy got home.)

After we got home from our little outing we did Science. We read the book Storm on the Desert. We talked about life in the desert as we read the poem.

For History we talked about what she remembered from Noah's Ark and then started reading Joseph. We also read Psalm 105:8-15.

English brought on a lesson on the letter M. Miss E already knows her letters and letter sounds. (I am going to have to find a way to make our beginning phonics lessons interesting for her.) We looked a some 'm' words from the book 'Joseph' and she told me which letter in the word made the 'm' sound. She also did her work on Lexia.

Today she recited her memory verse without any prompts!!

The activity for today in our Epi Kardia lesson is to bake a Name Cake. I bought the ingredients to make the cake a few weeks ago and she was so excited. She would tell everyone that when school started she would be baking a cake. So even though it was 1000 degrees outside we started the oven and baked her cake. I had her help throughout the entire process.

 The reason for doing the cake is to have the student write their name on something other than paper. The frosting was a little difficult to handle, but I think she did a great job. She was so proud of herself. After both kids went for a bike ride with their dad I cut them each a piece, because they were so excited about the cake. They barely touched it. I guess cake made at home is not as good as the store bought kind.

**I'm trying to keep up with this daily. I apologize for the shifts in tenses and any other grammar mistakes that will drive you English people crazy. As I sit down to recap our day I write what comes to mind. I'm going to try to dictate our day in the order we do things. Mostly for me to look back on in a few weeks to figure out a set schedule that I can post for Miss E to see everyday. Right now we are, or I am, in a learning curve. The next two weeks are going to see some additions into our week, so I'm trying to take things at a minimum right now and will beef up where I can in the next month or so hence, the randomness of when we do things. Projects will be done at a time we can do them, whether during the lesson or later in the day. I'm writing this right now on Wednesday night and I'm seeing that when Miss E is seated and engaged she wants to hear all of her readings, once she moves away from where we are reading she is ready for something new.

Day 4:

We spent the morning at a friends house, so our school day did not start until later in the afternoon. It was tough.

We read Genesis 8:20-12:9 and recited our memory verse.
We also did our calendar. I thought she was getting her days of the week but she really struggles with 'today is ____', 'yesterday was _____' and 'tomorrow will be _______'. It will just take a little more practice.

Miss E is very excited about her math. Our lesson today was matching objects of the same pattern. We have descriptive conversations about the pictures and I'm working on having her use sentences when she explains what is going on, instead of me asking questions that require a one word answer.


The next thing on our agenda was English. She was not excited. She wanted to play and told me that she did not like school anymore. I got her to practice her 'm's again and then told her she could do her Lexia as long as she did the activities correctly. She did a great job!

After she was done with Lexia she was ready to sit again and we finished our reading for the day. We finished reading Joseph. Since Little Man missed it yesterday, we recapped the story for him as we looked through the pictures. We then read You Can't Take a Balloon into the Metropolitan Museum. Both kids enjoyed telling me the story, there are no words.

We had our morning play date which will be recorded in her PE journal along with playing 'in the road' when daddy got home. Physical Education is the hardest thing for me to record but the easiest thing to get her to do.

**I reflected over our day, along with comments posted on my facebook about my frustration over the afternoon. I came up with the conclusion that everyone was overly tired and really there was nothing 'fun' to do in our work. **Update: I stayed up, pretty much didn't go to bed Thursday night, working on finding other activities that we can do to enhance our curriculum. I love the curriculum we chose. I love all the books that we read that teach through literature, however I'm finding that Miss E likes to do things that give her immediate feedback. She likes her math because after she is done I congratulate her and she has a sense of accomplishment. I found several things that I will be able to choose from next week and we'll see how that goes. Please note that I understand this is just kindergarten and she does not need to do a lot. I'm not adding busy work, I'm trying to find a balance of what we can do to keep from being board as we learn.

Day 5:
Again we did the afternoon thing. It did however go better than yesterday, Praise the Lord!!
We read Genesis 12:10-16 and recited our memory verse.
We did our calendar.



In math we talked about objects that looked identical by considering their attributes. It was fun to listen to her logic on why she chose the object she did. We also colored a couple pictures together keeping them exactly the same. She does not like having to follow my direction. My little girl is very independent.

Side note: We did not start school until the afternoon. Miss E did not stay in her jammers all day. We had a chiro appointment this morning and did some house hunting. She does not like being dressed when we are home but she knows that she has to be dressed for school time. So, when we got home she changed into her jammers. Not that I could blame her, I'd rather be in my jammers, too!


We missed some of our 'poetry reading' this week so we caught up on our reading. We read Psalm 105:16-36.

We re-read Storm on the Desert. As we read we talked more about life in the desert. Once we were finished I asked Miss E to tell me what she knew about the desert. Her is what she dictated to me based on our book:

What I know about the desert....

The desert is hot, a storm, animals are thirsty.

Insects look for food.

After the rain stops, a rainbow.

Birds look for insects for food.

I learned that a tortoise was looking for water.

The thunder crashes.

We later got out the sand and the kids played, we did wait until it cooled off a little bit. 

 There is no lack of physical activity with these two. PE later in the evening...

Week one overall was a success. There were trying times but I think that will come with the territory. I'm excited to see what next week will bring. 

Thanks for taking this ride with us.

Blessings,

Elizabeth

Literature:Bill and Pete Go Down the Nile by Tomie dePaola

Noah's Ark by Story Reader
A You're Adorable by Martha Alexander
Storm on the Desert by Carolyn Lesser
Joseph by Brian Wildsmith
You Can't Take a Balloon into the Metropolitan Museum by Jacqueline Preiss Weitzman

Links to blogs that provided ideas for activities we did.

I liked up here, too.