Kindergarten {Our Third Six Weeks}

Our Third Six Weeks

January 7– February 15, 2013:

We took three weeks off for the Christmas/New Year Holiday to celebrate the season and spend time with Family.

On Fridays the girls listened to “The 7 Habits of Happy Kids” while working on coloring pages that were associated with the theme. Themes included: Habit 1: Be Proactive. You’re in charge.

Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind. Have a Plan. Habit 3: Put Frist Things First. Work first, then play.

Habit 4: Think Win-win. Everyone Can win. Habit 5: Seek first to Understand, Then to be understood. Listen before you talk. Habit 6: Synergize. Together is Better. Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw. Balance Feels Best.

Bible Study for this six weeks included lessons from Marin’s Awana’s book and scripture memorization.

Calendar: In her Calendar note book Marin continued to make daily notations on a calendar and practiced writing the date in the correct form, January 7, 2013 and with numbers 01/07/2013. She continued to track the number of days of school numerically and with tally marks.  She updated a weather chart daily and we compared the most and least days of certain types of weather. We celebrated Valentine’s Day and made cards for friends.

Grab Bag: To continue to review facts and drills that I wanted her to remember, but didn’t want to become monotonous, I created a “grab bag” method. Selecting 16 items of importance she was asked to select four items from the Grab Bag each day for review. These included:

·         Say and write your phone number

·         Say the months of the year

·         Say and write your address

·         Count to 100

·         Say the pledge of Allegiance

·         Skip count by 2s to 100

·         Say the days of the weeks

·         Skip count by 5s to 100

·         Skip count by 10s

·         Is _____________ a common noun or a proper noun?

·         What is a noun?

·         Family relations quiz. For example (Your mother’s mother is your? ________)

·         Write the letters of the alphabet (Upper and lowercase)

·         Sing the vowel song

·         Write your numbers 0-20

·         Name the five senses

Marin responded positively to this method, and the results were wonderful in maintain a knowledge of these concepts without burn out.

Reading: Completed lessons 58 through 79 of “The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading.” Finished the two-consonant blends and moved to introduce three-consonant beginning blends. Covered Long Vowel and Silent E words plus the hard and soft sounds of C and G. I read the book “Farmer Boy” by Laura Ingles Wilder aloud to the girls. And Marin spent 15 each day reading aloud to me from an easy reader book. She kept a list and read more than 20 books. Marin was also excited to read books to her sisters at night before bed.

First Language Lessons: We completed Lessons 25 through 36 in “First Language Lessons.” We focused on common and proper nouns. Understanding the differences and identification of the two  and introduced aunts, uncles and cousins to family relations. Marin memorized the poem “Hearts are Like Doors” and “Days of the Weeks” and performed exercises in story and picture narration.

Math: Marin completed the Math.U.See Primer book and completed the first six lessons of the Alpha book. She has a firm understanding of telling time with hours and minutes within increments of five. And a basic instruction of subtraction. The first six lessons of the Alpha book reviewed place value, counting to 20, addition plus 0 and 1 and skip counting by 10s.

History: Finished the Food and Eating section of “The Usborne book of Living Long Ago.” While reading from this section of the book we built a cauldron model.  

Science: Read from  “Usborne Starting Point Science-Volume 1” and “Usborne Inside your Body.” We died flowers with food coloring to gain a better understanding of the “waterways” inside plants. We also took a nature hike on the Lone Star Hiking trail. A portion of the Big Creek Scenic Area, a part of the Sam Houston National Forest.

Music: Continued to learn the piano using “Music for Little Mozarts” We covered quarter notes, bar lines, three black keys and quarter rests. Listed to music by Mozart and Beethoven.