Moving right along...

Foot loose and fancy free...I'm ready for the big time, is it ready for me???......Muppet Movie

Just like the song, we're moving right along! We've got a great schedule down, and are enjoying every day as it comes. We're just finishing reviewing our long/short vowel sounds this week, then moving on to the two-vowel rule. I've got some great songs and activities that are making it fun as well as memorable.

Last week was a busy one with bowling, and art class added in with our regular weekly activities. So, this week I'm looking forward to relaxing a bit at home instead of running every day. Next week we gear up again with art class and a home school trip to the fair! (which we are so EXCITED about!) We're also thinking our great grandparents from Missouri might come for a stay. Yay!

After wrapping up our science unit on the senses we've moved onto living and non-living. Yesterday we did some simple reading in our science book, followed by a nature walk. We took a sketch pad and each of us drew 4 things we observed during our walk. Today, we cut them out and categorized them according to living and non-living. Very fun, and building on many skills!

We've finished up our 4th Boxcar Children book and have started #5. These take me back to my childhood, and I love reading them! Every night we take turns reading before bed, sometimes for over an hour! I'm very pleased with our progress.

We've added SO MANY signs to our sign language folder!! I can't even believe how much we've learned! Yesterday on our walk we were able to communicate to each other without a sound. So cool!

This week for history/geography we're wrapping up reviewing the maps, globe, etc. Since we covered this last year, it's been a breeze. I've just made the maps a little more advanced that I'm giving her, and have found some really cool resources through the Usborne Internet-Linked Children's World Atlas. This includes some interactive online maps that ask her questions and come alive with the correct answers!

Along with our daily math we've constructed a clock out of a hanger and some other materials that really gets her excited about telling time. There is a little pouch that holds different times, she picks one, then sets the hands accordingly. I found this in a really cool math centers book I bought at Goodwill for a buck! Tomorrow we're making a rabbit pattern box. So exciting!

So, that partly sums up our last week. Honestly, there is so much going on I could never possibly put it all in. Our days and nights are filled with endless learning possibilities! Until next time...

Oh, what fun!

We're having so much fun in kindergarten! We went to the Between the Lions show at the Tulsa Zoo, and went to the home school bowling this week. It was so much fun, and we plan on going every month if we can! We're actually ahead of schedule on our studies, which makes me very happy! Every morning as soon as we finish breakfast BabyGirl is begging to start school. This is great since we are usually done by 10:30. Yay! Then we have the rest of the day to do what we need to. Of course, recess comes right after school is dismissed!!

We've done many more science experiments involving the senses, and are reviewing that this week before moving on next week. We've moved on to the circulatory system with our Magic School Bus kit, and are loving it still!

We only have a couple more phonics lessons before we move on to 1st. We're just finishing up the long vowel sounds. I can't believe how her reading is coming along! Every day when she does her draw & describe activity I notice a change in her writing and spelling. Today she spelled "little" correctly! Yay!

We're playing some math games, and enjoying every minute! We've finished up our section on maps, and will be starting our study of the continents next month. She loves for me to make her maps with a little legend & key and ask her questions about it! It's one of her favorite things.

We're having so much fun and enjoying every minute of life. We're looking forward to our field trip to NaturalFarms, and are planning one to a local pumpkin patch/tree farm. Throw in a trip to Kentucky and you've got the makings for an unforgettable fall!!!!

End of week one, beginning of week 2

So, we've had a successful first week! I feel so great about everything we've accomplished. I've had my moments of wondering about how long we need to do school at a time, how often we need to do school per week..blah blah blah. I've come to my own conclusion that we will do school according to her attention span. Also, many of the activities we do are not "sit down book work" and are actually fun and engaging. Finding things like this makes it easy to fit school into our daily lives, not just certain times. My plan on how many days per week we do school will also be based on BabyGirls interests. We are already well ahead of the schedule I've made, so I need to not sweat it and take things easy. This was my lesson for the first week.

We've continued our exploration of the senses. We've read resources recommended by our core knowledge companion book called Books to Build On. We've also done some more experiments. One of them we gathered many small objects from around the house. We used only our eyes to look at them to guess whether they were smooth or rough. Then we used our hands to determine the result. We then categorized them according to which group they belonged. We also did the same activity using the words soft and hard to describe the objects. Later on in the day I asked BabyGirl what objects she remembered from the activity. She remembered almost all of them, showing her the importance of senses in our everyday life.

Another experiment we did on the senses involved an orange, a hard ball, and a soft ball. I had her close her eyes as I touched each object on her knee, then her arm. She was to guess what each one was. Then she was able to hold each one with her hands and guess. This experiment showed her how we use our hands the most to exercise our sense of touch. They are much more sensitive than other parts of our body.

Our other science experiment last week was the next one out of our Magic School Bus kit. It dealt with lung capacity. We were trying to see who had the biggest lung capacity in our family. After our hypothesis, we began the experiment. It was very messy and very fun, but we soon found out that an adult has more lung capacity than a 2 liter bottle can hold...so we played around with it awhile and have decided to conduct another experiment this weekend using a 5 gallon bucket instead. We can't wait, and will post the result as well as pics.

We've covered 3 more phonics lessons, and introduced 6 more readers. We're doing great with all of this, and only have about 5 more lessons to go until we move on...

We're also plugging along nicely with our math. We've included some activities that had BabyGirl run around the house counting different things, then she was to graph them or write the numbers down. She loved this!! Later this week we're going to work some with story problems.

We've successfully learned the letters A-L in sign language as well as some colors and phrases. We do use these everyday in many situations, and she loves it! It's fun to communicate in other ways. Somehow we've managed to learn the Spanish numbers to 10, and some colors as well. (even though she didn't want to) We actually did it using songs. I would just sing the song as I do dishes or something, then she'd chime in and sing with me not even realizing what we were doing!! :)

One of her favorite daily activities continues to be using her learn-to-write pad to draw a picture and write a sentence to describe it. I've noticed her using the lines correctly every time now with upper and lower-case letters. This is especially great to me since I've never told her how to do this. I love how everyday activities including reading can be such a non-invasive teaching tool! There's nothing better than discovering something on your own. I still remember the day I discovered multiplication! After weeks of trying to memorize my tables I actually GOT IT! I was making tally marks all over a chalkboard.

For history/geography we discussed the world and it's land/water. We've introduced the continents and made an outline map of them. We've gotten a children's atlas and begun it's exploration. Later this week we will begin maps. BabyGirl is already very globe savvy due to her playing with our Smart Globe constantly. She also watches her dad every evening trying to beat his best score on finding all the countries, etc. This is a great educational tool that is also very non-invasive! She enjoys sitting and playing with this globe regularly, and dreams of where she'd like to go. This also often times brings us to looking up information about different places. One of her favorite is Greenland.

We had our first art class and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was about colors. BabyGirl picked out her favorite color and drew a picture of herself, then one of a monkey. The teacher was excellent and very positive with all of the children. We can't wait to go again next week!!

Tonight we start back to gymnastics, and she's totally excited about that after having the last month off. We started dance last week. It was fun to see all our friends again that we hadn't seen over the summer. We've also enjoyed our story hour and playgroup. I'm so happy the school year has started off with a bang! I look forward to every single bit of it. I love the time we get to spend together, each of us learning more and more. I also love the freedom of mixing in time with my elderly grandmother each week, taking care of our animals, making our own soaps, weeding the garden....all of things that make a complete education. Some of these which I feel a lot of children miss out on. Again, how blessed I feel to be able to live our lives in this way.

Kindergarten Day 1

Today we had a wonderfully successful day 1! BabyGirl has been looking forward to our official 'beginning', so it was met with great enthusiasm! We started off with our science since that seems to be our favorite of all. We began our senses unit. Our kindergarten science book is well written so that BabyGirl can read it herself, and is paired with very colorful real life pictures. Each week our lesson will be followed by an activity or experiment. This is my favorite part about it since to me you can't really learn science from sitting and looking at a book! Today BabyGirl drew pictures of a nose, eyes, ears, hand, mouth on index cards. Then she followed me around the house as I showed her items. She was to pick out which sense she would use for that item. She loved it and had so much fun! We also read The Magic School Bus Explores the Senses. I have several other books requested from the library that cover this as well. Throughout the week we will demonstrate how our lives would be different if certain senses were taken away from us.

Then we focused on phonics. We introduced a new friend for V, and did the activities to go along with it. We pulled out our next new reader, and BabyGirl did an excellent job reading and answering all the comprehension questions correctly. We will be starting the long vowel sounds soon. I want to finish this program completely before I begin the 1st grade curriculum. For part of our writing BabyGirl decided to draw a picture and write a sentence about it by herself. She does this regularly, making my house FULL of art work! Today she drew a picture of a school with windows. Below it she wrote "The scl is a plas wer u lrn." It was so cute! She even remembered the period.

For math we did our lesson 1-1. It was not too challenging for her, but she enjoyed it nonetheless. The pictures were vivid and engaging. I'm going to work on our kindergarten curriculum we chose this year I THINK. I'm still deciding on it. A lot of it she already knows, but still loves working the problems. I do already have the 1st grade curriculum as well, just in case. My only thought is that I don't want to push her too early to do things that she isn't ready for. The whole reason for homeschooling is to fuel the fire which is curiosity, not push it out! So, we'll kind of take it as it comes and enjoy life, not forgetting to be children and play our hearts out!!!!

We went over the signs for A, B, C, D, E and F today. She really enjoys learning and doing sign language. It just comes naturally to her. For now, she's suddenly decided she can see no point in learning Spanish. She has absolutely no desire to. So, we will continue the sign language and see if maybe in the future she's more interested in another language as well. Until then, our plans go on hold for that. We have plenty of signs to learn anyway.... :)

Lastly, we decided to do an experiment from our Magic School Bus Human Body science kit. Today we began learning about the respiratory system. The question was "What would happen if there were a hole in the diaphragm?" We constructed a model of the lungs and diaphragm which was TOTALLY AWESOME!!! I can't even tell you how cool it was for both of us!! It really works, and when you contract the diaphragm the lungs fill with air!! If your child has any interest in this we urge you to purchase it!!! Everything about this kit is amazing. It comes with a workbook full of experiments, all the stuff needed (except a few things from home), and a DVD of all the human body episodes. Even better, you can sometimes get it on sale from Scholastic for as little as 10 bucks! After we finish the human body, I plan to purchase one of the others they have. We are totally hooked!!!

So, after some playing on Jump Start World Kindergarten we end this first day. We've had a great time learning and playing together. It's such a blessing to me to be able to spend this time with my daughter. I can't even imagine not seeing this little mind blossom into great things!!

Tonight we start dance, and then another new day tomorrow...until next time... :)