Kindergarten Week 2
Sep. 4th, 2010 11:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
entirelysonjaWe got through everything we planned in week 2, and managed to spend a day out of town and a morning at a museum. So I'd say it was a success! Next week we'll be spending much of our morning "school time" at the playground with Erika's co-op group. We decided to have a week together so the group could really get to know each other. I've revised our checklist for next week to drastically reduce the number of items on it, since we obviously won't have as much time to do our usual work. I've also changed the format of the checklist based on our experiences this week -- I've made some of the boxes mandatory, but for the rest just included an overall target number. That way if Erika wants to do extra writing or more science, it can count toward the overall target of work to be done during the week.
We tried having school at a park again this week, and were fortunately not bothered by wasps. Erika alternated between 15 or 20 minutes of work, and 15 or 20 minutes of running around on the playground. We got a decent amount done, and she had a good time, so we'll probably do it again.
Math
This week, we worked in the Math Mammoth Blue Series book, Addition 1. Erika was pretty happy with it, though we did encounter one occasion when I wanted her to use glass stones to model some problems, and she really wanted to do something unhelpful with the stones (something she's done before, which merely distracts her from thinking about the problems in a useful way). She then complained that the math was too hard, and I asked her to try it my way. Reluctantly, she eventually did follow along with my plan for the lesson, and did in fact find that doing it my way made it easier.
I'm looking forward to seeing how math goes next week.
English
We had a great week in English. Erika read The Berenstain Bears' New Kitten, and finished reading Penguin Chick by Betty Tatham. She also wrote another sentence for her story, again exhibiting a surprisingly good grasp of spelling. Her errors were logical -- for example, she spelled the word "leash" as "leshe." I read out loud from Mr. Popper's Penguins a couple of times, but we primarily did read-alouds in other areas this week.
Erika even did two formal reading lessons, one of them on the Metro heading back from the museum.
Science
We continued to read about Antarctic animals. We also did some work with the Lego WeDo robotics kit, and explored stalactites and stalagmites by growing our own using epsom salts.
Erika wants more science, by which she means more hands-on science activities. I think I can arrange that.
Social Studies
We began our project of keeping track of temperatures around the world by writing down the high temperature for our own location and for the South Pole one day this week, using Weather Underground. I plan for us to continue this every week, adding in a few other places as we study them. Eventually, we'll graph the results.
We continued reading about Antarctica, and Erika marked the Antarctic Peninsula on her map.
We're about done with Antarctica now, and plan to move on to Australia and New Zealand next week.
German
Erika made good progress with her German workbook, and enjoyed having me read aloud from Eine Woche voller Samstage by Paul Marr.
Art
Our main art activity for the week was our trip to the Natural History Museum, where Erika drew a dolphin.
She also did some other drawing during the week.
Music
Erika had a piano lesson with John, which seemed to go well, and continued with the Classics for Kids series on Benjamin Britten.
PE
PE this week mostly consisted of playground visits, though she did also learn to play croquet, and spent a lot of time romping around with her cousin Julia.
We tried having school at a park again this week, and were fortunately not bothered by wasps. Erika alternated between 15 or 20 minutes of work, and 15 or 20 minutes of running around on the playground. We got a decent amount done, and she had a good time, so we'll probably do it again.
Math
This week, we worked in the Math Mammoth Blue Series book, Addition 1. Erika was pretty happy with it, though we did encounter one occasion when I wanted her to use glass stones to model some problems, and she really wanted to do something unhelpful with the stones (something she's done before, which merely distracts her from thinking about the problems in a useful way). She then complained that the math was too hard, and I asked her to try it my way. Reluctantly, she eventually did follow along with my plan for the lesson, and did in fact find that doing it my way made it easier.
I'm looking forward to seeing how math goes next week.
English
We had a great week in English. Erika read The Berenstain Bears' New Kitten, and finished reading Penguin Chick by Betty Tatham. She also wrote another sentence for her story, again exhibiting a surprisingly good grasp of spelling. Her errors were logical -- for example, she spelled the word "leash" as "leshe." I read out loud from Mr. Popper's Penguins a couple of times, but we primarily did read-alouds in other areas this week.
Erika even did two formal reading lessons, one of them on the Metro heading back from the museum.
Science
We continued to read about Antarctic animals. We also did some work with the Lego WeDo robotics kit, and explored stalactites and stalagmites by growing our own using epsom salts.
Erika wants more science, by which she means more hands-on science activities. I think I can arrange that.
Social Studies
We began our project of keeping track of temperatures around the world by writing down the high temperature for our own location and for the South Pole one day this week, using Weather Underground. I plan for us to continue this every week, adding in a few other places as we study them. Eventually, we'll graph the results.
We continued reading about Antarctica, and Erika marked the Antarctic Peninsula on her map.
We're about done with Antarctica now, and plan to move on to Australia and New Zealand next week.
German
Erika made good progress with her German workbook, and enjoyed having me read aloud from Eine Woche voller Samstage by Paul Marr.
Art
Our main art activity for the week was our trip to the Natural History Museum, where Erika drew a dolphin.
She also did some other drawing during the week.
Music
Erika had a piano lesson with John, which seemed to go well, and continued with the Classics for Kids series on Benjamin Britten.
PE
PE this week mostly consisted of playground visits, though she did also learn to play croquet, and spent a lot of time romping around with her cousin Julia.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-05 03:49 pm (UTC)Do you have a mnemonic for which is which?
For what it's worth, I learned that "stalactites hang from the ceiling while stalagmites grow up from the ground".
I've also heard "stalactites cling tightly to the ceiling while stalagmites grow up from the ground and might eventually reach the ceiling" (or something like that), but that seems a bit weak to me ("might" could apply to either one, for example).
(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-05 03:52 pm (UTC)I like the German mnemonic that a waxing crescent moon looks like the right curve of a cursive capital Z ("z"unehmender Mond) while a waning crescent moon looks like the left curve of a cursive capital A ("a"bnehmender Mond).
I've heard that in Romance languages, a popular mnemonic is "the moon always lies", since the shapes look like "C" and "D", which look as if they stand for (the cognate of) "(in)crease" and "decrease", respectively, but are the wrong way around ("C" shape when decreasing, etc.).
(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-05 05:59 pm (UTC)-Karen