Kindergarten Week 5
Sep. 25th, 2010 06:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
entirelysonjaAlthough we did have a couple of not-so-good days at the beginning of the week, Wednesday-Friday were great. I actually had to shoo Erika away from the school room on Friday after three hours, suggesting she go play with Karl instead.
On Wednesday, we had the first meeting of our Kindergarten Co-op. It was my turn to host, so I did something with bridges and Legos, explained under the Science heading.
Because John took the day off from work on Thursday, Erika and I were able to spend several hours downtown at the museums. We visited the American History museum and the American Indian museum, both of which I'll talk about further in the various subject sections.
Math
Erika continued on with Math Mammoth Addition 1 this week, finishing up through the section on sums that add up to 8. I still don't feel like she quite "gets it" in the way I'd like her to, but I think Math Mammoth's systematic approach is helping her get there. For example, upon seeing a problem like:
4 + ___ = 7
she said, "I know that has to be three, because 4 + 4 is 8."
On the other hand, she thought 6 + 6 had to be 11 because she knew 5 + 5 was 10, and 6 is one more than 5. I definitely feel like insight is coming, but it's also clear to me that she needs time to practice and see these things for herself.
She also did some pages in a German-language first grade workbook we have, which she enjoyed very much. These were pages that reviewed things she already understood well.
English
This week I finally finished reading Mr. Popper's Penguins out loud. Erika wrapped up Robert the Rose Horse by Joan Heilbroner and read Pony Crazy by Catherine Mapka, the latter all in one day while we were heading back and forth to the museums. It can sometimes be hard to hear her reading to me on the loud Metro trains!
Erika also wrote a long letter to her pen pal this week.
Science
For the Kindergarten co-op meeting, I decided I wanted to try having the kids build the same general sort of thing each using their own identical set of Legos. My idea was to demonstrate that there's usually more than one solution to engineering problems, though of course without putting it in those terms.
I started out by having the kids talk about the general problem of crossing a river. They came up with various suggestions for how people can cross rives, and we eventually compared bridges and ferries as solutions. Next, I had the kids look at pictures of bridges on our TV set, and talk about the features they noticed in the bridges. We looked at a couple of variations on arch bridges, suspension bridges, and cable-stayed bridges. The most fun was the next part -- each kid had the opportunity to pretend to be a bridge supported from underneath by piers, or suspended from above. I used slings for the cables, which worked well, and everyone had fun.
By this time, the kids really needed a snack, so we took a break. We never did get around to having everyone build a bridge with their Legos, but they did do the warm-up exercise of building towers, and everyone seemed to be having fun, so I think our first co-op meeting was a success.
The next day, Erika and I visited the Spark! Lab in the American History museum. She got to build a circuit using Snap Circuits, and then had a lot of fun playing with the resulting flying saucer launcher.
She also participated in one of their guided experiments, where they learned about the properties of dry ice. one of the particularly cool things they did was put some dry ice into an insulated container, and then create a soap bubble across the mouth of the container. The bubble would fill up with gas, and then eventually burst all over the counter.
Here Erika is blowing into a flask containing Bromothymol Blue, demonstrating that people breathe out carbon dioxide, which reacts with water to form carbonic acid.
Social Studies
We didn't really do much with Social Studies other than visit museums this week, but we sure got a lot of Social Studies then!
At the American History museum, we saw an exhibit involving slavery, which generated a fair bit of discussion. I even touched a bit on its lingering effects in our society today. Right after that, we visited the First Ladies exhibit, where Erika really liked Mary Lincoln's dress, giving me an opportunity to discuss the significance of Abraham Lincoln's presidency in the context of the slavery discussion we'd just been having.
I was amazed that Erika still wanted to go to the American Indian museum after we'd been at American History for 3 1/2 hours, but she insisted. There, we saw a film about Native American people, looked at animal sculptures, and learned a bit about creation stories. It was a long day!
German
This week Erika did more than the expected number of pages in her Einsterns Schwester workbook, did a page of homework for her Saturday class, and listened to me read the end of Eine Woche voller Samstage. She also went to her third session of Saturday German school.
Art
I'd say art wasn't a huge success this week -- I tried to do an exercise with her on seeing the shapes in what you're drawing, but she found it very frustrating. I'm going to need to find a fresh approach to that in a few weeks. She's very interested in drawing, and obviously seeing is an important part of that, so I do think it worth revisiting fairly soon.
Music
We wrapped up the Benjamin Britten section in Classics for Kids this week. Erika really enjoyed listening to the sounds of all of the different instruments, and hearing how they come together in orchestral music.
PE
Nothing new here -- swimming once, some time at playgrounds, and soccer tomorrow.
Health
Erika's continuing to make good progress memorizing personal information using Anki. She's got our cell phone numbers down well at this point, and is working on our address.
On Wednesday, we had the first meeting of our Kindergarten Co-op. It was my turn to host, so I did something with bridges and Legos, explained under the Science heading.
Because John took the day off from work on Thursday, Erika and I were able to spend several hours downtown at the museums. We visited the American History museum and the American Indian museum, both of which I'll talk about further in the various subject sections.
Math
Erika continued on with Math Mammoth Addition 1 this week, finishing up through the section on sums that add up to 8. I still don't feel like she quite "gets it" in the way I'd like her to, but I think Math Mammoth's systematic approach is helping her get there. For example, upon seeing a problem like:
4 + ___ = 7
she said, "I know that has to be three, because 4 + 4 is 8."
On the other hand, she thought 6 + 6 had to be 11 because she knew 5 + 5 was 10, and 6 is one more than 5. I definitely feel like insight is coming, but it's also clear to me that she needs time to practice and see these things for herself.
She also did some pages in a German-language first grade workbook we have, which she enjoyed very much. These were pages that reviewed things she already understood well.
English
This week I finally finished reading Mr. Popper's Penguins out loud. Erika wrapped up Robert the Rose Horse by Joan Heilbroner and read Pony Crazy by Catherine Mapka, the latter all in one day while we were heading back and forth to the museums. It can sometimes be hard to hear her reading to me on the loud Metro trains!
Erika also wrote a long letter to her pen pal this week.
Science
For the Kindergarten co-op meeting, I decided I wanted to try having the kids build the same general sort of thing each using their own identical set of Legos. My idea was to demonstrate that there's usually more than one solution to engineering problems, though of course without putting it in those terms.
I started out by having the kids talk about the general problem of crossing a river. They came up with various suggestions for how people can cross rives, and we eventually compared bridges and ferries as solutions. Next, I had the kids look at pictures of bridges on our TV set, and talk about the features they noticed in the bridges. We looked at a couple of variations on arch bridges, suspension bridges, and cable-stayed bridges. The most fun was the next part -- each kid had the opportunity to pretend to be a bridge supported from underneath by piers, or suspended from above. I used slings for the cables, which worked well, and everyone had fun.
By this time, the kids really needed a snack, so we took a break. We never did get around to having everyone build a bridge with their Legos, but they did do the warm-up exercise of building towers, and everyone seemed to be having fun, so I think our first co-op meeting was a success.
The next day, Erika and I visited the Spark! Lab in the American History museum. She got to build a circuit using Snap Circuits, and then had a lot of fun playing with the resulting flying saucer launcher.
She also participated in one of their guided experiments, where they learned about the properties of dry ice. one of the particularly cool things they did was put some dry ice into an insulated container, and then create a soap bubble across the mouth of the container. The bubble would fill up with gas, and then eventually burst all over the counter.
Here Erika is blowing into a flask containing Bromothymol Blue, demonstrating that people breathe out carbon dioxide, which reacts with water to form carbonic acid.
Social Studies
We didn't really do much with Social Studies other than visit museums this week, but we sure got a lot of Social Studies then!
At the American History museum, we saw an exhibit involving slavery, which generated a fair bit of discussion. I even touched a bit on its lingering effects in our society today. Right after that, we visited the First Ladies exhibit, where Erika really liked Mary Lincoln's dress, giving me an opportunity to discuss the significance of Abraham Lincoln's presidency in the context of the slavery discussion we'd just been having.
I was amazed that Erika still wanted to go to the American Indian museum after we'd been at American History for 3 1/2 hours, but she insisted. There, we saw a film about Native American people, looked at animal sculptures, and learned a bit about creation stories. It was a long day!
German
This week Erika did more than the expected number of pages in her Einsterns Schwester workbook, did a page of homework for her Saturday class, and listened to me read the end of Eine Woche voller Samstage. She also went to her third session of Saturday German school.
Art
I'd say art wasn't a huge success this week -- I tried to do an exercise with her on seeing the shapes in what you're drawing, but she found it very frustrating. I'm going to need to find a fresh approach to that in a few weeks. She's very interested in drawing, and obviously seeing is an important part of that, so I do think it worth revisiting fairly soon.
Music
We wrapped up the Benjamin Britten section in Classics for Kids this week. Erika really enjoyed listening to the sounds of all of the different instruments, and hearing how they come together in orchestral music.
PE
Nothing new here -- swimming once, some time at playgrounds, and soccer tomorrow.
Health
Erika's continuing to make good progress memorizing personal information using Anki. She's got our cell phone numbers down well at this point, and is working on our address.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-26 06:19 pm (UTC)and museums definitely count as history!
(no subject)
Date: 2010-09-26 06:19 pm (UTC)Week in Review
Date: 2010-09-26 07:00 pm (UTC)