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Kindergarten Week 1
Aug. 30th, 2010 03:10 pmOur first week of formal homeschooling definitely had its ups and downs, but on the whole, I'm feeling pretty optimistic.
How'd the checklist work?
We did wind up modifying our checklist, which I had certainly expected to do. We omitted the Handwriting item entirely after deciding that Handwriting was adequately covered in our German curriculum. We also consolidated Math into 4 "Math Lessons" rather than being so specific about which types of math we would do. Writing was a surprise addition to the checklist -- I'd been planning to do something like that with Erika this year, but hadn't planned to start on it right away. Obviously, she had other ideas!
We didn't check every box on our checklist, but I hadn't expected to. We did check at least one box in every row, which makes me happy because a big part of the point of the checklist for me was to make sure I didn't ignore things that were harder for me. I think I would otherwise tend to give short shrift to subjects I consider less critical, or that are very time-consuming.
I think the checklist definitely helped Erika to understand what we needed to get done, and she enjoyed checking the boxes.
Partway through the week, I downloaded the VisualTimer application for the iPhone/iPod touch. It's been very helpful in allowing Erika to understand how much time we have available, and I think it will also help her with telling time. She'd really like to improve her skills at telling time, but we're finding it challenging.
Math
The biggest challenge we had was finding our place in Math, a task we haven't really accomplished yet. Erika isn't terribly "teachable" -- she doesn't like me to explain things -- but she was also finding some of the math things we were doing too difficult and frustrating. So we stepped back to some easier stuff, which is a little on the boring side. She wants to give the easier math some more time before deciding if she'd like to skip ahead in it to a place where it would be a bit more challenging.
English
As I mentioned in my earlier post, Erika wrote her first sentence this week, and I was very impressed with her spelling.
She did quite a bit of reading out loud during the week, but only one formal reading lesson. I'm still on the fence about how important the formal reading lessons are, though I think she does learn patterns better when she sees a whole bunch of words at one time that follow the same pattern, rather than seeing them here and there in real books. Probably the highlight for me was when she read, "A Fly Went By" with a good degree of fluency. I got out the first BOB book and pointed out to her that a year ago, that was the most difficult book she was able to read with the same degree of ease. She couldn't believe her reading had improved so much in only a year.
Science
We read a lot about Antarctic animals this week, and also watched part of a National Geographic video, Antarctic Wildlife Adventure, in which a family sails along the Antarctic Peninsula counting penguins. The boys in the family are even homeschooled! The book Summer Ice by Bruce McMillan was a nice read-aloud for her, because she's so interested in animals. I think it might have been a bit dense for Kindergarten with a different child.
We also started our rocks and minerals study by examining a rock in some detail, which allowed us to use a magnifying glass, a loupe, and a miniature light table. I got a kick out of being able to repurpose my old tools from the era of chemical film processing for our homeschooling studies.
While we were camping this weekend, we spent time stargazing. Erika also asked a very interesting question as we were walking to the stargazing location the second night -- she wanted to know how we're ever able to get anywhere by walking or driving if the earth is moving so fast. I don't feel like the answer I gave was all that satisfactory, so I think I'm going to address it again next time we're riding the Metro.
Social Studies
We read about Antarctica and did a little work with maps of Antarctica.
German
I read some books aloud in German, and she did a bunch of pages of her Einsterns Schwester workbook. It's organized by letter, so the kids learn how to write each letter, listen for its sound at the beginning, end, and middle of words, and eventually how to read and write words containing those letters. She got to the point this week where she was reading and writing actual words. This is probably the most difficult subject for her, because it involves so much writing.
Erika also watched a fair amount of German TV, including the discovery of a new favorite show -- "Panda, Gorilla, & Co.", which is about zoo animals and their caretakers.
Art
Erika spent quite a while drawing. She also worked with me to make a cardboard climbing wall for Playmobil people, based on instructions in a book called, "The Cardboard Box Book," by Danny, Jake, and Niall Walsh. This was actually part of her summer reading program at the library; the second-to-last challenge was to read a book that taught you how to make or do something, and then to make or do it. The folks at the library were very impressed with her project.
( Picture of cardboard box project )
Music
Erika had a piano lesson with John, listened to an episode of Classics for Kids on Benjamin Britten, and listened to some of Britten's music.
PE
We made a fair number of playground visits, and also spent the weekend camping at the beach, which involved a lot of running around. I think we had PE covered for the week.
( Picture of Erika at playground )
How'd the checklist work?
We did wind up modifying our checklist, which I had certainly expected to do. We omitted the Handwriting item entirely after deciding that Handwriting was adequately covered in our German curriculum. We also consolidated Math into 4 "Math Lessons" rather than being so specific about which types of math we would do. Writing was a surprise addition to the checklist -- I'd been planning to do something like that with Erika this year, but hadn't planned to start on it right away. Obviously, she had other ideas!
We didn't check every box on our checklist, but I hadn't expected to. We did check at least one box in every row, which makes me happy because a big part of the point of the checklist for me was to make sure I didn't ignore things that were harder for me. I think I would otherwise tend to give short shrift to subjects I consider less critical, or that are very time-consuming.
I think the checklist definitely helped Erika to understand what we needed to get done, and she enjoyed checking the boxes.
Partway through the week, I downloaded the VisualTimer application for the iPhone/iPod touch. It's been very helpful in allowing Erika to understand how much time we have available, and I think it will also help her with telling time. She'd really like to improve her skills at telling time, but we're finding it challenging.
Math
The biggest challenge we had was finding our place in Math, a task we haven't really accomplished yet. Erika isn't terribly "teachable" -- she doesn't like me to explain things -- but she was also finding some of the math things we were doing too difficult and frustrating. So we stepped back to some easier stuff, which is a little on the boring side. She wants to give the easier math some more time before deciding if she'd like to skip ahead in it to a place where it would be a bit more challenging.
English
As I mentioned in my earlier post, Erika wrote her first sentence this week, and I was very impressed with her spelling.
She did quite a bit of reading out loud during the week, but only one formal reading lesson. I'm still on the fence about how important the formal reading lessons are, though I think she does learn patterns better when she sees a whole bunch of words at one time that follow the same pattern, rather than seeing them here and there in real books. Probably the highlight for me was when she read, "A Fly Went By" with a good degree of fluency. I got out the first BOB book and pointed out to her that a year ago, that was the most difficult book she was able to read with the same degree of ease. She couldn't believe her reading had improved so much in only a year.
Science
We read a lot about Antarctic animals this week, and also watched part of a National Geographic video, Antarctic Wildlife Adventure, in which a family sails along the Antarctic Peninsula counting penguins. The boys in the family are even homeschooled! The book Summer Ice by Bruce McMillan was a nice read-aloud for her, because she's so interested in animals. I think it might have been a bit dense for Kindergarten with a different child.
We also started our rocks and minerals study by examining a rock in some detail, which allowed us to use a magnifying glass, a loupe, and a miniature light table. I got a kick out of being able to repurpose my old tools from the era of chemical film processing for our homeschooling studies.
While we were camping this weekend, we spent time stargazing. Erika also asked a very interesting question as we were walking to the stargazing location the second night -- she wanted to know how we're ever able to get anywhere by walking or driving if the earth is moving so fast. I don't feel like the answer I gave was all that satisfactory, so I think I'm going to address it again next time we're riding the Metro.
Social Studies
We read about Antarctica and did a little work with maps of Antarctica.
German
I read some books aloud in German, and she did a bunch of pages of her Einsterns Schwester workbook. It's organized by letter, so the kids learn how to write each letter, listen for its sound at the beginning, end, and middle of words, and eventually how to read and write words containing those letters. She got to the point this week where she was reading and writing actual words. This is probably the most difficult subject for her, because it involves so much writing.
Erika also watched a fair amount of German TV, including the discovery of a new favorite show -- "Panda, Gorilla, & Co.", which is about zoo animals and their caretakers.
Art
Erika spent quite a while drawing. She also worked with me to make a cardboard climbing wall for Playmobil people, based on instructions in a book called, "The Cardboard Box Book," by Danny, Jake, and Niall Walsh. This was actually part of her summer reading program at the library; the second-to-last challenge was to read a book that taught you how to make or do something, and then to make or do it. The folks at the library were very impressed with her project.
( Picture of cardboard box project )
Music
Erika had a piano lesson with John, listened to an episode of Classics for Kids on Benjamin Britten, and listened to some of Britten's music.
PE
We made a fair number of playground visits, and also spent the weekend camping at the beach, which involved a lot of running around. I think we had PE covered for the week.
( Picture of Erika at playground )