Kindergarten Week 12

We had another good week here. The highlight for me was probably Erika's continuing progress with math, though it was by no means the flashiest thing that happened.

Math

Nothing really new and exciting on the math front. Erika is continuing to work on subtraction and place value, and is working with more efficiency and focus. She got even faster in her math drill, too.

We played quite a bit of the card game, "Rat-a-tat cat," which she received for her birthday. At the end of each round, you have to add up the values of four cards to get your score; I was impressed that Erika was able to do this for herself even when the answers were numbers over 10.

English

English this week consisted of writing thank-you notes and reading Nate the Great and the Monster Mess. We didn't do as much reading as we usually do, but did a lot of writing, so I think it balances out.

Erika also read Clifford the Small Red Puppy to Karl when he was feeling sick.

Social Studies

We continued our study of Canada by learning a bit about native peoples. I read a book out loud about the Inuit, and we also learned a bit about the residential school system by reading Shi-shi-etko. I'm still trying to decide whether the sequel is too dark.

We also paid a visit to the National Museum of the American Indian, where we made it a point to look at exhibits about native people living in Canada.

Since we are going to the National Building Museum on Monday for a program on city planning, we also dipped into the preparatory packet for that. We talked about different categories of buildings and why you would want certain things close to each other or far apart.

Our temperature graphing project continued onward, and Erika continued to study countries, continents, and flags in Anki. I added some of the countries immediately surrounding Germany to her study this week.

Science

At our co-op this week, the kids learned about pendulums. ( Picture of pendulum )

The kids experimented with different pendulum weights and string lengths, and used a funnel pendulum filled with salt so they could observe the patterns. At the end, they dumped large quantities of salt under a pendulum with a point on the end, and took turns releasing the pendulum and examining the patterns generated.

We also wrapped up the second Life disk, learning about birds and insects.

Art

Erika drew pictures on the backs of her thank-you notes and played Who, what, Where? Junior this week.

Music

Erika got frustrated this week that each episode of Classics for Kids is so short, so we agreed to listen to all of the episodes about one composer on the same day, and then to repeat it again the following week. So we listened to the rest of the episodes on Prokofiev this week.

Physical Education

We went swimming once and to the playground a couple of times, but didn't get as much physical activity in as I think is ideal. We were planning to go swimming twice, but Karl was sick on Friday afternoon, so we had to scrap that plan.

Health

This week we started studying germs using the Magic School Bus science kit about germs. So far, we've succeeded in growing mold on a piece of bread. Yummy.

German

I finished reading Am Samstag kam das Sams zurück last Sunday, so this week we started reading Conni auf dem Reiterhof. Erika likes it, but thinks the kids are too mean to Conni.

Erika also made good progress in Einsterns Schwester 1, did her homework for the Saturday school, and went to her class on Saturday.