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Kindergarten Week 15
Dec. 19th, 2010 09:42 pmThis week was the last before our winter break. Karl's school is out of session until after the new year, so our home school is on break as well.
It was a good week, with considerably less stress than last week. I kept Karl home from school on Thursday due to snow, but did a full day of school with Erika anyway, which was a bit challenging for everyone.
English
Erika did some fairly challenging reading this week, finishing up Jaguars and starting on Bobcats. She also wrote a letter to her pen pal, listened to the story of Shakespeare's Tempest twice, and got yakked at about nouns. We'll see how much she remembers about nouns next time it comes up...
Math
We spent a lot of time in the Math Mammoth Place Value 1 book this week, learning about counting by various numbers, and particularly about counting by 10's starting from any number within 100. She also learned more about estimating, and solved problems like, "if a purse costs $23 and a sweater costs $48, approximately how much do they cost together?" The expectation here was that she round each price to the nearest 10 and then add them together.
Erika also asked me to start adding bigger numbers into her math drills, so she's now practicing sums up to 11 instead of 10. I plan to increase that slowly up to 20.
Social Studies
I read out loud from Wow! Canada three times this week. During one of those sessions, Erika colored in the flag of Canada. She also marked and colored some interesting features on a map of Canada.
Erika also did some work with the US states this week, assembling the GeoPuzzle of the US and Canada with only limited help, and playing the "Stack the States" game on the iPod.
( Picture of Erika putting the puzzle together )
Science
In science this week, Erika did an activity on sediment layers and a ping-pong ball airflow experiment. ( Picture of ping-pong ball experiment ) She also visited the Hidden Oaks Nature Center, where she participated in a program about dinosaurs and enjoyed the exhibits. One particularly interesting thing was an owl skull displayed with a human skull, which made it easy to see all the differences between them.
I also read out loud about giraffes and tapirs from her Animals book.
Art
Erika did some drawing and crafts this week, nothing too exciting.
Music
Erika continued her study of the Nutcracker this week. She listened to the music several times, heard the classics for kids episodes on Tchaikovsky once, and watched part of the ballet on TV.
Her co-op this week was also on the subject of music, though since I wasn't there myself, I'm not really sure what they did!
Physical Education
Nothing unusual here - swimming twice, playground, playing in the snow.
Health
Erika watched three episodes of The Magic School Bus on the functioning of the human body and its response to infection. She also had her annual visit to the pediatrician.
German
Erika did her usual work in Einsterns Schwester, listened to me read aloud from the third Sams book, and read from an easy reader a couple of times.
She also went to her Saturday class, which was partially occupied with the Christmas festival. I thought it was charming -- some of the classes did group performances (including dad's!), several families performed on various instruments, and some individual students also played.
It was a good week, with considerably less stress than last week. I kept Karl home from school on Thursday due to snow, but did a full day of school with Erika anyway, which was a bit challenging for everyone.
English
Erika did some fairly challenging reading this week, finishing up Jaguars and starting on Bobcats. She also wrote a letter to her pen pal, listened to the story of Shakespeare's Tempest twice, and got yakked at about nouns. We'll see how much she remembers about nouns next time it comes up...
Math
We spent a lot of time in the Math Mammoth Place Value 1 book this week, learning about counting by various numbers, and particularly about counting by 10's starting from any number within 100. She also learned more about estimating, and solved problems like, "if a purse costs $23 and a sweater costs $48, approximately how much do they cost together?" The expectation here was that she round each price to the nearest 10 and then add them together.
Erika also asked me to start adding bigger numbers into her math drills, so she's now practicing sums up to 11 instead of 10. I plan to increase that slowly up to 20.
Social Studies
I read out loud from Wow! Canada three times this week. During one of those sessions, Erika colored in the flag of Canada. She also marked and colored some interesting features on a map of Canada.
Erika also did some work with the US states this week, assembling the GeoPuzzle of the US and Canada with only limited help, and playing the "Stack the States" game on the iPod.
( Picture of Erika putting the puzzle together )
Science
In science this week, Erika did an activity on sediment layers and a ping-pong ball airflow experiment. ( Picture of ping-pong ball experiment ) She also visited the Hidden Oaks Nature Center, where she participated in a program about dinosaurs and enjoyed the exhibits. One particularly interesting thing was an owl skull displayed with a human skull, which made it easy to see all the differences between them.
I also read out loud about giraffes and tapirs from her Animals book.
Art
Erika did some drawing and crafts this week, nothing too exciting.
Music
Erika continued her study of the Nutcracker this week. She listened to the music several times, heard the classics for kids episodes on Tchaikovsky once, and watched part of the ballet on TV.
Her co-op this week was also on the subject of music, though since I wasn't there myself, I'm not really sure what they did!
Physical Education
Nothing unusual here - swimming twice, playground, playing in the snow.
Health
Erika watched three episodes of The Magic School Bus on the functioning of the human body and its response to infection. She also had her annual visit to the pediatrician.
German
Erika did her usual work in Einsterns Schwester, listened to me read aloud from the third Sams book, and read from an easy reader a couple of times.
She also went to her Saturday class, which was partially occupied with the Christmas festival. I thought it was charming -- some of the classes did group performances (including dad's!), several families performed on various instruments, and some individual students also played.