Updates to come!

As to our recent car accident, I have been spending my normal blogging time to trying to research the best way to handle everything.  We still our having our normal homeschool schedule, but I just haven't had time to blog about it!  Hopefully we can quickly get things squared away and I can get back into my regular blogging routine!  Wish us luck!

Thursday, 10/16/08

Today we started with math.  That seems to work best for us.  We learned about subtraction 5 facts and the girls did really well with this.  Then we read a poem called the storm.  The little boy in the poem really liked the sounds of the storm, but my oldest made it very clear that she does not like the sounds.  We then read a story by Beatrix Potter and talked about that and discussed some of the words that were unfamiliar to them.  For science we learned about the different parts of plants and what they need to live and then we made our own flowers, roots and all, to demonstrate what we learned. We also made pumpkins out of paper bags for an art project.  They are still drying so we will have to finish that tomorrow.  We ended by practicing our sight words out of our Book of Mormon curriculum.  

Wednesday, 10/15/08

We did a lot of reading today!  We read from our fairy tales book about a real princess(the princess and the pea) and then we read a poem titled the mackrel.  We also read the story Peter Cottontail.  I feel like a lot of the literature for kindergarten, as well as the questions, are pretty basic so I am going through it quickly to give our oldest a little more of a challenge.  For science we did the same thing.  The next like three lessons were on whether something was living or dead and our oldest and even our youngest daughter knows what's living and dead and what they need to survive.  NO BRAINER!!! So we breezed through about three lessons.  We also worked on the kw sounds for the works quick, queen, quilt, etc.  Then for math we did more subtraction focusing on subtracting fours.  Our oldest wasn't as focused on math today, but that was mainly my fault for waiting till the end of the day, but she still did pretty good.

Thursday, 10/9/08 - Tuesday, 10/14/08

So we are back from vacation and yes, we still did school!   On Thursday we were able to finish our addition unit.  Hopefully our oldest has a good fundamental grasp on the basics.  We also learned about our teeth.  We talked about the different parts of the teeth ie the crown, the neck and the root.  We talked about the dentist and also about how we start with baby teeth and then adult teeth come in.  We also did a story for language arts.  Friday was a no school day! HOORAY!  It was really nice.  I was planning to teach and then went online to discover there was no school!   On Monday we started subtraction and continued with that today.  Both of the girls seem to be grasping this concept much faster that the addition unit.  Today they almost didn't need to use manipulatives! Amazing!  Yesterday we read part of Sleeping Beauty and then talked about how to set the table.  We did this little story about how to remember how to set the table.  

The princess (the fork) was on the left and was separated from her prince by an alligator infested swamp (the plate) and an angry guard (the knife).  They really liked this story and so I gave them print outs of a proper place setting and they drew the characters from the story.  Today we finished the story of sleeping beauty and talked about what happened and how the people in the story must have felt after being asleep for 100 years.  We also did our book of mormon reading which we do every night.  I highly recommend this learning method.  I am amazed at how well our oldest is picking it up.  IT'S AWESOME!!!  Hopefully I will have pictures tomorrow.  I am still playing catch up from vacation!

Wednesday, 10/8/08

There will be no posts for the next couple of days.  We will be on vacation!  I will be sure to post our new "learnings"  when we get back!

Tuesday, 10/07/08

Today we did more addition sentences and the number 6 addition facts.  We learned that even though you reverse the order of the numbers they still equal the same sum.  For science we learned about muscles.  We learned about the arm muscles and we made our own arm (elbow included) with balloons for muscles.  We learned about the heart and the girls learned how to feel for a pulse and learned about the size of their heart.  Then we talked about the brain.  Later for literature we read Hey Diddle Diddle and the colored and cut out the characters in the poem and then had to put them in order.  Then we read a poem about pumpkins and then they made mosaic pumpkins.  It was a pretty fun day and the girls favorite part was learning about the muscles.  I have to admit that it was pretty fun as well.  Did you know there are 640 muscles in the human body?  I didn't until today.  Just another fun fact!

Monday, 10/6/08

For math, we started with review on the computer then moved on to addition sentences.  Her workbook had her counting pennies, so I pulled out the pretend money and that really help her to visualize the problem.  Then she moved on to doing problems that didn't have visuals.  I thought she would really struggle with this, but she did pretty good.  I saw her using her fingers a couple of times, but she did it!  Then we did a bunch of phonics worksheets.  I am trying to get her to a place that is a little more challenging for her so we have been doing a bunch of these worksheets until we find something she doesn't already know.  Then we read a poem that I loved called Bed in Summer by Robert Louis Stevenson.  This is the second poem of his that we have read and I absolutely love them.  They are so real to life and what kids think!  Then we read Tom Thumb and our oldest loved the book.  It was a bit long for our 3 year old.  We then did a little book that the kids could color.  It had sentences you had to read in order to know what color to color the leaves.  So I like _______ leaves.  The girls really enjoyed this and they can't wait till our own leaves on the trees change color!

Friday, 10/03/08

Today my husband did the math lesson in the morning so I could go to a friends house and learn how to can grape juice.  Hopefully I will be able to apply that to a lesson.  Anyways, he taught more about addition sentences and adding 5 facts (different addends that equal the sum of 5).  He also used manipulatives to really help her visualize the addition sentences.  Later we worked on a weekly review of her phonics which went really quickly.  Then for language arts we read the story Thumbelina and talked about which characters were nice and which ones weren't and how we can be nice.  She then colored and cut out different characters from the story i.e. the sparrow, butterfly, field mouse, and mole.  She really liked this story because Thumbelina turned into a fairy queen at the end.  Today was such a nice day to have my husband home and to let him take a turn teaching so he can see what goes into our lessons.  

Thursday, 10/2/08

On Thursday we started out with phonics just to mix things up a bit.  This actually turned out to be a mistake.  I think we all have gotten so used to the routine of things that it kind of threw the whole day off, but oh well.  You live and learn.   So we started with phonics and our oldest  breezed through that and then went on the help her sister.  That worked out really nice.  I threw in a picture of how our baby has been the last couple of days.  It has been really frustrating dealing with him and trying to do school, but it looks like he is doing better now and his teeth are finally starting to break through!  My husband came home early today, so I waited for him to continue with school.   We did math in the afternoon, and again because it was a different schedule our oldest didn't have the greatest attention span.  But we did manage to learn about addends and sums and practiced writing addition sentences and then learned to write those sentences in a vertical format.  Later we did science and learned about the different bones in our bodies and their function.  Then they got to make their own skeletons.  Not the best day, but what do you do with a screaming baby?  I'll tell you . . . you do your very best and hope that your kids are learning something.   Here's to hoping!!!

Wednesday, 10/1/08

So I didn't get quite as many pictures today, but we were quite productive.  Before we started class I took the kids to park.  Today was supposed to be the last really nice day of the season so I thought we should take advantage of it.  The girls met some kids at the park and decided to have races up and down the hill.  I love how kids can make friends with anyone.  I wish it were that easy for me.  Not that it couldn't be as my husband would say, but it's just not for me.  Anyways, we came back and worked on addition sentences.  I love teaching something to our oldest and then having her teach to our middle child.  Not only is our middle kid learning, but it helps reinforce it for our oldest.  LOVE IT!!!  Later we read Little Red Riding Hood and talked about safety with strangers.  She was really curious about this subject so we did quite a bit of discussing.  After that we did phonics sheets addressing the ending sound g, letter recognition, and a whole bunch of other ones that I can't really remember right now. :)  Then we worked on science.  Since switching from first grade science to kindergarten, I feel that is a little to easy for her.   So we did a bunch of assessments together until we came to some things she didn't know quite as well so she can be a little more challenged and I can feel like I am not wasting time on something she obviously knows very well.  Then to end off the day we did more math review with apples and then made an apple pie and talked about measurements.  Oh, and the pie was really tasty as evident from the pictures!