Kindergarten is Over

We have had a very busy spring.  There is so much that a mere blog entry here could never cover it all.  Due to our extremely "spring-like" winter here in NH there  has been less time spent in the house for learning and more schooling happening out and about. 

Suffice  to say,  that  also means a lot less computer time for both me and Charlie.  We finished all our plans for Kindergarten in early April.  He has passed with more than flying colors and has started right in with some of his 1st grade academics.

We have been busy taking fieldtrips, attending co-op classes, going to therapy 2x a week and there have been hikes with other homeschooling friends in all kinds of weather.

Even while keeping to that type of crazy schedule, we still managed to  squeeze in math and reading lessons.

Kindergarten–Antarctica & Penguins

We are taking a small break from rowing books for F. I. A. R. and spending time way down south in Antarctica.  We have learned that it is 1 of the seven continents and the coldest place on Earth.

We are also learning about penguins.  Not all but quite a few of the species live on Antarctica.  Here are some of the books we have been using:

We have watched a few movies from Netflix as well including Antarctic Wildlife Adventure, Antarctic Mission, and The Last Continent.  We also borrowed The March of the Penguins and Happy Feet from our local library.

Art projects included a 3-D wooden penguin puzzle and 3-D paper penguin chick.

We tried a blubber science experiment.  A fellow homeschooling Mom gave us a project on blubber her boys were finished with.  She sandwiched shortening between 2 freezer bags and sealed them with packing tape.  As you can see in the picture you can then slip your hand inside the "blubber mitten" to keep it warm and dry from the snow.  Charlie was a little hesitant at first to even touch the bags.  The squishy texture or maybe the thought of it being "blubber" freaked him out a bit.  Eventually he did try it and was happy and surprised that he good clear the snow from the car without feeling it.

We haven't been working on many lapbooks lately so we created a rather large one this time to show all we learned while working on our unit.

Here is a gallery of all the pages

     

Kindergarten - Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

This was our first book for our F.I.A.R. co-op class for the new year.  I only wish we had snow in our neck of the woods while we were rowing it.  This was last year:

This year we haven't had any real snow to speak of yet.

Here are some shots of our binder pages.  We located the New England states, where the poem likely is set, on the map.  Charlie dictated his summary to me.  His favorite picture is when the old man was making a snow angel in the woods and it scared off the animals.

He copied a picture of that page on his draw & write paper.  The instructions were to draw your favorite picture from the book and copy the lines of verse from the page, but this particular page had no verse on it.

We read a few other poems from Winter Eyes by Douglas Florian and rated whether we liked them or not.

 

For hands on learning we played dominoes with snowflake dominoes, assembled a snow scene puzzle, used out building block letters for our "Build, Read, & Write pages and of course took some walks in the woods.

Good bye 2011 - Hello 2012

The month of December has come and gone and we are definitely ready to get back to routine.  School at home has been on hold since the beginning of the month and our time has been spent prepping for the holiday season.  Charlie did have 1 co-op class and his various therapies throughout the month but mostly we just played, read, and visited with friends and family.

comfy clothes of choice for hanging at home

Always the silly boy

 

Sister time  

Amby

Jenny

Andrea

Christmas Eve with his nephew & niece

Aydan, Tessa Jane & Charlie

 visit to Santa's workshop

Christmas Morning was early and Charlie must have been really good this past year because Santa brought him the 3 things he asked for and a few extras he thought he would like.

This was a big surprise

With his new digital  camera Charlie had lots of fun, although we do need to work on focusing.

Auntie Margaret

Rob - Cousin

Dad

Soon to be Uncle Charlie

Mom

Frankie

Cousin Kyra & Ryan

Cousins Leo and Mike

Charlie's new camera is also a video camera.  Goodness knows, he is always talking about making movies.  Here's a spliced together film of his grown up cousins trying  to "out-spin" Charlie on his Bilibo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtrdU6A2Qro&context=C3d773c7ADOEgsToPDskJ1qCR7mR5khitRodmpJoRx

Here is another sneaky picture & video "trick" of his with his PT Shannon

Shannon - PT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=pbI9YPJgU4Y

So watch out world he's filming for real now :-)

 

Kindergarten - A New Coat for Anna week

This week has been a busy one.  We worked on our next F.I.A.R. book,  A New Coat for Anna by Harriet Ziefert.  At our next FIAR co-op meeting, we'll bring our binder and share what we did and learned while "rowing" this book.  

This week we also had our regular co-op class.  We've been traveling the U.S.A. through lots of great books.  This week the mom who ran the class talked about Florida and alligators.  That went over great with the kids.  They also learned a little about what an oviparous animal was ... an egg layer.

     

Here are the photos from our week.

  

We read a lot of extra books along with A New Coat for Anna.  Of course, Charlie Needs A Cloak by Tomie dePaola is 1 we've had for awhile and is a favorite of Charlie's so it was nice to tie it in with the unit.

We had fun and made a great amount of mess while dyeing and mixing colors on coffee filters.

As always, we located where the story took place.  This story takes place "somewhere" in post WWII Europe.  Charlie loves punch-cutting maps.

Here's a picture of all the work pages we did in regards to this F.I.A.R. title.  

Charlie also worked on a few fun art projects other than the dyeing.  We made paper chains for our Christmas tree like on the tree in the book and the ones Anna made for the sheep.  He noticed that they also had real candles on their Christmas tree.  Charlie brought up the thought of how dangers that would be because with the real candles it could start a fire.  It was nice to have him intiate that thought and then have a good conversation about fire safety.  We talked about weaving and together weaved the checkered art project, as well.

We really didn't work too much in our math book this week.  Instead math came in the form of some of the related binder worksheets we had this week.  We did of course continue on in our Reading Eggs program.  Charlie is now moving on to his 3rd work book and the corresponding online lessons.

Kindergarten - Thanksgiving Week

This week of Thanksgiving we spent less time on regular school work and a lot more time just reading and doing hands on work relating to the Pilgrims and Wampanoag people.

We really learned about what daily life was like for children of both the Native people as well as the English

We read 2 books about Squanto. From the beginning he was a helpful to the English and chose to return to England with them as a guest.  We then learned that a few years later he made the voyage back to his native land, but he was then kidnapped by a different English captain and sold as a slave in Spain.  Eventually he did make it back again to his home, but he then learned that the people of his village died of illness.  Later, while living in the Wampanoag village he was helpful when the Pilgrims came.  He worked to communicate between the English and the Wampanoag People.  Eventually he chose to stay and live among the English at Plymouth Plantation.

For fun, we read Cranberry Thanksgiving, and a few others.  We used our If you sailed on the Mayflower book to find a bit more information about what it was like when they were sailing.  We also watched Disney's Pocahontas to try and see the native peoples point of view.

We really did not concentrate much this year on the "First Thanksgiving Feast."  There is so much commercialism in even this holiday that I made the conscious decision to only really learn what life might have been like from a historical point of view, for both communities.

We spent time talking about the type of clothing that was worn and the chore children had in that time period.

We also spent time, daily,  working on our models of Plymouth Village and the Wampanoag village.

In the end ... the LEGO world conquered all, though!

Kindergarten - Ferdinand

This week we read The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf for our FIAR book.

This is also the book our FIAR co-op is doing.  We really enjoyed the story and the whole theme of being yourself and not always doing what other do just to be like them.
Besides reading the book, we watched this animated version on you tube.  Charlie enjoyed it but he really liked this stage version SO much more.  It just resonates with his interest in the performance arts I guess.  I think we have watched at least 50 times.
To go along with this book we also read:
The knight and the squire : a retelling of the adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, based on Cervantes, Don Quixote de la Mancha by Argentina Palacios
and
El Chino, by Allen Say
We completed many of our regular pages to go in our FIAR Binder we are keeping this year and did Charlie’s favorite … Geography.


For incorporating some art into our week, we made a TP roll puppet of a bull and Charlie insisted he could be a rainbow colored bull because he can be anything he wants.  Who was I to disagree with that!  We also made a flower and then added Jello powder for color and scent.

Of course, as always, we continue on with our math and phonics programs.

We finished off with some homemade tacos for dinner.  Technically this is Mexican not Spanish food but who cares!