Oatmeal and Raisins

Wondering what our "school" looks like?

It’s really not dark in that space.  It’s actually very well lit by the natural light through the window. 

Oh yeah, that’s "Officer Zion" taking a Cheerios break.

I know it’s hard to tell, but he’s wearing a police officer hat and holding a police badge.  Cute huh?

Here are my bookshelves.  Yes, every shelf is TWO rows deep.  Help us Lord!  I need more bookshelves desperately.

And here are my bulletin boards.  I did make these, please hold your applause.  

I <3 spray adhesive!  It’s so awesome and I got it at Wal-Mart for just under $3.  I consider myself a novice when it comes to crafts, but I’ve never done anything requiring this type of adhesive, mostly jewelry and painting figurines.  I used some foam board, an old skirt (that’s the brown background), some $.20 pieces of felt I got from Michael’s and ribbon.

I also used these wonderful removable picture hanger strips to hang them.   They’re basically like strips of velcro, but the Command strips have the pull down tab so they remove cleanly from walls.  They work great with lightweight items like my bulletin boards!

Today’s Web Resources:

police officer hat and badge 

The Sight Word Buddy for Windows is free and does have to be downloaded.  I have done so with no viral issues and it functions great.  It’s actually very simple.  You hear a sight word and there are three "arms" with a word and the right one has to be clicked.  It will show results, but they can’t be printed.  Zion did 120 in about 15 minutes today with 95% accuracy (5 missed words).  It’s setup where you can alternate between pre-primer, primer, first grade, second grade and third grade drills. We focused on pre-primer and primer words today.  It required no explanation on what to do and Zion really liked it.

I didn’t plan anything for this week.  Not on purpose.  Fortunately, the spirit moved today and led us to rhyming words.  We reviewed some things, but I was suddenly compelled to see where he is on rhyming.  Good thing the spirit moved.  I started with the whiteboard and simply going over sets of rhyming words and we did two pages together in a Reading Readiness workbook we have already.  Naturally, I knew I should find something online for him to do as practice.  He loves being on the computer!  I very quickly came across a site that led to another with a great game for rhyming words.  The first site has several links to online rhyming word practice as well as many other literacy and math skills for Kindergarten and PreK.  Internet4Classrooms has their links grouped by skill which made to very easy to find those specifically on rhyming words.  It gives a brief description of what each activity involves so you can pick what will work best for your child.  I chose the link to a Scholastic game.  Yes, the same Scholastic that has a book club that I even belonged to as a child.  This game was so perfect for Z.  He could pick from a variety of places which included a store, home and zoo.  Then he simply clicked a top picture to hear and see the word and chose from three others to find a rhyming word.  Very simple.  There are audio instructions, words and pictures and it’s all done using the computer mouse.  This works great for all types of learners, i.e. auditory, visual, etc.  I’ve been on this site a number of time looking into books for early readers and never checked out the other resources like games and printables.  So there’s games and stuff for K-8.

Today’s Web Resources:

Rhyming words game 

We love to own our books in this house but we do utilize the local library.  So, here’s what Z checked out this week:

I See, You Saw  Nurit Karlin 

Oliver  Syd Hoff 

The Berenstain Bears and Too Much TV   Stan and Jan Berenstain 

Why the Sun and the Moon Live in the Sky   Elphinstone Dayrell

Stuart at the Library   Susan Hill

Stuart at the Fun House   Susan Hill

Stuart Hides Out   Susan Hill 

Several of these are in the "I Can Read Book" series.  I See, You Saw is a "My First I Can Read Book" and it was great to hear him read all but two words in this book on his own the first try.  If you’re focusing on sight words as I am, this and the Stuart Little books in the series (those are all by Susan Hill) are great choices.  If you search "I Can Read Book" under children’s books on Amazon, it will list all the books in that series which is multi-level (we’re reading level 1 books) and includes Amelia Bedelia and, my fave, Frog and Toad.  Happy Reading!

Today went very well and…very long.  Several interruptions for me but I was able to keep Z busy, fortunately, and on track.  We did three quizzes today on color words, number words and days of the week all online and he gor three perfect scores.  I was so excited for him.  Especially regarding the days of the week, because we’d only been reciting them daily and I had no idea he could actually read them and out of sequence.  I guess my "soft" approach worked.  

By "soft" approach I mean not excessive drilling on things that simply require memorization.  Just a single daily recitation until it’s learned.  We didn’t even use flash cards for the days.  I only typed them and the months on a single sheet together and he’d glance at it sometimes.

I found a nice nine minute video on youtube on fire safety for kids.  There a re a few others I’m sure we’ll watch before the week’s over for refresher and to not be too repetitive.

I had to ditch the coloring and activity book I was trying to use as part of the Noah’s Ark lessons.  Thankfully there’s tons of stuff online and even more so that my mom got him this neat set of Hooked on Bible New and Old Testament.  They each have materials for three major biblical stories including activity book, story book, cd w/ relevant songs and scripture cards.  It also has a cute reward chart and stars.  Since he’s not too fond of coloring, though he loves to paint, he surprisingly liked doing the trivia questions at the end of the story and got them all right.  I think she found both sets at Marshall’s for less than half the retail price, thanx Mimi (Z’s name for my mom)!

Today’s Web Resource:

candohelperpage.com — many activities for language arts on this sight.  this is the one we used for today’s three quizzes,though, for math: days of the week calendar activity #1, color words activity #2,  number words activity #3

 Today was a rough day.  My patience was quite short and drinking 3 cups of coffee did not help.  

Zion does not want to color, which is odd.  He gets tired of it very quickly but I think it’s because he expends so much energy coloring very hard and on the same spot for far too long.  So, he he gets sore fingers and it takes him 10 minutes to color something that should only take maybe 30 seconds.

His handwriting and coloring need much improvement.  Though these basic skills are not up to par, he is satisfactory or excellent in everything else.

He has picked up on the pattern of the 2’s addition family when going over the flash cards in sequential order.  I’m now writing problems on the whiteboard at random and teaching him how to use the number line in the process.

His recognition of color words in Spanish and English is moving along very quickly and easily.  The same goes for the alphabet in Spanish.  I’m having him spell, in Spanish, the color words as we do exercises in his Spanish workbook.  And, I found a neat online game of matching color words– the link is below.

Fortunately, several lessons seem to conveniently overlap this week like in Science and Social Studies we’re learning about fire safety and fire fighters.  Colors are being learned in Spanish as we learn the color words in English.  Also, there are exercises in our fire safety activity book that reinforce recognizing color words.

Hopefully, I will be more patient tomorrow…I pray.

Today’s Web Resources:

match the color words 

Today ends our first full week of kindergarten, YAY!  

It was productive.  I really see where we achieved some of our goals for the week.  His confidence is improving where he doesn’t seek my approval on every answer before he writes it.  He is very comfortable with adding by 1 and numbers 1-10 in Spanish.  Like many children, he could count in Spanish around 3 or 4 yrs. old but now, he recognizes most of the Spanish number words and can translate them out of sequence.

Handwriting needs a lot of work still but I’m not too concerned.  I won’t stress it too much, just some light practicing daily.  I’m allowing him to do as much typing as I can incorporate since he likes to do so.

Also, Zion has totally mastered my 1a list of sight words: the, to, a, I, he, and, you, it, of, i.
This has been one of the lessons where typing has been an activity.  Today I decided to have him type the words as I called them out instead of him reading them on his own.  Sure enough, he could spell them all.  I feel very comfortable moving to the next 10 words next week.

Overall, we’ve had a good first week.  I’m feeling good about the next.

Today was our first official day of "kindergarten". It went pretty smoothly. Having a lesson plan was definitely a good decision. Zion stayed focused and "in the game". We started at 8 am after he had a waffle and strawberries for breakfast and vanilla soymilk. We finished about 12:10 pm.

We used a variety of resources and activities such as: cut & paste, flash cards, typing, workbook, worksheets, coloring and even a website. He really likes the Spanish website we use to hear words and letters pronounced.

I did alot for a snack break around 10 am which was welcomed. Lunch was as soon as we finished for the day.

I asked if he enjoyed "school" and was it hard and he said "yes" and "no" respectively.

We played music while he ate, painted and sang, of course. We listened to the Action Bible Songs cd mostly. During his free paint time, we listened to Coltrane’s "A Love Supreme". I think he actually enjoyed it. But, no surprise this is MY child we’re talking about.

Today’s Web Resources:

"-ack" word family: carlscorner.us.com and janbrett.com

Creation color page: DLTK coloring 

All About Me: kidsprintables.com 

Memory Verse Workbook: atozteacherstuff.com

Spanish pronunciations: Spanish for kids | 123TeachMe 

These are all free.  The Memory Verse Workbook is really neat.  You do have to go through the purchasing process (without giving any credit card info.) to get this download.  There are several other free workbooks there as well.  

I thought homeschooling wasn’t going to happen for awhile.  Things got pretty bleak, but the sun is peaking out now.  Anyway, we officially begin "kindergarten" on Monday, August 4.  So very exciting!

Lately, Z has taken a sincere interest in reading.  He wants to show me all the time that he can read and spell.  He loves telling me the new words he learns on "Super Why!"  He also loves to type and has discovered his little VTech laptop has a typing feature amidst all the pre-programmed games.  So, I immediately thought that typing would be a great way to teach him sight words and word families. 

As for curriculum, I’m not doing anything prepackaged.  The areas we’ll focus on will be: Language Arts, Math, Bible, Science, Social Studies and Spanish.  We’ll also be doing some P.E. and Arts related activities but not necessarily planned daily.  I know it seems like a lot for kindergarten, but it’s really more for me to be organized.  If I don’t have a game plan and waste too much time moving from one activity to another, Z will get distracted and disinterested.  And that’ll be all she wrote.  

As I post about daily activities, I’ll list some of the resources we’re using for each learning area. 

Peace