Reading With Dad

Recently, we have been reading small chapter books with J at night. She has truly loved the Nate the Great series. A series of books about a boy detective who solves cases. I have found a few of them in my stash from 'Merica and we have read them more than once. While I was making dinner, I came into the living room to see this...

My DH reading to the kids. I love that Kaleb has joined in the chapter book fun as well. He gets so mad if we take them away. He so wants to be big like J. My heart can't take his treatment of the chapter books yet, though. He is still young and he likes to bend the covers and such. To remedy this, I gave him an old chapter book that was a duplicate so I wouldn't panic when I saw him with a book. I am teaching him how to handle books but he is still practicing. I just don't want him to tear up my books in the process. I hope your day is full of great reads.

Tot Tuesday

This week I caught Kaleb in the food pantry doing something interesting. He was peeling the onions in my bin. He sat there quite awhile, just peeling away. He would carefully peel each layer and place the layers in the potato bin. He wasn't hurting anything, so I left him alone. But I just had to take a few pictures.

He kept himself busy, just peeling the layers, concentrating hard on getting the job done.

He did a pretty good job. I will have to call him when I need an onion peeled.

Tot School - Red

Over the holidays, when we weren't completely sick, I began to plan for the new school year. I truly felt like I wasn't completely able to devote as much time to the tot as I would like without feeling that I wasn't doing enough for my kindergartner. I am making changes in our school day, which is an on going process, hopefully for the better. For the tot, I decided to work on colors for the next few weeks - the first color being red. Here are a few of the activities that we accomplished.

I recently found a marble game at a yard sale here called Wobally. It is full of rainbow colored marbles. I gave Kaleb a bowl full of red marbles, a spoon, and a small plastic bottle. The idea was to work on his fine motor skills by spooning the marbles into the bottle.

He mainly enjoyed pouring them into the bowl and dropping them back into the bottle.

The next activity was also for fine motor practice. I gave my tot tongs, red foam blocks, and a bowl. I showed him how to use the tongs and moved the block from one bowl to another. He practiced this for awhile.

He is so serious. While I was working with Kaleb, I had J working on some things I knew that she wouldn't need a lot of instruction on. She practiced her handwriting and worked on some adding. Seeing all of the activities that I was doing with Kaleb, she asked to do some as well.

The next activity was a water transfer using an eye dropper. I had planned on tinting the water red but I didn't. I showed Kaleb how to use the water dropper. This was somewhat frustrating for him.

He is dropping some water into an ice cube tray.

I turned my back and found this...I guess he was thirsty. Now, I am glad I didn't tint the water red.

A quick mental note - don't play with marbles the day after you have eaten M & M's. The candy was a treat from my parents in 'Merica and we do not normally have them. He thought they were candy. No worries - I stopped him. (always watch your children when playing with small items)

I gave Kaleb scissors and some red paper to cut.

With a little direction, he glued the red paper onto a heart that I cut out. He definitely didn't like getting glue on his fingers though.

Last activity for the week, I gave Kaleb a milk carton and some pick-up sticks - remember those? I used to love that game when I was younger.

Then I let him see what he could do. It didn't take long for him to figure out - he placed all of the sticks inside the carton. He loves things like these. Well, that was our tot week full of the color red.

Sonlight Week 15

I am finally glad to be back on track with school. Don't get me wrong, I love the holidays but there are times when you are ready to get back on schedule. This week in Sonlight brought us The Story of Dr. Dolittle, reading about Victorian fashions, and ocean creatures.

We added a new monthly calendar page to our math notebook. Our math notebook is used every day. It has monthly calendars which J traces the school day and counts how many days are left in the month. She marks special days with stars and counts the days. It also has a 100's chart. She uses the chart to count to 100 by ones, fives, tens, and soon by two's. It also has a blank 100's chart which she adds a sticker for every school day. Then she counts the days she has been in school and how many we have left until we reach 100. This notebook adds a few minutes to math instruction but I have found that it has helped J learn to count to 100. She now no longer has to look at the chart but it is there, in case she looses her place. It has also helped with the concept of weeks and months. (Links below if you are looking for some of the notebook pages)

She practiced her handwriting while I was working with Kaleb on the color red. I placed this sheet into a page protector so she can reuse it.

She worked on a word sort for cvc words. She had to say what the picture was and add it to the word family.

J worked on her mystery letter page. Her letter was D. She looked through magazines for pictures that started with the letter D. She worked on this while I was working with the tot.

J reading her words in Explode the Code. She is in the book Explode the Code 1 1/2 for the school year.

She worked on drawing ducks for the letter D. She made a whole family of ducks.

She practiced beginning sounds with this free printable that I found from Kindergarten Crayons. (Sorry, try as I might I could not find the exact link)

As a review from the long holiday, J worked on some word family mini books, a free printable by Lavina Pop. These are mini books that J will glue the pictures and write the words.

J is working on her Dr. Dolittle animal scrapbook. J loves animals and this is something she has requested to do. You can download the scrap book from here. In order not to stress out about the research, I have two animal encyclopedias on our table. When we work on a page, we look them up in the books.

We talk about the facts and she informs me which ones to add to her animal page. I write them for her. The basic idea is to learn about the animals. Here J is looking at the hedgehog pages. Did you know that a hedgehog can stay rolled in a ball for hours?

Lastly, we spent much time outside on our balcony, enjoying the snow. This week was a quick week due to snow days but it was full of fun and cold weather. Hope your week went well.

Links

Sharing Kindergarten space themed, missing numbers for child to add, plus a chart for number writing practice

What the Teacher Wants all the numbers missing except 1 and 100

Homeschool Creations has an ultimate file for math/calendar notebooks

Teaching First more free printable charts, use one for counting practice, the other for keeping track of days

Ironic Adventures has free printable calendars to trace the day and she added a new colorful set 2013 calendar set

Snow Day

This week we had an unexpected snow storm. My DH and DD both had the day off from school and, try as I might, I could not keep J focused on her school work. So, we had to play in the snow.

We had a snowball fight with our balcony neighbors and we even had enough snow to make a snowman. Kaleb cried when we came in but we were frozen. I guess home schoolers can have snow days too.

Dr. Dolittle Scrapbook

This week in our Sonlight adventure, we are reading The Story of Dr. Dolittle by Hugh Lofting. J absolutely loves animals and this book is full of animals to study. I wanted to add a scrapbook of sorts during the reading of this book. When we are introduced to an animal in the story, J can work on a mini-scrapbook page. She can add a picture of the animal at the top, trace the name, and add facts as we read about each one. I have several animal encyclopedias that we will use while reading the book so the research time will be minimal.

I added a page for each animal suggested in the manual. I also added a blank page for any other animals that you would like to add. At the end of the file, I included 3 pages of animal images that your child can cut and paste, if he doesn't want to draw. This is my first, true, self made printable. It is not perfect but I made it and I am offering it to you for use in your homeschool. If you download, I would love to hear from you. If there are any problems/errors that I have overlooked, please inform me and I will fix them. Hope this adds to your enjoyment of The Story of Dr. Dolittle. Please click HERE to download.

Tot Tuesday

One thing that I have had to learn to deal with this year homeschooling my kindergartner is that the tot is never too far behind. He insists on being right in the middle of everything - my lap, our games, everything. I have had to be flexible and creative, giving  Kaleb things to occupy him. His favorite activity is coloring with markers. I try not to give them too much because, if he is not totally supervised, we end up with marker on everything. The nice thing is that they are washable.

Look how happy he is that I caved and gave him markers to color with!

Busy, busy, busy... lining them up and coloring.