ivey league kindergarten: weeks in review!

Here's what we did over the last couple of weeks...

We took MLK Day off since that's a typical school holiday, plus Daddy was home that day too!

Reading:  This week I printed out another "snakes & ladders" game board with some of the words we had learned during the previous week.  We played with this board a few times during the week since Caleb seems to learn well with games.

In our Hooked on Phonics workbook, we continued to work on -ng words.  I also found a few readers at the library that used similar words.

During the second week, we moved on in the workbook to -amp, -imp, and -ump words, as well as words ending in -nd.  Caleb earned a total of 3 stars on his reading chart for reading the accompanying stories and books!

Math:  We continued on in his math workbook, which introduced more skip-counting as well as subtracting without a number line.

Handwriting Without Tears:  During these two weeks, Caleb finished all of the lowercase letters.  The workbook also had more word and sentence copywork, and introduced the basics of punctuation.

The workbook ends with number practice.  Caleb already learned how to write his numbers via our math curriculum, but we decided to work on it some more since he still has some difficulty with 8's in particular (he still writes an 8 as two circles on top of each other, rather than the standard "start with an S" method).  My one complaint with HWT....we were not fans of how they taught a few of the numbers, mainly 2's and 6's.  Caleb actually did worse with the 2's when he tried to copy them using the HWT method, so I finally told him to ignore it and write 2 as he was used to doing.  I also helped him when we got to 6, which almost looked like a lowercase "b"....I gave him a different starting point in the box, told him to write as though he was writing a zero, and then loop it in the center. 

Caleb was frustrated when we got to 8, but I had him practice on his Doodle Pro first.  By his third or fourth 8 he did much better!  We purposely did handwriting before math that day, so he was able to move on to math and practice his 8's in his math workbook as he solved addition and subtraction problems.

Bible:  We continued doing our Growing With Jesus devotional most days.

Read-Aloud:  We finished Stuart Little.  I don't think either of us were big fans of this book.  There are some funny parts, but it's slow-moving at times and the end is uncertain.  Caleb wanted more closure!  We started A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh after that.  I had found that and The House at Pooh Corner at Goodwill awhile back; both boys liked the movie so Caleb was interested to see what the book was like.  Tigger isn't in this first one, but so far it's been enjoyable.

Caleb has around 30 math lessons left, and only a few pages left in his handwriting workbook.  We'll probably do extra handwriting practice until he officially starts first grade in a couple of months (though I have the first grade HWT workbook as well), only because there are times when he forgets how to form a letter correctly and I want to make sure he has it down before we get into spelling and other curriculum later on.

ivey league kindergarten: week in review

Here's what we did last week!

Caleb has really been into board games lately, so I was excited to find free printable sight word "snakes and ladders" game boards online.  You can type in your own words if you want a custom board, so I filled in a mixture of new and familiar words for us to read as we played.  This was a great way to practice reading without getting Caleb all frustrated!

We continued to review -ch, -tch, and -sh words....

...and also got into -ng words toward the end of the week.  I went ahead and printed out a different snakes and ladders board for us to use next week so we can make sure to practice these new words as well.

In math, Caleb continued to work on addition and subtraction with a number line.  However, when presented with simple addition problems without a number line, Caleb was very good about adding the numbers up in his head!  The math lessons also introduced three-dimensional shapes such as spheres and cones, and we also learned about "quarter after" in telling time.

In Handwriting Without Tears, Caleb worked on lowercase y, j, r, n, m, h, b, and f.

We continued our devotionals each day too.  However, I didn't think far enough ahead to include some kind of activity with any of them.  I might try to do that more often, because if Caleb does some kind of hands-on art activity or game, he's more likely to remember the message that went along with it.

We continued to read Stuart Little aloud as well, and on Friday we took advantage of our library recently extending their hours of operation and checked out some new books!  Caleb declined story time on Tuesday...I'm not sure if he was feeling tired or just isn't interested anymore.  If we do go back, I'm going to try to go in the afternoon in hopes that more kids his age will be there then.

Links:
Free Snakes & Ladders Sight Words Game (SightWords.com)
Free Phonics Readers (The Measured Mom)
Free "TH" Words Sorting Activity (Teachers Pay Teachers)

ivey league kindergarten: week in review!

We're back at it after a few weeks off for the holidays!

Since Caleb finished the first half of first grade reading right before the break, we decided not to jump into the second half right then.  Instead, we reviewed what he had learned, plus read a bunch of Level 1 Readers, both in our collection and from the public library.

We started back this past Tuesday and jumped right in.  The second half of the first grade level deals with pretty much the same digraphs and blends we learned in the first half, only now they're on the end of the words.  Caleb had a little trouble with this, so we're going through it nice and slowly.  To help, as well as to make things more interesting, I printed out a couple of free phonics readers that featured -atch and -itch words, plus printed out a whole set of word builder cards since sometimes Caleb learns better by actually constructing.

We also used his Magna Doodle to write words in the same family.  Since we only had to erase the beginning of the word if we were staying in the same family, it helped Caleb see how to read each one (I also let him make nonsense words!).

In Handwriting Without Tears, we continued to work on lowercase letters.  The booklet has also started having the student copy words and sentences as well, so this is teaching Caleb about when to capitalize a letter, as well as to put a period at the end.

In math, I was relieved to see that Caleb didn't regress over the break...he still remembered how to add and subtract using a number line, among other things.  This week we learned about the quarter.  He still struggles with finding the value of groups of coins, but I'm not stressing about this.  It's kindergarten math so I'm fine if it takes awhile for him to figure out this skill.

We also started a new devotional for Bible time.  It's called Growing With Jesus and each lesson has a verse and a very brief discussion.  For a few of them, I found hands-on activities to help drive the point home.  On the first day, we learned that God made everyone special, so we did a fun fingerprint activity to show that no one's fingerprints are the same.

Another day talked about how when we become friends with Jesus, He makes us into a new creation, much like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly.  We colored pictures of butterflies on that day.

On Friday, we learned that we should be thankful even if we don't feel like it.  We talked about different emotions, and then filled in blank faces for fun.  I printed out fun emotion puzzles for Micah too!

Speaking of Micah, he's been very interested in joining us at the table for school.  So I've made a point of setting aside certain toys, puzzles, and books just for school time.  I give him one thing at a time, and switch them out once he seems bored.  So far it's working pretty well.

All in all, I'm pleased about how our first week back went.  On to the next!

Links:
Free Phonics Readers (The Measured Mom)
Free Word Builders Set (The Measured Mom)
Fingerprint Stamp Activity (Making Learning Fun)
Blank Faces Printable (Dabbles and Babbles)
Emotion Puzzles (Z lesa)