Kindergarten Week 1!! :)

I am so excited to share with you our first week of Kindergarten! If you didn't see the post about the curriculum that we chose you can read it here. As of right now we have only begun the Animals Worlds portion. We will begin the phonics portion in July, and math in August. Even though it was all introduction stuff we (yes, both of us) had a great time this week. I don't know who had more fun! I absolutely LOVE that I have a curriculum all planned out before me. All I have to do is check things off. Of course I can't leave well enough alone and add things here and there. I just have to find things to add to the theme whereas before I was creating the entire theme.

This week in the encyclopedia (which Annabelle is actually enjoying!) we talked about animals, what they eat, where they live, senses, skeletons, organs, camouflage, and your basic introductory stuff. She was really enthralled by the anatomy portion of this and we talked about our insides for quite a while. I caught her looking at this book several times throughout the week. I don't blame her, the pictures are quite beautiful.

To go along with talking about different habitats I made up this animal/habitat sort that I found here. We did this a couple times. I wanted to see what her knowledge was of where animals live. She did very well with the tundra and ocean animals. We will keep this out the next couple weeks and work on it some more.
Annabelle loved helping me cut out her animal measuring chart. She felt pretty big.
All hung up on the wall. We will be using this all year as we chart how tall different animals are. If you look closely you can see the light blue square on the chart. Annabelle is 42inches tall. Amos, our dog measured in at a whopping 37 inches (his head height while sitting).
We will be starting our Animal World adventure in the Savannah. I got a head start on the book, Born Free, that we will be reading for the next 6 weeks or so this week. I really think that she will only be able to handle it every other day so I wanted to start it early. We did a neat little game to hold her interest, you can read about it in this short post. It worked out really well, and got her excited about reading a book that would otherwise be of no interest to her.
After one of our readings from Born Free was done we practiced dragging a blanket around like a lion would drag something, between its legs. Let me tell you....this is very awkward. Yes, I did try it. Yes, Annabelle did take a picture of me doing it. No, you cannot see them. lol
Throughout the year we will be doing a lot of exploring and observing outdoors. On this night we talked about what an observation is, and how we use our senses to discover things. I let her use my camera to make some observations about the living room (she LOVES this). She made note of what was out of place. (This is one of her sample pictures)
After the observation time was completed I printed off the pictures she took and she cut and pasted them into her 'field journal'.
The day before we made our first observations outside we put together a little explorer's backpack. She was incredibly excited about this and told anyone who walked in our door about it. The backpack includes: a flashlight, zip lock baggies, bug house, binoculars, tape measure, colored pencils, pad of paper, shovel, magnifying glass, AND something every explorer shouldn't leave the house without.....2 My Little Ponies, in case she gets bored exploring (as per her reasoning). lol
Her first outside observing venture.
The next couple pictures are ones that she took. Not included are the pictures of bushes and tree sap (which smells like a Christmas tree). I printed these off and she pasted them in her journal.


Annabelle also finished up her alphabet wall this week. She danced around saying, "I'm all done with letters forever!" If she only knew what was coming. It's ok, I'll let her think that she's done for a couple weeks. :)

We used the bottom of plastic soda bottles to stamp violets.
V is for Violets.
X is for X-ray. I drew the X's and the skeleton on white paper with white crayon. She brushed black paint over it and revealed the picture.
Y is for yellow yarn.
Z is for zig zags (which she drew on the Zz you just can't see it very well) and zipper.
The completed wall. It has been in the works since August 2010. This gives me such a feeling of accomplishment! It is finally finished! :) AND.....we had fun and learned so much along the way, not only academically, but about each other too.
I'm so glad that we get to keep learning together! Happy blogging.
jess_hak

I am linking up to Preschool Corner. Head on over there and find out what other fun littles are doing.