Kindergarten Catch-up Post

Wow! It's really been a while since I updated what Annabelle was doing in school. We are still having a lot of fun. We did have to slow down in Dec/Jan due to me not feeling well. We pretty much stayed on track with all her important things (math, phonics, reading). We slacked off on the Animal Worlds. It was just too overwhelming for me during that time. We really just needed to get the bare minimum done. We pushed through and we are on the other side. We FINALLY finished up our woods unit. Unfortunately due to lost time we will be skipping the Arctic Tundra unit and head right into the Desert Unit, followed by the Rainforest, and if we have time we will wrap it up with the Ocean.

Anyway, onto what we have been doing the last month and a half.....

Our last Woods week was based on owls.

The highlight of this week was probably dissecting the owl pellet. I was thoroughly grossed out (I don't know why, I loved dissecting things when I was younger). Annabelle thought it was so cool. I really love that she is girly, but not afraid to get dirty and play hard.
Pulling a bone out.
Annabelle and Asa examining all the bones that we found.
Their favorite was the full skull. I was pretty impressed with that myself. We came to the conclusion that these bones were most likely from a mouse.
She really enjoys making these little animal crafts. She's been playing with this owl since she made it.

We had a fun activity that we did for Animal worlds. We fed the squirrels...and they got a gourmet feast....peanuts (with a few almonds, pecans, and hazelnuts mixed in). Zak's reaction to this activity..."You're going to set this project up in our neighbor's yard right?" Nope, we did it in our yard. :)
This was our first of many visitors. He was so fun to watch. He would grab a nut, go bury it, and then come back for more. Annabelle named him Squirrely (quite original right?).

Plugging away at Ready2Read and still loving it. There are 8 units in level 1 and we've been doing one unit and stretching it over 2 weeks. She gets overwhelmed with reading quickly so I thought it was important just to take our time with it. Here she is pin poking her sight words. This activity was requested by her when she saw Asa working on his letter of the week.
Word family sort.
She is also starting to read her little beginner readers. She thinks it's pretty cool that she is reading 'real' books.
She really, really likes her Explode the Code 1 book. I really like that it is giving her a TON of confidence with her reading skills.
Patterning work in math.
Snow play dough. I made this for the little guys theme, but she enjoyed it just as much. Her favorite Toob figures were the Eskimos and the igloo.
We had snow for about 2 weeks here in MI (it's low 40s now and the snow is gone!). They were outside quite a bit while it was here though. This is one of the days that they played with their colored water spray bottles. So much fun!
I hope everyone else is having a great winter! Even though my posts were absent I've been still keeping up with others and enjoying what everyone else is doing! Happy blogging.

jess_hak

Linking up to Preschool Corner.

African Savannah: Zebras and Rhinos

Another week down! One more week left in the Savannah and then we'll be moving on to Swamplands. That should be....exciting. :) We are almost done with two of our chapter books (Born Free and Henry Huggins). Annabelle's listening skills have definitely improved. I did a couple of posts to show some activities that we did to go along with the books. If you are interested in seeing those you can find them here and here. :)

I also wanted to say that these posts are not all inclusive of what we do during the week. There is also LA, Bible, and soon to be added....math. I just liked the thought of doing separate posts for these so that they don't get too long. Plus, it is easier for me to categorize and go back and look for something later if I keep them separate.

We talked about two different animals in length this week. The first being the zebra. We learned a lot about them. Annabelle surprised me when she remembered what part of the grass zebras eat (the tops). We only covered that briefly a couple weeks ago. I guess picking up weird, useless facts starts at an early age. :)

Her favorite thing about every week is making her animal craft. I was only planning on keeping them until we started the next habitat unit, but I don't think she will let me get rid of them. lol They have become her favorite toys to play with these last few weeks.
Loving that it is dry and she gets to now introduce it to the other 'animals'.
We worked hard on her notebook pages again. I love her drawing of the zebra. I tried to explain to her that zebra stripes run vertical (except for their butts and legs)....but she insisted they be horizontal. As usual the elements for this were found at Homeschool Share. I like in this particular unit they included younger children elements like other black and white animals and words that start with Zz.
She also colored the fictional story of How Zebras Got Their Stripes. She 'scribble' colored on a good portion of this story and was upset to find out that it was going in her book like this. She has come to terms with it now, but it was a really good lesson in always doing our best. It is important to learn to be proud of your work because you never know who will be seeing it. With that said I gave her the option to redo it. She opted to just tell people it wasn't her best work. lol She really doesn't like coloring all that much. :)
She was excited when she found out we would be making 2 animals this week. She enjoyed mixing our black and white paint to make a nice gray rhino.
Her rhino is a white rhino because it is nice and likes people.
We talked about two different kinds of rhinos this week: the white rhino and the black rhino. Her notebook deals with a lot of those differences. She seems to remember them pretty good. However, sometimes she calls the white rhino a gray rhino. It only makes sense right....I mean they are gray....but so are the black rhinos...right. This was a conversation that went on for a couple days. :)
She also thought it was funny that female rhinos are called cows. She said, "But it's a rhino, not a cow."
The letter in the curriculum this week was Jj. She worked really hard on putting jewels on the Jjs.
By far her prettiest craft ever (so she thinks).
She also made a jellyfish, which as she pointed out went very good with her brothers ocean theme.
She didn't want it to sting her. :)
Snapped this picture one morning of her and her posse of boys. She is showing them her notebook and teaching them about the animals. So glad we're keeping a notebook. It is such a fantastic review/learning tool.
Hope everyone else had a great week! Happy blogging.

jess_hak

Linking up to Homeschool Creations.

African Savannah: Lions

We actually started out this week about talking about tree shapes. Acacia trees that are found on the Savannah are umbrella shaped. We went outside and walked around to see if we could find any umbrella shaped trees.....we didn't. We found that trees with a distinguishable shape tend to be triangles in our neck of the woods. :)

This is her observation page that she did. She found the trees and took pictures, and I printed them out for her to cut and paste into her book.
Working on her lion craft. She has a lot of fun with these.
She even let Asa help!
The finished masterpiece. :) Right now him and the giraffe are having tea. lol
Here is some work that we did on her Animal Notebook this week. I love the multi-colored animals that she has been coloring. They make me smile. :)
Bad picture....sorry. I made this "Where do lions live?" interactive. I just put velcro on it so that she can do this again and again. There is also some copy work attached that she did.
We learned a lot about the jobs of each lion. The boys protect the pride from predators, invading lions etc., the girls hunt and raise the babies, the babies learn how to be lions.
All of these great lap book components can be found at Homeschool Share. Annabelle really likes her notebook, and it is something she looks over almost daily. It is also something she loves to show other people. It is so good to see her be proud and take ownership of her work. :)

The letter that we reviewed this week was the letter N. One of the activities we did was creating the letter Nn out of pipe cleaners. She also made quite a few other letters.
Making a newt.
Newts like to sun themselves on rocks, so of course Annabelle had to find a nice rock for her little newt.
She also made a noodle name. I wrote her name on paper (I tried to have her write it, but she wasn't understanding that it needed to be big, but not so big that it wouldn't fit on the paper), she outlined it in glue, and then stuck on the noodles.
She did this while I was reading to her from Born Free (one of the chapter books she has a really hard time focusing on). This type of work really helps her engage more in the reading.
My kids really enjoy their school space. I find them playing in there often. It is such a blessing to be able to have an area for there things (and to be able to close the door when I don't want them playing in their manipulatives).

This is a little peek of what I find during the day when my kids are actually playing quietly and nicely (without doing something naughty or making a huge mess lol). Annabelle is 'reading' to Asa and Jude.
Waking up in the morning and playing with everything on the shelves all at once. We had a fun cleaning/sorting lesson after this. :)
That was our week. Next up we will be learning about cheetahs (with a little side glance at hippos). Happy blogging!

jess_hak

Linking up to Preschool Corner. :)