I've spent the last week intermittently cleaning out the schoolroom. The walls are bare; all papers have been sorted and stored (and believe me, that was a JOB); furniture has been rearranged and cleaned; shelves are in the process of being reorganized.
With a clean slate, I'll be ready to let the creative juices flow and get things set up for my 5 year old! I'm still feeling a bit strange about not having to plan for my 8 year old, but I'm sure I'll get over it!
I'm starting to feel excited about this new school year!
Thursday, August 8, 2013
Friday, August 2, 2013
A Second Try
Clearly, I wasn't very good at this last year, so I'm going to try again this year. It's only August, and we don't start our school year around here until September. This year, Angie will be attending the local elementary school as a 3rd grader. So I only have Maddie to work with for now.
As I'm beginning my planning, I have a dilemma to deal with. Maddie is 5. She's very smart and is doing 1st/2nd grade work. Unfortunately, she's 5, so she doesn't deal well with paper and pencil work. She'll do a bit of it, but much prefers play-like activities. So, this year, I'm going to make sure I focus on that aspect. But, I don't want her to stagnate academically, so I need to design it so that she will advance while having fun.
I've decided to go ahead with a standard Theme format for our kindergarten year. I'm going to try very hard to make each week a theme around which we base our academics. Here's the thought process.
Each day of the week will involve the weekly theme, and each of her academic subjects will revolve around that theme. We'll try to stick with the basics: reading, writing, math, social studies, science, spanish and crafts. And each day will contain about 4 or 5 subjects. No more than 2 hours of directed school work, in other words. Then we'll add in a lot of other activities and pretend play.
As for Angie, I'm hoping that she enjoys school and that the material is something that she is comfortable with (and that I am comfortable with) and that I don't have to supplement too much at home. If we do, it's going to get tricky, what with me working nights and all.
So, this is to be my accountability with Maddie, and my progress report with Angie!
Wish me luck!
As I'm beginning my planning, I have a dilemma to deal with. Maddie is 5. She's very smart and is doing 1st/2nd grade work. Unfortunately, she's 5, so she doesn't deal well with paper and pencil work. She'll do a bit of it, but much prefers play-like activities. So, this year, I'm going to make sure I focus on that aspect. But, I don't want her to stagnate academically, so I need to design it so that she will advance while having fun.
I've decided to go ahead with a standard Theme format for our kindergarten year. I'm going to try very hard to make each week a theme around which we base our academics. Here's the thought process.
Each day of the week will involve the weekly theme, and each of her academic subjects will revolve around that theme. We'll try to stick with the basics: reading, writing, math, social studies, science, spanish and crafts. And each day will contain about 4 or 5 subjects. No more than 2 hours of directed school work, in other words. Then we'll add in a lot of other activities and pretend play.
As for Angie, I'm hoping that she enjoys school and that the material is something that she is comfortable with (and that I am comfortable with) and that I don't have to supplement too much at home. If we do, it's going to get tricky, what with me working nights and all.
So, this is to be my accountability with Maddie, and my progress report with Angie!
Wish me luck!
Thursday, February 21, 2013
In Which Maddie Makes a Coloring Page
 |
| by Maddie I sow Maddie wocing a dog. She wus gwing home. (I saw Maddie walking a dog. She was going home.) |
Monday, October 22, 2012
Parental Pride
I can't help it. I tried and I tried to keep quiet, but I just can't.
Angie has written her second book ever, and just like the first, it has a beginning, middle and end, complete with conflict and resolution. (Because, as she said, "Mommy I noticed that in almost every book something happens, like something is lost or broken or someone does something wrong and then they have to figure out how to fix it.") It is seven chapters (read: paragraphs) and she spent three days writing and illustrating it. I printed it in booklet format for her from Adobe reader (thanks to Sandie for telling me about that nifty feature) and she is in heaven. I'm so very proud of her.
I shall provide the text of it here, but if you want a copy of it, you'll have to make a request. I'll have to scan and edit the illustrations before we can publish :).
The Mermaids’ Seashell
By Angie
Chapter 1
Once upon a time there were two mermaids named Jane and Marina. They were sisters. They were exploring the ocean. They found some pearls so they could make a necklace or bracelet. They were so excited that Jane fell. She fell on a seashell. It was a golden shell. Jane did not know what to do with it.
Chapter 2
Jane and Marina went to the king’s castle to ask the king if the golden shell was his. He said he had been looking all over for it. The two mermaids gave it back to him. But he said, "You may keep it because you found it." The two mermaid sisters said, "Thank you so much."
Chapter 3
The two mermaid sisters went home to their cave. Marina had a whole collection of pearls. Jane had a whole collection of seashells. But none of Jane’s seashells were gold. Jane thought that it would be nice to give the golden shell to Marina.
Chapter 4
Marina loved the golden seashell. While Jane and Marina were sleeping , a crab came and took the golden seashell to live in. When Jane and Marina woke up, Marina did not see the golden seashell. She was very ,very angry. But Jane told her that she would help look for it.
Chapter 5
First they asked if the king knew where it was. But he shook his head. Next they went to Seashell Cave. But they did not find it. They also looked at Sandy Seashore. But they only saw regular seashells. They didn’t see it anywhere. So they gave up. They started to swim home when Marina saw it and a smaller one too!
Chapter 6
When Marina picked up the two golden shells, one crab popped out of each seashell! The bigger crab pinched Jane because Jane was older. The smaller crab pinched Marina because Marina was younger. Jane swam home as quick as she could ,while Marina was trying to pull the crabs out of the two golden shells. Jane came back with two swirly seashells. When Jane saw that Marina was trying to pull the crabs out of the two seashells she was very angry. Then Jane said, "Leave the poor things alone."
Chapter 7
Marina let go of the two crabs. Jane said, "Here crab". The crabs crawled into the two swirly seashells. Then Jane said to Marina, "Wasn’t that so much easier than pulling them out?" Marina said, "Yes".
When the two mermaids got home, Marina gave the smaller shell to Jane. They went to a shipwreck to find a glass jar to put their golden seashells in. But this time they didn’t leave the seashells behind. When the two mermaids returned to their cave ,they were as happy as could be.
Angie has written her second book ever, and just like the first, it has a beginning, middle and end, complete with conflict and resolution. (Because, as she said, "Mommy I noticed that in almost every book something happens, like something is lost or broken or someone does something wrong and then they have to figure out how to fix it.") It is seven chapters (read: paragraphs) and she spent three days writing and illustrating it. I printed it in booklet format for her from Adobe reader (thanks to Sandie for telling me about that nifty feature) and she is in heaven. I'm so very proud of her.
I shall provide the text of it here, but if you want a copy of it, you'll have to make a request. I'll have to scan and edit the illustrations before we can publish :).
The Mermaids’ Seashell
By Angie
Chapter 1
Once upon a time there were two mermaids named Jane and Marina. They were sisters. They were exploring the ocean. They found some pearls so they could make a necklace or bracelet. They were so excited that Jane fell. She fell on a seashell. It was a golden shell. Jane did not know what to do with it.
Chapter 2
Jane and Marina went to the king’s castle to ask the king if the golden shell was his. He said he had been looking all over for it. The two mermaids gave it back to him. But he said, "You may keep it because you found it." The two mermaid sisters said, "Thank you so much."
Chapter 3
The two mermaid sisters went home to their cave. Marina had a whole collection of pearls. Jane had a whole collection of seashells. But none of Jane’s seashells were gold. Jane thought that it would be nice to give the golden shell to Marina.
Chapter 4
Marina loved the golden seashell. While Jane and Marina were sleeping , a crab came and took the golden seashell to live in. When Jane and Marina woke up, Marina did not see the golden seashell. She was very ,very angry. But Jane told her that she would help look for it.
Chapter 5
First they asked if the king knew where it was. But he shook his head. Next they went to Seashell Cave. But they did not find it. They also looked at Sandy Seashore. But they only saw regular seashells. They didn’t see it anywhere. So they gave up. They started to swim home when Marina saw it and a smaller one too!
Chapter 6
When Marina picked up the two golden shells, one crab popped out of each seashell! The bigger crab pinched Jane because Jane was older. The smaller crab pinched Marina because Marina was younger. Jane swam home as quick as she could ,while Marina was trying to pull the crabs out of the two golden shells. Jane came back with two swirly seashells. When Jane saw that Marina was trying to pull the crabs out of the two seashells she was very angry. Then Jane said, "Leave the poor things alone."
Chapter 7
Marina let go of the two crabs. Jane said, "Here crab". The crabs crawled into the two swirly seashells. Then Jane said to Marina, "Wasn’t that so much easier than pulling them out?" Marina said, "Yes".
When the two mermaids got home, Marina gave the smaller shell to Jane. They went to a shipwreck to find a glass jar to put their golden seashells in. But this time they didn’t leave the seashells behind. When the two mermaids returned to their cave ,they were as happy as could be.
Friday, October 19, 2012
One Year's Temperatures
Many of the decisions made in today's world are dependent on the collection and tabulation of great amounts of data. And trends in data can often be seen by graphing, a skill which too many children lack. In the sciences especially, where the correct analysis of data leads to new discoveries that can potentially impact the world, graphing is one of many tools that scientist need. And because I'm a very math and science minded person, it's important to me to teach my children how to read and create graphs that relate one quanitity to another. So we've begun a project called "One Year's Temperatures". Here's how it works:
I printed out a graph with temperatures ranging from 0 to 96 degrees Fahrenheit marked every 2 degrees on the vertical axis and the days of the month (1 - 31) on the horizontal axis. It uses 2 pages in landscape mode, taped together to form one graph. This hangs on the wall in our Calendar section of the room.
Each day, Angie checks a Weather Channel page ( which you can find for your town by Googling "yesterday's weather yourtownnameandstatehere". It'll be similar to this link: http://www.weather.com/weather/pastweather/90210 ) for the previous day's high and low temperatures. With a red marker, she marks the high temperature and connects it to the previous day's data point with a line. With a blue marker, she marks the low temperature and connects it ot the previous day's data point with a line.
Now, we have the kind of line graph that is found so prevalently in stock charts and other time valued data graphs.
What's wonderful is that she's beginning to understand the idea of a coordinate system and is looking at the graph from an analytical point of view. For intance, when the temperature plummeted 24 degrees overnight, Angie declared, "Wow, Mommy, do you see that!?!" as she drew the line. She imeediately understood that the steepness and downward slant of the line indicated a tremendous drop compared, especially, to the relatively minute changes we'd been seeing over the last few days. She has now related slope of a line with rate of change and direction of slant with increasing or decreasing behavior. These are Algebra 1 topics, folks. And my 7 year old (and yours too) can understand them because she's seeing them daily.
Our plan is to complete a temperature chart for each month and string them altogether on the longest wall in our house. And then, as we gaze at the entire assemblage, we'll mark the changes of the seasons and remark on the cyclic nature of temperatures. We may even take a single day and graph the temperatures hourly to see how it compares to the yearly one, getting in a discussion of similarity and fractals at the same time! (Note: Angie is also already noticing how the monthly charts are similar even though the temperatures are a bit lower than last month's.)
Oh how I love math!
I printed out a graph with temperatures ranging from 0 to 96 degrees Fahrenheit marked every 2 degrees on the vertical axis and the days of the month (1 - 31) on the horizontal axis. It uses 2 pages in landscape mode, taped together to form one graph. This hangs on the wall in our Calendar section of the room.
Each day, Angie checks a Weather Channel page ( which you can find for your town by Googling "yesterday's weather yourtownnameandstatehere". It'll be similar to this link: http://www.weather.com/weather/pastweather/90210 ) for the previous day's high and low temperatures. With a red marker, she marks the high temperature and connects it to the previous day's data point with a line. With a blue marker, she marks the low temperature and connects it ot the previous day's data point with a line.
Now, we have the kind of line graph that is found so prevalently in stock charts and other time valued data graphs.
What's wonderful is that she's beginning to understand the idea of a coordinate system and is looking at the graph from an analytical point of view. For intance, when the temperature plummeted 24 degrees overnight, Angie declared, "Wow, Mommy, do you see that!?!" as she drew the line. She imeediately understood that the steepness and downward slant of the line indicated a tremendous drop compared, especially, to the relatively minute changes we'd been seeing over the last few days. She has now related slope of a line with rate of change and direction of slant with increasing or decreasing behavior. These are Algebra 1 topics, folks. And my 7 year old (and yours too) can understand them because she's seeing them daily.
Our plan is to complete a temperature chart for each month and string them altogether on the longest wall in our house. And then, as we gaze at the entire assemblage, we'll mark the changes of the seasons and remark on the cyclic nature of temperatures. We may even take a single day and graph the temperatures hourly to see how it compares to the yearly one, getting in a discussion of similarity and fractals at the same time! (Note: Angie is also already noticing how the monthly charts are similar even though the temperatures are a bit lower than last month's.)
Oh how I love math!
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
My Star Students
Here are this year's students, posing for their yearly beginning-of-the-year pictures. We always take our pictures, print them in Jumbo Wallet size on our Epson PictureMate Dash, then glue them to the front of our "All About Me" books, in which we record pertinent information about our physical selves, as well as our likes, dislikes and abilities.
This is Maddie, who grew three inches in the last year. She is 4, but I keep forgetting that because she acts (most of the time) like all of her 6 and 7 year old cousins. My personal goal this year is to remember her age and treat her accordingly. She is very excited about school, and I'm trying hard to make it fun for everyone by playing games and keeping our daily lessons short but meaningful!
This is Angie, my 7 year old bundle of boundless energy who can't seem to sit still for much of anything, but has an amazing amount of concentration when it comes to completing arts and crafts. She will literally climb the walls if left to her own devices for too long. She also prefers hands on learning activities, and I've told her I'm working on it and she's being patient with the worksheets and reading we've been doing so far.
Although not one of my students, when I saw the filename "Girl with Nice Boots" on my computer, I couldn't help but open it and see what it was, because I never name my photos. And this is what it was, courtesy of Angie (who really prefers to be called Angelyn, but who settles for Angie because I never remember to call her Angelyn unless she's in trouble for something :) )
Amazing Handwriting Worksheets
If you search exactly that, "amazing handwriting worksheets", in Google, you're very first hit will be this fantastic and free site for making handwriting practice pages in three different writing styles with multiple options for what to put on a page. It is FULLY customizable. I can't say enough good things about it. If you need quick handwriting worksheets, this is your tool! (But don't be fooled by the giant DOWNLOAD buttons in the middle of the page. That's just for a PDF creator, which you don't need, unless you want to save your worksheets for future printing by printing them to a PDF generator instead of your printer. Or you can photocopy the one that you're going to print out.) Scroll down the page a bit to find the three choices for writing styles and begin!
When I practice handwriting with my littles (who are 4 and 7), I use this worksheet generator. I put 4 different letters on the page (one per line) and then 2 short words that use the current letters or letters we've already practiced on past sheets. The first letter on each line uses arrows to direct the writing. The second letter on each line is simply dotted, with no arrows. Then I ask for 5 beautiful copies of the letter on their own. I sit and correct as they're doing it to avoid bad habits. Then, immediately after finishing the line, we choose the best example from the five and put a tiny reward sticker above it. This provides incentive to both finish the work and to do it well. We always enjoy choosing the best one. When we disagree about which is the best, the child gets to choose. Notice that we're just looking for the best among the five that the child wrote, we're not looking for perfection.
And stickers from the local Dollar Tree are always useful!
When I practice handwriting with my littles (who are 4 and 7), I use this worksheet generator. I put 4 different letters on the page (one per line) and then 2 short words that use the current letters or letters we've already practiced on past sheets. The first letter on each line uses arrows to direct the writing. The second letter on each line is simply dotted, with no arrows. Then I ask for 5 beautiful copies of the letter on their own. I sit and correct as they're doing it to avoid bad habits. Then, immediately after finishing the line, we choose the best example from the five and put a tiny reward sticker above it. This provides incentive to both finish the work and to do it well. We always enjoy choosing the best one. When we disagree about which is the best, the child gets to choose. Notice that we're just looking for the best among the five that the child wrote, we're not looking for perfection.
And stickers from the local Dollar Tree are always useful!
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