The end of an adventure...

 Our first official school year (Kindergarten) has come to a close! It has been a crazy fun adventure this year as Chickadee and I (and my husband) waded through the waters of homeschooling! We had many ups, a few downs, and lots of fun memories! Here are a few highlights from our year:

August: First Day of Kindergarten! 
September: Trip to Disney World!
October: Charlotte's Web Unit Study
November: Learning to Read!
December: Truth in the Tinsel Christmas Study!
January: 100th Day!
February: Animal Secret's Homeschool class at the Children's Museum!
March: Fairy Tales Unit Study!
April: Road Trip USA study (begin)

MAY:  

I can't believe that I have a first grader now, but I know that beyond a doubt, homeschooling her this year was the right choice! We have all learned so much from this experience and are excited to see what the next year holds!  Overall I was pleased with our curriculum and only had to make a few tweaks. Along with literature studies, a social studies magazine, and resources from our library, our Core Curriculum we used this year included:
Horizons Math K
All About Reading Level 1
Starfall Learn to Read
Elemental Science- Exploring Science
Home Art Studio
Writeshop Primary Book A
A Reason For Handwriting K
What's In the Bible with Buck Denver? (complete series)

We have now wrapped up our school year, are in the process of reorganizing and cleaning our school room to get ready for next year, and we are enjoying the summer!  We have already made a trip out of state (for my sisters wedding!), gone swimming at our local pool, played in the sprinkler numerous times, read many many books, joined our library's summer reading program, and done some cool science/art projects! Summer is in full swing and we are living it up!

Until life's next adventure,
~B


*If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to ask. I would be more than happy to answer them!

**Disclosure: All links are only for your benefit. I do not receive any type of endorsement or reward for my opinions/links above. 

100's day Adventure!

How we celebrated our first 100 days of Homeschooling Kindergarten!

 I wanted to give Chickadee a fun day for making it through her first 100 days of Kindergarten!! She knew when our 100th day would be as we have been keeping track of the number of days during our morning calendar time, however, she had NO idea what I had planned for her! The night before our 100th day (after she was well asleep!) I made the 100 poster (with 3 sets of 100 "things"-hearts, swirls, and stars- one hundred around each number) and hung it up in our living room entrance! (I had decided we would be doing school in the living room on this day since A-it was more of a fun day and we could be more relaxed in there and B-the temperature outside was near the single digits (before wind chill) which meant our school room would be REALLY REALLY cold!) I also piled up all the books we would be reading (see list at end of post) and put in the different activities between the books.  When she came out of her room that morning, she was SO excited! 

  The first thing we did was head out to our cold school room to do our calendar time- I wanted her to SEE how to move our place value straws to make 100 and fill in her "100 days of school chart. Once we were sure it was our 100th day, we headed back to the living room. We read a few poems from the book "Counting our way to the 100th Day!" Then she opened her special letter from her Grandma! (My mom is a principal at a Christian School in Michigan and wanted to send along something fun since she understands how fun the 100th day is for Kindergartners!)

Inside she found some pretty neat glasses (see picture above), a certificate, a pencil that said "Kindergartners are #1, a bookmark and a fun 100 day coloring activity! She LOVED it (but what kid doesn't thoroughly enjoy getting mail!!??!) 

  Then, we read "Miss Bindergarten Celebrates the 100th Day of Kindergarten" by Joseph Slate. She LOVED this book and even chose to write about for her first "assignment" of the day- "My favorite thing about the first 100 days of school...." Chickadee's answer was "Reading Miss Bindergarten Celebrates the 100th day of Kindergarten with mommy." (I tried to explain that it meant she could pick something from ALL our days of school this year, life field trips, unit studies, art, etc. but she insisted that it be this! After that we played a 100 tallies dice game and read another book. Our day continued in this fashion for the most part, read a book, do a few activities, read another book, etc. (Listed below are all my resources for the activities we used as well as the books we read!) 

Dad even got in and read one of our books on his lunch break!

  One of my favorite activities was the "What can I do in 100 seconds" game. Chickadee had to estimate how many times she thought she could do a certain activity and then actually do it for 100 seconds to see what it acutally was. She had a lot of fun completing the activities which included: clap your hands, blink your eyes, sing the  alphabet, write your name, etc. 

  Another one of my favorite things she did during our celebration day was the "What I think I will look like when I am 100 years old..." Her picture cracked me up so I wanted to share it with you... 

Apparently, she is not going to have much hair on the TOP of her head, but it's going to grow all over her face. That is what she told me all the lines on her face were... :)

One of our final activities (and I think Chickadee's favorite) was making a fruit loop necklace. She had to count out all the fruit loops then string them on and then she could eat them as we did the rest of our work. Here are a few pictures of that process: 

Overall, we had a wonderfully fun day!! I wanted to leave you with just a few more "fun pictures" from our 100th day celebration!! 

Happy 100th day!

Books we read for our 100th day celebration:

• Miss Bindergarten Celebrates the 100th day of Kindergarten by: Joseph Slate**
• Kindergarten Count to 100 by: Jacqueline Rogers
• Fluffy's 100th Day at School by: Kate McMullan
• Jake's 100th Day at School by: Lester Laminack**
• Emily's First 100 Days of School by: Rosemary Wells
• Henry's 100 Days of Kindergarten by: Nancy Carlson
• Counting Our Way To The 100th Day! 100 poems by: Betsy Franco**

**These were our favorite books to read!**

List of resources where we found our activities and printables (all free at time of printing): 

• 100's day mini unit  includes: booklet, "If I had $100.00..., My favorite thing...., What I will look like when I am 100...., trail mix recipe, Tallies dice game, Estimation page and directions.
• 100's day activity bookmarks Includes 2 different 100 day bookmarks to make and 1 premade
• What I can do in 100 seconds worksheet (Scroll down about 3/4 way, also has a lot of other fun ideas on this page!)
• flip a coin 100 times (also includes a color by code- even/odd #'s and 100th day news)

These are most of the resources we used. You can find so many more ideas and free printables on pintrest or through a google search! I hope I have inspired you to have a 100's day adventure of your own! 

As always, comments, questions, or just random thoughts are always welcome!

~B

Math Adventures!

How I teach MATH in Kindergarten:

   To begin, I will redirect you to the beginning of yesterday's post about Chickadee's Early Childhood background here. 

PRE-K:

  So now, I will pick up where that left off! Last year we used Confessions of a Homeschooler's K4  Curriculum. In this curriculum, Chickadee practiced number writing 1-20, beginning math skills, reviewed colors and shapes, counting to 50, skip counting, and a variety of other math related things! My favorite math component from this pack were the Add It! and Subtract It! games. These hands on games helped Chickadee to visualize what happens when we add to basic numbers or subtract numbers. She enjoyed playing them last year and we still pull them out from time to time for review and fun!

  Along with our purchased curriculum for PreK, we also watched Leapfrog DVD's (Math Circus, Math Adventure to the moon, etc) and used a variety of preschool leveled games to reinforce and teach math skills. 

  KINDERGARTEN CURRICULUM:

  This year we are using Alpha Omega's Horizons K math curriculum. (Learn more about the complete Horizon's Curriculum here.) I love this curriculum as the teacher book is easy to follow and the student book is all in color! Chickadee LOVES math (and that's an understatement!) and loves to get to her math draw each day. We have our math curriculum in our 2nd work-box (after Calendar) because she looks forward to it and it helps us start our morning off right! We usually start our lesson with some oral counting (currently- up to 100!) and a few flash cards covering either basic addition to 10 or skip counting. Then, we sit together using whichever manipulative needed and cover the "new" concept of the lesson. For this time, we use a variety of manipulatives and other resources. We may use the chalkboard, play money, clocks, dry erase boards, dry erase books, pattern blocks, base 10 blocks, games, etc. Whatever we need to do for Chickadee to grasp the new concept. Then, she moves back to her desk and we go through her work-page together. The first part of her page is usually covering the new concept, so we talk this through together. The rest of the work page is review of previous concepts taught. We are at the point in our school year now that most days, I go over all the directions with her and then she completes them on her own. She usually tells me "I want to surprise you, let me do it by myself!" I will move back to my desk and find something to work on while she finishes her math! Then we check it together and go on with our day! 

CALENDAR:

  We also cover a lot of math concepts during our calendar time. 

This is the very first part of day getting us into "school-mode." During this time, we practice the months of they year, the days of the week, and the date (including the year). Chickadee then writes in the day's number in her monthly calendar we get from here. Then we graph the weather. (Find the graph we use here; "click on weather graphing"). Next, we do a tally mark count of the days of school for each month. (Find our tally sheet here.) After that, we do our place value number of days and keep track of how many days of school we have had. We do this two ways- the first is that we have a 100 grid that we are filling in to get to 100! The second way to keep track of how many days of school is writing down our number and placing them around the room. At the beginning of the year, I traced Chickadee's hand onto construction paper. Each day, we add a number to one of her fingers. When all 5 fingers are filled, we right the last number largely on the palm, and then hang it in the room. The next hand goes right next to the first hand and so on. This is a great way of keeping track of days of school as well as visualizing how to count by 5's! We have also done a different colored hand print for each month and we are getting a rainbow effect around the top of our school room! Chickadee gets practice writing numbers and we have a quick visual of how many days of school! Finally, chickadee does a number a week page to give her extra writing practice with her numbers. We use Confessions of a Homeschooler's Kindergarten Number Writing sheets. 

(Disclaimer: We use a lot of Confessions of a Homeschooler's math pages during calendar because we used this curriculum during her PreK year and it is what she is familiar with. Confessions of a Homeschooler offers most of these printables for free! Check them out, they are definitely worth it!)

Putting in the date card

Writing in the date

Counting in the Weather graph

Tally Marks

Place Value- 10's

Place Value- Ones!

Number Writing Practice sheets

 Other Ways to teach MATH:

  We also incorporate other math concepts and math practice through unit studies, like our Charlotte's Web study and our current Fairy Tale study. 

Measuring fire tools - Fire Safety Unit

Writing down those measurements!

Playing a game for Fire Safey- note the dice with number words instead of dots or written numbers!

We also use manipulatives during free play. I have quite a collection of math manipulatives and Chickadee gets time each day to choose different items for free play. I have listed some of these activities below:

Some of our Manipulatives

• Geoboards
• Pattern Blocks
• Tangrams
• Number Puzzles
• Shape Puzzles
• Alphie-Numbers
• Flashcards
• Dice
• Games
• Unifix Cubes
• Base 10 Blocks
• Math DVD's
• Sequencing Cards
• Fun workbooks
• Themed units

These are the ways we incorporate and teach math throughout our school day in Kindergarten! I hope that maybe you saw a new idea and are encouraged to try something new with your students! Let me know if you have any questions! 

~B 

Brown Bear, Brown Bear Necklace Sequencing

We decided to try out the Virtual Book Club for the first time! This month's author was Bill Martin Jr. We chose the book "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?" (one of Chickadee's favorite books!)

I picked this book because it was a book that Chickadee loves and enjoys reading, but not one that we had done a lot of activities with. She was excited as she pulled out the activity and wanted to know what we were going to do! Here is what I used:

The book "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" by Bill Martin Jr./Eric Carle; Pony/craft beads;  "Brown Bear Flip Book" cards

The first thing we did was read the story. Since this is a favorite of Chickadee she pretty much as this story memorized and so she read it to me!  

She even added voices for the different characters! It was great!

Next we took the cards I had prepared and played matching, matching the pictures to the words that described the cards:

Then, we made our sequencing necklace!! I had her lay out the pairs of words/pictures and get out the bag of beads. I asked her which animal came first in the book and she said "Brown Bear!" so we added one bead and then added the brown bear word card and picture card. Next we added 2 beads (for the second animal) and she knew red bird was next so we added the word card and the picture card. Then we added 3 beads (for the 3rd picture) and she had to check in the book for what came next because she couldn't remember. We continued using this pattern (# of beads for which number the animal was plus the word card and picture card) until the necklace was completed!

Look at that concentration!!

Finally, we had a finished "Story Sequencing Necklace" and she just HAD to wear it and retell me the story of the book using her new necklace!

**This activity ended up teaching more than just story sequencing! We did matching, counting beads, ordinal numbers, worked on fine motor skills, and retelling the story! My favorite part of the activity of was Chickadee was stringing on beads, stopped and looked up at me and said- "Mom, this is awesome! I LOVE this!" 

Making learning fun.... that's what it's all about!

Until next time, Enjoy life's adventures!

~B