there is a lot to learn!

When I started our Pre-K year last year, I was a bit intimidated by the idea of homeschooling.  Having to be the one to teach these girls everything!  It seemed a bit overwhelming.  And, we got through it.  The girls showed much improvement throughout the year.  And, we all made it out on the other side alive! :)

And, so begins our Kindergarten year.  Talk about overwhelming.  I'm not sure if this is going to be the same feeling I get year after year.  But, I am a bit nervous about this year.  Now, looking back, having the girls memorize the alphabet and number, shapes, colors, and whatever else we covered seems easy.

I have our set curriculum that I bought through Timberdoodle, again, this year.  I cut out some of their suggestions to keep it basic (and cut the cost...you can spend LOTS of money).  In other areas, I am looking online and in books we already have for ideas.  Art, for example, is something that I have a few books with all sorts of ideas.  And, just take a look at Pinterest.  Tons of ideas there.

I can handle the art projects.  The part I am nervous about is teaching them how to read!  WHAT!?  I have to do that?!  I hope it goes better than I am expecting.



Click on picture to go to link.

And, there are just so many things you just don't think about.  Or, at least, I don't think about them.  What about odd and even numbers, all the sight words, vowels, days of the week, etc.  The list just goes on and on.  Oh, and telling time!  Doing this whole homeschooling thing, I have definitely learned to appreciate teachers more.  Not that I didn't appreciate them in the first place.  And I only have two students!  A whole classroom full of them!  No thanks!

So, we have added some fun posters on the wall to emphasize what we are learning.  The book I showed above, The Reading Lesson, we just finished one lesson (each "lesson" is between 19 and 21 pages).  So far, it seem OK.  And, I am just going to work on repetition and review a lot.  Also, we have lots of phonics books that came with the curriculum.

I bought all these flash cards of sight words.  I'm just introducing a new one each day and reviewing the previous ones everyday.  We enjoy making up sentences with the sight words.  We started a sight word caterpillar on the wall.  We can only add words that we know.  That is a huge incentive for the girls.  They love adding to it.  Hopefully it will help them retain the words they learn.  (fingers crossed)  Something else I have been doing is when I read a book to them, I have the girls read the words we have learned.  Just another way for them to remember the words.  Some extra reading is going to be done this year.

I have been working on the numbers/math a lot.  As I mentioned before, I kind of slacked on the numbers.  There are a few that they get confused about.  But, now, I am introducing the spelling of the numbers.  Here, we are doing an easy math lesson.  We broke out the dominos and added up the two sides.  Emily picked up on it so quickly.  Bella, it took her a few times to get into the groove.

I do really like all the books that came with the package I bought.  It seems just the right amount of work.  And, the books are just well thought out.  I guess that is the point, right? :)

I did hesitate when buying all the books/workbooks.  There was a Beginning Geography workbook that I wasn't really sure about.  But, I went ahead and bought one for each of the girls.  I am really glad I did.  We have only done about 5 pages so far, but it introduces such basic information that, once again, I wouldn't have thought about teaching.  Remember, I didn't go to college to teach! :)  Here, the girls are doing a page in their Beginning Geography book.

The girls have always been OK with doing school, for the most part.  They have their days.  But, that is to be expected.  This year, I am going to be better about doing fun things, like art projects, with them.  A few times a week we finish our school day with something fun.  Last week we did the stamps and paper lanterns.  The girls loved the lanterns.

This week, the only project we have done so far is making paper plate snowmen.  That went over really well.  Right now they are hanging on the wall here in our classroom.  I think what we will do tomorrow is this snowman project.  We will keep it festive for the holidays for the next few weeks.

Now to get all my worksheets printed out for tonight's school session.

we started kindergarten!

***Updated -- I added pictures of us using the stamps!***

I got the packages of our school books and workbooks in the mail last week.  And, I got busy planning our year and was able to get us started on our Kindergarten year this week.  So, we are official Kindergartners.  Exciting, yeah?  Of course!

I'm a little intimidated because this year I am teaching these girls how to read.  Please, let it be not as horrible as I am thinking!  Time will tell, right?

The girls were excited to get started with school again.  We had taken a 6 week break.  I think we all needed that break.

I have started having an incentive a few times a week for them.  Art projects are the incentive. Easy, right!?  They know if they are listening and following directions during school, they get to do the fun art project that I have planned.

Today, I had to do the first part of the project before our actual school work.  We have to let our project dry before we can use them.  I got this idea from the crafty Julie!  She is always coming up with fun things to do.  Check out hers here.

We made stamps!  Fun!  I loved it just as much as the girls.

Some foam paper, scissors, hole punch, glue, and wooden blocks equals a fun time and lots of stamps for really cheap!

Bella showing me her favorite stamp.  She saw me make one and wanted to do the same.

Emily deep in her thoughts.  She didn't end up using any of the pieces she cut.  I cut out everything for them in advance so the project was more fun for them.  You can see on the yellow tray in the first picture there are piles of different shaped pieces.  That worked out perfectly.  The blocks are small enough that it isn't very easy for them to cut out their own.

Bella in her zone.

Here are all the stamps that Bella made.

I joined in the fun, too.  Here are all of mine.

And, here are all of the ones Emily made.  Notice that most of hers look like faces.  I think that was her intention.

 
They are drying right now. We will be testing them out here in a little bit!

Here we are using all our made stamps (and some that we already had from the store).

Emily started spelling out words she knew.  Very good and educational on her part!  Smart girl!

And, so you can see how some of our stamps turned out, here are the ones I made.  The project worked really well!  I highly recommend you doing this.

Go buy your supplies now! :)

we are on a crafty roll!

I decided to stretch out our school year so there wouldn't be any gap between our years.  So, we are finishing up our school year now.  We probably have the rest of the week and one more week before we are finished. 

Pretty good timing since we are flying to the States in 2.5 weeks!  And, our new kindergarten curriculum materials are waiting at my mom's house. 

The girls have done really well this year.  I know it is all basic stuff...alphabet, numbers, shapes, etc.  But, I can see a major improvement in how they understand concepts and how their confidence has increased.  They know all their letters, and sounds for a lot of them.  They know most numbers...we are working on that.  I concentrated so heavily on the alphabet, that it is my fault that they are not fully up on their numbers.

I found a fun little way to practice number recognition via Pinterest.  After doing some of our workbook work, we got out the cupcake pans and buttons.  It was a big hit with the girls.

I wrote the numbers 1 through 12 on a cupcake liner and gave them a bowl full of buttons.  They just had to put the correct amount of buttons in each liner.  Emily had a few hiccups and Bella just had one.

They were almost as thrilled to see what sort of different buttons we had in the jar.  It doesn't take much to entertain them.

We added a fun weather chart to our classroom.  Not that the weather changes a whole lot here.  But, they can learn the words that are on the chart.  I finally bought the clothes pins at the store last night so today was our first day using it.  I think it is pretty cute.  You can get your own here.

And, since we bought clothes pins, we did another little art project that I had been wanting to do.  Ours definitely didn't turn out so beautiful like the ones pictured here.  But, ours are special in their own way.  And, right now, the girls are playing with them.  That means it was a success!  There is no fighting right now.

Emily made a million and one of them.  She was into it big time!  You can see the ones that I cut out for her verses the ones she cut out.  If they hold up for the week, that is good enough!  We can always make more.

Bella, on the other hand, was not being a good sport.  Or, more like, she was in a perfectionist mode.  And, that is never good.  It usually ends with her whining that she can't do something.  I didn't allow her to give up and made her make one.  Emily ended up sharing with Bella, so that was nice, too.

And, I had to join in on the fun.  I made a fish for each of the girls. 

The heads may detach from the bodies on these guys.  Or, their whole body comes apart.  But, we don't care.  We made it our way!  We did use card stock so they would hold up a little better.  Try them for yourself!

learning about absorption

If I don't stop posting our art/school projects, I am going to have to change the name of this blog.  But, this is life.  And, not much else is going on right now.  We have three weeks until we leave for the US.  We are very excited about that.  We will be there for a month!  So, we have been busy thinking about what we want to do there and what Halloween costumes we need to buy!  And, of course, I have been spending money like I have a money tree in my backyard. 

Anyway, today we did another fun art/science project that I found on Pinterest.  You can find the link here.

We took glue, salt and watercolors and made pretty pictures.  I did join in on the fun to show the girls how gently they needed to squeeze on the glue bottle.  And, how to control how much salt went on the picture.

Here they started to draw their pictures with the glue.

Once that was done, salt was sprinkled on top of the wet glue.
 

Here are all of our works of art before we started painting them.  Yes, my art skills peaked in the first grade!

Then, we cleaned up the table to bring out the watercolor paint.  This is where we introduced the word absorption.  We talked about how the salt was absorbing the watercolors.  The girls were thrilled when they would put the paint brush on one spot and the color spread out where the salt was.  Almost like MAGIC! :)

Emily, at this point, worked another lesson into our project.  She wanted to mix colors and make new ones.  She was making purple here.  As you will see on her finished picture, she experimented a lot with mixing colors.  This one is a curious child.  She will create a mess in a heartbeat and it doesn't bother her in the least.

Bella, on the other hand, has to stick to clean, non-abstract drawings.  It is very typical of her.  Often she tells Emily that the way she is drawing/coloring something is wrong.  I always tell Bella that Emily is using her imagination and whatever Emily chooses to do is fine.  It isn't as easy for Bella to accept that.

Here they are showing you their finished pictures.
 

We put them all outside to dry. 

This was a very fun and successful project.  Even with all the salt everywhere, it wasn't too messy of a project.  I would definitely suggest trying this one for yourself.

handmade ornaments

I've been working on spending better quality time with the girls.  Some days I am better at it than others.  And, as you all know, Pinterest is an invaluable resource to find things to do with the girls. 

The other day I found a link to make ornaments from cornstarch, baking soda, and water.  Simple!  Today, we took on the challenge, and overall, it turned out pretty nice.

We took advantage of having stamps and stamped some images onto the rolled out dough.  I need to invest in more stamps!  This was a fun project and cheap!  Even if you just make them for the fun of it, that is good enough!

Here are the girls using cookie cutters to cut out their ornaments and stamping some designs into them.

And, I thought we might as well paint them before we threw them in the oven.  I just got out the watercolors and it worked rather well.

Here are all the ones we ended up making and painting.  There was a handful of dough left after making all of these.  But, we stopped for now. 

As expected, the color slightly dulled after baking them.  But, look!  They are great!  I think we will figure out where we can hang them until the Christmas tree comes out.  If you are curious, I did the three down the middle: the green leaf and the two with horses on them.  Everything to the left of mine are Bella's.  Everything to the right of mine are Emily's.  I stamped an E (for Emily) and B (for Bella) on the back of them so we can tell who did what. 

Next up, I really want to do these cute clothespin animals.  Aren't they cute?