Golden Beads, Japanese Tea Party, and the State Museum

Kindergarten Week 9

Day 37 - Monday

Have you noticed that we've been working with the golden beads a lot lately? I can not stress enough how thankful I am that we backtracked and worked through the golden beads sequence from the beginning. M went from total frustration and wanting nothing to do with math, to choosing math first almost every day!

I reviewed the tens board presentation, and we built the quantities from 10 to 99 to match the numerals on the board. M mostly watched (I offered to let her take over, but she wanted to see me do it).

Acids and Bases

Acids and Bases

The Magic School Bus Young Scientist's Kit on Acids and Bases couldn't have come at a more perfect time! We just finished exploring the digestive system, which of course included a discussion on stomach acid. So what exactly IS an acid? Are there different kinds of acids? Are acids dangerous? We explored these questions and more as M worked her way through this exciting kit!

Spelling, Telling Time and Counting Money

Week 8 of Kindergarten

This was another fun week with a few scheduled field trips and lots of progress on our new house. M did her own planning this week. She requested to learn about the digestive system, and told me about an experiment she saw online that she wanted to try. She also chose to do lots of reading and spelling work this week, and she finished several lessons in her reading book, as well as reading some new books. We also worked on telling time and counting money.

The Digestive System for Kids

The Digestive System

We were driving to the grocery store, and M starts telling me about a science experiment that involves crackers, coke and a ziplock bag. She tells me that she wants to try this experiment and learn about the stomach. Well, you don't turn down a kid when they ask to learn something new, right?? So we added coke to the grocery list and I started researching as soon as we got home.

13 Months

What's My Toddler Doing?

I decided to start a new series of posts with observations of my toddler. (Toddler??!! Can that be right??) She is 13 months now, and is a little ball of energy. She is gaining new skills every day, so I will use these posts to record pictures and observations of what she has been up to for the past month.

Golden Beads, Concrete, Watercolors and a Covered Bridge

Week 7 of Kindergarten

Day 28 - Tuesday

As I've been saying for the past few weeks, we're struggling with setting up a schedule. We're in limbo right now because we're between houses and we don't have all of our belongings (a good bit is in storage). Since this is a short-term housing situation, we are trying to make do rather than spend the time and money to really set up the space to meet our needs. 

Volcanoes, Geography and Golden Beads

Week 6 of Kindergarten

Day 24 - Monday

We spent most of the week learning about volcanoes. See more information on this post.

The volcano experiments led to lots of practical life activities - scooping and pouring, washing the table and chairs, and washing dishes, followed by lunch prep.

Explosive Volcano Unit!

We spent most of this week learning about volcanoes! We have explored volcanoes in the past when we did a unit on dinosaurs, but M is older now and was interested in learning about the parts of a volcano and understanding what causes a volcano to erupt.

Chemistry and Construction

Week 5 of Kindergarten

Planning

This was a busy week for house construction, so we took it easy with planned "school" days and focused on learning through experience. We still had two co-op days, which were based on physical science and chemistry this week.