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.

Starry Night, Solar System, and Pizza Fractions

Week 4 of Kindergarten

Planning

I'm continuing to use the same work plan to keep M on track throughout the week, but I plan to print a new version for next week. I may change the format to use push pins or stickers instead of the paper clips because the clips tend to slide on the laminated paper.

We continued with "Young Chefs" camp, and I added a few new materials to M's shelves. M also received the second kit from the Magic School Bus Young Scientist's Club. I have several of these kits that I modified and used with my high school science classes when I was teaching, and I was excited when a friend passed along a great deal on the annual membership for this club. I put away the first kit (on volcanoes) for next week to prepare for our science camp, so we jumped ahead to this month's kit - The Secrets of Space (affiliate link). I really like getting the monthly kits because it has a wide range of activities, most of the materials are included, and it helps me narrow down which science theme to pursue that month.

Work Plan, Cooking, and American History

Week 3 of Kindergarten

Planning

This week was the start of the "Little Chefs" camp for our co-op. We also got in an order of new materials from IFIT, including two sets of bells, and we planned a field trip with friends to the Upcountry History Museum.

In addition to those planned activities, I printed our first attempt at a work plan based on the post by What DID we do all day? I decided to go with daily and weekly options so we could reset it at the end of each week. I will probably play around with the subjects listed until we find something that we're comfortable with, but this was a good start. M really likes moving the paper clips from one side to the other as she completes her work, and she likes having the chart to look at to see what her options are for the day.