Second Week, Day 1

Welcome to the second week of Kindergarten! Babe was pretty excited after her first weekend as a Kindergartner, and she did all her homework and told me to give her more tonight. Er...

Today we jumped right into Math with discussing top/middle/bottom. She defined each for me, then we headed to the fridge and I asked her what was on each shelf. We did the same for the freezer. Next, it was craft time! I vaguely remember doing something like this when I was little, so I figured Babe would get a big kick out of it. Turns out, Bubs and Z got a kick out of it, too!

We made layered hamburgers illustrate the top, middle, and bottom of a burger. Babe knew the bread went on the top and bottom, then she used her imagination and cut colored construction paper to layer the middle ingredients to make it "a really tall big hamburger!"

Now doesn't that just look delish.

Bubs had a bit of a different approach and actually stacked her paper upwards, as a real burger would stand. She used all the colors that Babe did, except her craft was about half an inch thick.

She even wrote her name on it!

Z just had fun using the glue again. He's getting good at squeezing the bottle though!

So after we created the burgers, Babe did her worksheet with ease. Then we jumped right into Reading Comprehension with "The Tortoise and the Hare". She recognized the title immediately and asked, "Is this the one where the rabbit falls asleep in the middle of the race and the turtle wins? Why would anyone fall asleep while they were racing? I wouldn't."

Despite her knowing the story, I read it anyway but had her illustrate it using a stuffed rabbit and a toy turtle. They raced across the living room as I read, and when I finished the story, I followed through with the questions. She answered them pretty well except for what kind of lesson the rabbit learned.

"He learned he shouldn't fall asleep while racing!"

Well that is true, but Calvert thought she should learn that if you take your time, as the turtle did, you'd end up eventually completing the task you set to do. She kind of understood, so I brought out the Dominos and reminded her how slow and careful we had to be to build a huge Domino row in the kitchen one rainy day a few months ago.

The turtle's lesson was beginning to click, especially after she tried to set up two Dominos at a time and with a bump from one, the rest of the row fell. I asked her what she thought the turtle would do, and she proceeded to pick up only one Domino at a time from that point on.

She managed to make one row across the length of the table, but of course had to outdo herself the second time by adding cars and balls (something we tried those months ago).

And then, after successfully creating and destroying that row, she made another one. Using all the Dominos. That went around the table.

Check out the little waves she added. Impressive! Lesson learned!

Since the morning was full of activity, and it was a Monday, I let them veg in front of the TV with PBS Kids. Then it was lunch time. It was a pretty long break, but I figure Mondays are a good day to slowly get back into the swing of things from the weekend.

After lunch she did her Phonemic Awareness lesson with Bubs with a poem called "Caterpillar", one I've never heard of. But once she recited it, I had Bubs try to say it, and while Bubs was saying it, Babe was acting it out, unprovoked. How cute is that?

"I was doing that to try to help her remember the words."

Adorable.

Bubs went to bed after that, so I led Babe right into her science activity - an intro to body parts and the assembling of a paper puppet to help review the terms. After she colored and got ready to cut, I reiterated the Tortoise's lesson from the story and told her to go slow and take her time while cutting out each part. She is very good at rushing through cutting and missing lines and such. But with the exception of cutting through one body part, she did a great job!

While coloring, she kept asking me what kind of earrings her Aunt Dani (my younger sister) had and if she had rings on every finger. I told her to color her puppet however she wanted, but despite my trying to have her make her puppet her own, she ended up with a very similar-to-Aunt-Dani-looking-puppet.

Note the purple, her Aunt's favorite color.

After we assembled the puppet, we briefly and quickly reviewed the body parts and names. Torso was a new term to her.

It was getting very close to the time to leave for dance, so we rushed through the discussion on chores. I had to help her differentiate between a chore and good habit. As she was washing her hands, she said, "Look! I'm doing a chore!"

I tried to explain by using dishes as an example. That after the family eats dinner, you don't wash your dish right when you are done with dinner. You put it in the sink and wait a bit to wash. "A chore is something you've waited to do."

"You mean like when I'm playing with a game or a toy and I'm done with it and put it away, that's not a chore. But on Saturdays when my dad says to get in our teams and clean the house. That's a chore?"

Whoa. Exactly.

End of Day 1, Second week.