Today was a great day, considering Babe woke up not feeling so well this morning. But after breakfast, I sent her back to bed to lay down for another 30 minutes or so. She came out by herself and asked if she could start Kindergarten now.
I slowed down the day a bit, giving extra long breaks in between lessons, and that seemed to work really well. Despite getting done at 4:30, with a two hour lunch break to McDonald's so she could fulfill her free Happy Meal ticket from the library for finishing her summer reading list, we got everything in and she was feeling better by the end of the day.
Math was a review on left and right, and even though she already knows it, I reinforced the lesson using counters and book pages. I took the local furniture store ad and had her put blue counters on all the couches on the left side of the page, and red counters on the couches on the right side of the page. I had her do the same thing with the grocery ad, using vegetables instead of couches.
And I usually don't take photos of the worksheets, but today's sheet had some great responses.
She had to color the right one of each, and Babe is a coloring fiend, so I knew by the end of the sheet, she'd have some of each item colored (forgetting the lesson itself). But when I went through each item and asked her what it was, for the canteen, she responded, "cheek sprayer" (as in perfume bottle), and for the lanterns, they were "Harry Potter lights."
Babe loves the Harry Potter movies, but I, as a Harry Potter fan and "expert", as she calls me, will only allow her to watch the first three movies. So her response was perfect and cute.
I was also very impressed that she knew these items all had to do with camping.
Right after Math, we did a quick run-through of the poem "Peas Porridge Hot." I cooked them oatmeal and put half in the freezer for a bit so they could actually taste "peas porridge cold." Bubs loves oatmeal, and I knew she'd prefer the hot oatmeal over the cold, but Babe had no preference. Ew.
After running a few errands and meeting her parents for lunch, we came home and rested for a bit. When she said she was ready to start Kindergarten again, we dove right into Reading Comprehension with "The Enormous Turnip", a story about a farmer who grew a large turnip and needed help pulling it out of the ground. Again, I used dollhouse people and other toys to illustrate the story. When we were done reading, I even scrambled up the characters and Babe was able to put them back in the same order!
It was a very cute story where, in the end, a mouse was the last character to help pull the turnip out of the ground. Babe immediately asked if it was the same mouse that helped the lion in yesterday's story ("The Lion and the Mouse")! I asked her if she would want a pet mouse to always help her with big jobs, and she said yes. So our next craft was actually making a pet mouse.
I grabbed a pair of socks, buttons, felt, googly eyes, pipe cleaners, yarn, and a hot glue gun. I let them stuff the sock to their liking, they picked which eyes they wanted, which button nose, which color ears, and which color pipe cleaners for whiskers. Then I sat with the hot glue gun while they watched their mice come together. They turned out so cute that I want one!
After free-playing with their mice a bit, we ran right into a discussion on uniqueness. I had Babe explain to me how she was unique compared to Bubs and the rest of her family. I asked her if being unique was a good or bad thing. Then I read one of my favorite stories of all time, "The Story of Ferdinand" by Munro Leaf. We talked about how Ferdinand was unique to his friends who shared his pasture, and if it was OK for him to just like sitting and smelling the flowers.
"I think he likes it because it's very relaxing and he just doesn't like fighting."
I think Babe is exactly right.
It was an easy transition from uniqueness to Science today, as we were still discussing body parts and movements and such. For homework a few days ago, I had Babe trace herself and Bubs and label the body parts she knew. Today, they painted their traced bodies! Of course, Babe took her time and made sure the clothes she painted were to her liking. She did a really good job, though.
While waiting for the paint to dry, we discussed the movements that each part can make. We played Simon Says to reinforce the movements and I incorporated a bit of the left/right terminology into the commands. We played that for a long time before adding another book to her Reading Log, one that actually had to do with today's science lesson! She read this one quite well, and only struggled a second with one word: high.
We can't end the day without singing the song, so Babe and Bubs actually held hands and marched around the table and kitchen while both singing "You're a Grand Old Flag."
As I said, we got a lot done today! And despite Babe feeling a bit under the weather, learning at her own pace made it a great day.
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