Three. Five. Three.

Today was another rough day, and with the addition of a doctor appointment, I had Babe do only one exercise today.

I brought out the book "My Dad and I" from yesterday and I had her pick out all the verbs and write them down.

She did great at it! She picked out verbs that were even kind of tricky.

And with that, we ended the day. I also made a decision that today is the last day of Kindergarten for the week. So until Monday night, have a great weekend!

Three. Five. Two.

It finally happened. Today, Babe actually struggled with something. Struggled hard, too. To the point where I nearly stopped all work for today. But since I know that the end of this week will be hectic, I had to carry on and forced myself to stay calm amidst her frustrations with...

...Math.

Today I introduced her to the idea of cutting numbers into fourths. Now, her frustrations may have been my fault all along, as I may have made it way too hard by making her use numbers in addition to shapes and towers, but she was pretty unfocused all morning so I figured with plenty of repetition she'd get the hang of it.

I started off by making her build a tower four blocks high. I asked her if she could tell me if four is an even number. She cut the tower into two equal parts and told me yes, four is an even number. Then I asked her to cut the two equal parts into half again. She did. I separated the blocks so there were four equal parts, and told her that she just cut 4 into four equal parts.

"How many blocks are in each equal part?"

"Four."

This was her answer two more times, and then when she started guessing, I had to quickly think of a new route (especially since I was repeating the words "fourths" and "four"). So I tried using the number eight, since I could say "How many blocks are in each fourth of eight?" without her getting completely confused.

She built a tower eight blocks tall, then cut it in half, then in half again.

"Four equal parts!"

"Good! How many in each part? In each fourth?"

"Two!"

Awesome! We were finally getting somewhere. I pushed my luck a little bit and asked her to do the same exact thing with a tower 12 blocks high. She cut it in half, told me that 12 is an even number, and cut each half into half again.

"OK, how many are in each fourth?"

"12?"

Dang. Back to square one. I asked her to look at the blocks that were sitting in front of her and tell me how tall each tower was.

"3."

"Yes! So that means 3 is one-fourth of...?"

"3?"

OK...not so awesome. I asked her to take a little brain-break and told her that we'd start all over with the Math lesson in 10 minutes. She hated that idea, but I was adamant about her clearing her mind, so she went and played until the timer went off.

While she was taking a break, I reviewed the Calvert Math Manual with a different perspective. I think the point of this lesson was to get the Kindergartner comfortable with the basic idea of splitting things into four equal parts, not necessarily knowing what one-fourth of a specific number is. So I went with that and drew four shapes onto a sheet of paper - a heart, circle, square, and diamond.

I called her back to the table, had her cut out each shape, and we started with the square. I asked her to cut it in half, which she did, and then asked her to cut each half into half again, which she did. I pointed out that she just cut the square into four equal parts.

"Yeah! They are the same size!"

I then had her do the same thing with the diamond, without my help. She did.

Then I asked her to cut the heart in half. When she did that, I asked her if she thinks she could cut the heart into four equal parts. She cut.

"These aren't the same shape."

"Right! So can a heart be cut into four equal parts?"

"No."

Awesome. Then I had her cut the circle into four equal parts, without my help. She did!

Alrighty, that was successful. I had her do the worksheets, and just to end on a challenge, I had her build a tower eight blocks tall. I asked her if she could remember how many is half of eight.

"I know this one. Four."

"Yes! Good job! Do you remember what one-fourth of eight is?"

She cut the tower in half, then half again.

"Two!"

"Awesome job!"

We ended Math with a smile, which is the complete opposite of how we started it, so that felt good. But by now it was nearly lunch time, so we didn't have time for much else. I got out "My Dad and I" by Julio Ricardo Baerga for her to read and add to her reading log. We didn't have time to name the nouns in the book, but she was able to read it easy.

I then had her draw a picture of something she likes to do with her dad.

I recognized the couch immediately and asked her what she likes doing with her dad.

"I love snuggling with dad on the couch while we watch TV. And we play feetsies."

Ha! Adorable!

Lately, I've noticed that the way she writes some of her letters is a little lax, so for the last 15 minutes before lunch, I had her practice writing the alphabet on manuscript paper in her very best handwriting.

And with that, it was the end of the day.

On to Wednesday!

Three. Five. One.

Well, vacation is over and we are back into the swing of things. Babe was a bit rusty so we spent the first hour of the day reviewing all Math and English. When I felt she was comfortable enough to move on, we jumped into Math with learning about halves, and cutting things into two equal parts.

I first asked her to build a tower 10 blocks high. Then I asked her to cut it in half so each part is equal. She had a very interesting way of doing this. It was almost like she estimated in her head what half would be, then counted out her estimation, and when she got to her estimate, she started counting at number one again to see if, when she got to the end of the tower, she ended with the same number.

Did that make sense? It made complete sense to her, and actually, her way worked very well!

I had her do this same thing for numbers 14 and 6, so she could get the hang of cutting in half. Again, she did really well using her method. To end this lesson, I had her build a tower 9 blocks high, then asked her to cut it in half.

After using her method only a couple of times, she knew that this number could not be cut into two equal parts. She was confident in her answer, so I (very) briefly introduced to her the concept of odd and even numbers.

For this, I brought out the number line and put a yellow dog on the numbers she already worked with that could be cut into two equal parts. I then put a red dog on the number 9, since it could not be cut into two equal parts. I then had her start with number 1, asking her if she could cut each tower into two equal parts. She did the first few and immediately noticed the pattern.

"I'm making an AB pattern!"

With that, I introduced the terms "even" and "odd." I told her that even numbers were the yellow dogs, the numbers that could be cut into two "even" towers. The red dogs were on the odd numbers, because they could not be cut into two equal parts. She started to understand, so I had her pick any number on the number line and build a tower that many blocks high. Of course she went for the biggest number, 30.

She used her method to figure out if it could be cut into two equal parts. After a few minutes, she put a yellow dog on the number 30.

"30 is an even number! 15 plus 15 is 30! They are two equal parts!"

Amazing.

Worksheets done. Math complete.

Next, I set up an art project and had all the kids sit at the table in front of a large sheet of paper. On their sheet of paper, each corner had a big puddle of paint. I told them that we were going to listen to four different kinds of music - hip hop, jazz, country, and 80s - and when the music played, they were going to let the music guide their hands to make a fun painting.

I've never seen them all have so much fun. I let them get ask messy as they wanted and they were flinging paint everywhere.

While I cleaned up, I let them dance in the living room to their favorite kind of music of the four kinds they painted to.

Their favorite?

The 80s!

After lunch, Babe read "Aaron and Gayla's Alphabet Book" by Eloise Greenfield to kick of Reading Comprehension. In the middle of listing out the verbs in the book, she nearly fell asleep, so I sent her to bed for a bit before heading to dance.

And that was Monday!

Three. Four. Three.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope you have an incredible holiday full of love and giving thanks. But first, enjoy the blog!

For Math, Babe was briefly introduced to fraction-work and cutting things in half, into equal parts. I drew some shapes onto a sheet of paper, had them cut them out, and then asked her to cut each shape into two equal parts. Which she did.

For the last shape, I asked her to cut it into two unequal parts. And she did.

Then I got out the bread and asked her to do the same thing. Cut it into two equal parts. And she did. :)

After Math, I had Babe catch up on her Checkpoints. While she was at the computer, I had Bubs do an activity found on Pinterest. I hid some foam letters from a puzzle in a tub of rice and had her fish them out and put them in their place in the puzzle. She had a lot of fun with this, and after she was done, she of course got to play with the rice. Double plus. That's her favorite thing in the world to do.

After her Checkpoints, I had Babe recall the story of the First Thanksgiving. She did really well with this. Then I had her read another book based on the same theme, a basic idea of the First Thanksgiving.

After lunch and naps, we used the Calvert recipe to make cranberry relish to add to our Thanksgiving feast.

YUM!

With that, the day flew by and they worked on their Thanksgiving color-by-letter until the end of the day.

I'm exhausted, but ready to start cooking for tomorrow! Again, have an incredible Thanksgiving! See you Monday!

Three. Four. Two.

FIELD TRIP DAY!!!

Before we headed to our destination, we did a little bit of Math to stay on track, but since Babe knows the material so well,

I just handed her the worksheets to do. She breezed through them, then I handed her a book to read for her reading log. She breezed through that, too!

She's getting so good at reading it's ridiculous.

In the car on the way to our destination, she read another book!

Then we got to our destination and we all had a blast. We went to a dairy farm and watched cows be milked and learned the process of milk production. We went last year and it was amazing, so we repeated the trip!

They all got to help bottle-feed the baby cows. THEY WERE ADORABLE.

We were at the farm for a good three hours. Then on the way home, Babe read another book for her reading log! That's right! Another three-book day!

And with that, we ended our school day. A very fun, yet productive day. Another one of my favorite kinds!

Three. Four. One.

Thanksgiving week means no dance, which means so. much. work. But even though we got so much work done today, Babe learned so much and we had a lot of fun. Throughout the day I thought of new ideas to incorporate into the lessons on the fly, and they all worked out great. It was a very relaxing, but very productive day. I love those kinds of days.

We started off with Math, as usual, and I brought out the homemade scale from the first days of Kindergarten. We worked with the terms heavier and lighter, and I had Babe compare the weight of random items. I gave her a heavy shell and had her put it in one of the cups. Then I asked her to figure out how many dog manipulatives it would take to be the same weight as the shell. We did this activity for a few different items. She's really good at reading the scale!

After Math, I gathered the kids on the couch to read "The Littlest Pilgrim" by Brandi Dougherty to them. Such a cute book! The illustrations were just so adorable. After I read it, I told Babe that back when the Pilgrims were here, the Pilgrim children all attended the same school, all in the same classroom. I explained to Babe that if she was back in those times, she'd be in the same class as her cousins, who range in grades 1st to 9th grade!

"That's a lot of people in one room!"

I then explained, from the Calvert Lesson Manual, that the windows in the schoolhouse were "oiled windows" that helped keep the heat out in the summer, and the cold out in the winter. I told the kids to sit at the table, where I had wax paper and butcher paper set out, with cups of vegetable oil at each. What we did next was kind of a bust, but they all really liked getting messy and sticky. Even Z dove his fingers into the oil.

When they were done spreading the oil onto their paper, I stuck each of their "windows" onto the sliding glass door and had Babe compare if the oiled windows were any different than the window itself. She did notice that the oiled windows were a bit darker, letting less light through. But that was about it with the revelations. It was a very messy project but it was cool watching them get all slimey and having fun. (In the photo, the sheet in the middle is not an oiled window, but a plain sheet of wax paper. The sheets on either end are the oiled windows.)

After I cleaned up the messiness, I had Babe read a book before I prepared lunch.

This book. Is adorable. I had Babe read it twice through because she struggled with it the first time, but after the second time, her comprehension was spot on. After the last page, she recalled the whole book AGAIN, in perfect order of how the leaf affected each animal on the farm. I had goosebumps the whole time. Amazing.

After lunch, I brought this book out again and thought of an exercise for reviewing nouns and verbs. Babe remembered what a verb and what a noun was, so I had her turn to each page and tell me the nouns and the verbs she saw. Sometimes she would get confused though.

"Cow is the verb on this page."

"OK, now, I want you to stand up and show me how you cow."

She got the biggest grin on her face.

"I mean sneeze! Sneeze is the verb on this page!"

"That's right! Show me how you sneeze."

Another one of my favorite mess-ups was when she said goat was a verb.

"Show me how you goat."

She laughed so hard. She looked at the page again and found the right word.

"Kicked! Kicked is the verb. Goat is the noun."

By the end of the book, she was getting them all right. It was really cool to see.

After this impromptu lesson, we did a quick Vocab lesson with position words - words she already knows. I didn't linger too long because I had other plans for the day, but it was a quick review and she was fine with it.

Next was her thankfulness lesson, so I handed her another book to read.

I loved this book. It has a perfect rhythm and, again, the illustrations are just too cute. As Babe was writing it in her log, I noticed it was written by the same author as her previous reading log book. I showed Babe and her jaw dropped.

"He wrote TWO books!? Wouldn't that be so cool to write THREE books?!"

After she read this book, I asked her what kinds of things she was thankful for. Then I asked her if she was thankful for any of the same things that the animals in the book were thankful for.

"I am really thankful for my crayons."

Ha!

I then had her draw three things that she was thankful for.

She knows we are going to the dairy farm tomorrow.

I told her I've never seen a better drawing of a dancer. Ever.

She told me she was "just going to draw bread", but then she started cracking up and told me it looked like pancakes instead.

Whatever works.

After her drawings, she did her online lesson on basic graphic designing. Then she did her Checkpoints.

And then we were done with the day! Like I said, we had a lot of extra time, and I filled it to the max. I felt very accomplished!

Three. Three. Five.

Another really productive day! And we were finished by 11!

I had special plans for the girls after lunch so I had to make sure Babe was ready to focus so we could get everything done before lunch. She started off with adding a book to her reading log.

Then for Math, I let her breeze through it. I didn't linger on much since it's been working with short and tall all week, so I handed her the worksheets to do. She wanted to measure one thing with the blocks though, so I asked her to estimate how many blocks tall a water bottle is.

"20. Or 29."

She sighed.

"Wrong again."

I reminded her that it was OK to be wrong on an estimation.

Next we jumped into Science, where I handed her a Calvert-worksheet and asked her what season the pictures reminded her of. She answered correctly, and she colored the pictures, then glued them to the Fall sheet of her seasons project we started yesterday. The pictures she colored included a basket of apples and a pile of pumpkins, so I thought this was the perfect time to hand her another brand new book from our Scholastic order, "Clifford Picking Apples and Pumpkins."

I told her that this book would be just as hard, if not harder, than the Hello Kitty book from yesterday. She looked through the pages and agreed, but you know what? She read it. All by herself. The whole book. Again, I was impressed. She's even starting to read the conversation text as an actual conversation, with changes in tone of voice. It's incredible!

I told the girls we had one more thing to do before lunch, and that was to begin talking about Thanksgiving! I gathered the girls on the couch and read them a really, really great book called "The Story of the Pilgrims" by Katharine Ross. It was very easy for Babe to understand and the pictures were very detailed. It had key Thanksgiving words like pilgrims, Indians, Mayflower, and Squanto. I also had Babe go grab her world map so we could see how far England was from the United States, and how much water they had to sail through. Babe was starting to get the idea about the first Thanksgiving. She soaked it all up.

I then had her read yet another book today! That's right! Another three-book day. This book was a perfect read after the book I read, because it is a very basic Thanksgiving story, using the alphabet as a guide!

It really is the best Thanksgiving book! I can't say enough about it. I just love that Babe can read all these books now. I'm still on a high.

Before lunch started, I had Babe sing her November song, "My Country Tis of Thee" so I could record her. Enjoy!

The surprise after lunch was meeting Grandma at Home Depot, then an ice cream outing. During the ice cream outing, Babe told Grandma all about the first Thanksgiving, including how the "mean king in England wouldn't let the Pilgrims talk about God, so they came to America for freedom."

An amazing end to the week.

Three. Three. Four.

I called it yesterday! Today was a really busy day. Really productive, but really busy! And it started off with an addition to the reading log!

She read this one with ease. I'm going to have to go harder on the books when I go to the library! She'll be reading Harry Potter herself soon!

In Math, Babe practiced a bit more with measuring and sorting shortest to tallest. Then came the estimation and, like always, she had a bit of a tough time being wrong, but not nearly as bad as the last time. I reminded her that estimations were guesses, not answers, and she was OK. I asked her to grab a bunch of stuffed animals from her room, and then sort them shortest to tallest. Then I had her estimate how many inches each animal was. Then we measured for real! She actually did really really well with her estimations here!

Math took a while today because she was having fun using the connecting blocks and ruler to measure her animals, so I let her do whatever. After her worksheets were complete, I asked Babe and Bubs (Z was out today) to sit on the couch and handed Babe the remote control for the DVD player. We listened to an audio book for "Julius, the Baby of the World" by Kevin Henkes, but I had Babe do the commands for the player. She couldn't remember the eject button, but I handed her the flash cards we made and she found it right away with the help of those. She did each command - power, eject, play, rewind, stop, and eject, and power again.

After that, we headed to the library, where Babe got to help the teacher out with a story for the little kids. Babe eats that stuff up and the teacher loves her, and the kids pay more attention when a peer is involved, so it's win-win-win. Even Bubs, when I put her in her car seat after class, said, "That was fun!"

After library and lunch, Babe added a second book to her reading log today. Another one she read with ease. Although, the dog's name in the book was Princess, and she kept saying "princesses." I guess all those soft 'c' sounds can be all confusing. But after I corrected her a few times, she was good to go for the rest of the book.

When I put Bubs to bed, I told Babe we were now going to write instructions using the sequence words she learned yesterday, but instead of baking a cake, we were going to write the steps to brushing your teeth. She remembered that the order of words went "first", "next", "then" and "last". While she was illustrating the instructions, I couldn't help but laugh out loud at her cute drawings.

Directions as follows:

1. Put the toothpaste on the toothbrush

2. Brush your teeth

3. Spit (notice how dirty the spit is, filled with "corn and broccoli")

4. Brush teeth again.

5. Spit again (this time, clean spit comes out)

6. Brush your tongue

I put the cards out of order and had her do the actions in silly ways and she was laughing the whole time.

"How can I spit if I haven't brushed my teeth yet!?"

We then rolled into Science, where we learned about what months are in each season. First, I had her put the months in order. When she did that, without one mistake, I had her cut out the season pictures from her worksheet and place them each on their own sheet of paper, in order (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter). I then showed her the months in Winter, knowing her slight compulsiveness would be upset that the first month of the year was in the middle of Winter. With Winter's months done, she was able to figure out that the first season of the year, Spring, started in March, and so on and so forth with the rest of the seasons. To conclude this activity, we looked through magazines and catalogs for one picture to cut out and glue for each season. This will be an ongoing activity.

To end the day, I brought out one of the brand new books from our Scholastic order that I've been hiding from her. I knew she'd freak when she saw it, and I was excited for her to read it herself, but I was convinced it'd be a little tough for her to read on her own. When I showed it to her, she did exactly what I thought she'd do. Drop her jaw, gasp, and want to read it immediately. I explained to her that it might be a little hard for her, but that if she read it all by herself, I'd let her place the stickers where they needed to be in the book. She was determined to read it, and you know what?

SHE TOTALLY DID.

All by herself. I was so impressed. I thought it'd be tough because there were more words than usual on each page, plus lots of conversation between characters. But while she read, I asked her questions about what was happening and her comprehension was spot on. Towards the end of the book, she even guessed what was going to happen!

It was very impressive and I had goosebumps after every page she read. It was perfection.

And you know what that made today? A three-book day! Three! That's never happened before.

Amazing.

Three. Three. Three.

Today was an unexpected short day. We really only got Math and Vocab in before Babe went to a doctor appointment.

For Math she practiced sorting random things from shortest to tallest, and measuring each with both a ruler and connecting blocks.

How's that for overly random items to sort? :)

After Math, we worked on some sequence words in Vocab. It was the perfect day to do so, because we had a mini celebration for Z's 2nd birthday! So while he and Bubs were playing in the other room, I brought out the cake mix box and had Babe read what to do "first", "next", and "last." Then I showed her that each thing we do is a verb. I'm very impressed at how quickly she picked up types of words. She's nearly a pro at it!

Z's red vanilla cake with bright blue frosting to go along with his favorite thing, Thomas the Train!

By the time we were done cooking the cake, it was playtime/lunchtime, so that was the end of the day. Tomorrow and Friday should be full days, so lots of work to be done!

Three. Three. Two.

Today started off really amazing. Usually, every day (before Math), Babe and I go over her homework from the night before, then I have her fill in her calendar and write the date, then jump into Math. Well, before we did Math and after she wrote the date, I read a letter to Babe from her grandma.

Her grandma mentioned that she reads my blog and noticed that one day, Babe was learning about pollution and how, when oil gets into the ocean, it ruins the water and animals (see: experiment with fluffy pom poms and vegetable oil and water). Included in the letter were pictures her grandma printed out from the Internet of the devastating oil leak off the coast of New Zealand. The ship "Rena" is stuck in the coral reefs and oil is spilling out of it. The pictures show the oil along the shore, in the water, and a poor bird covered in it.

I had Babe go get her world map and asked her to point out Florida. Then I pointed to New Zealand to show her the distance between the two. We started talking about the pictures, and I asked her if she remembered what happened to the pom pom that we dipped in oil.

"It was so heavy. This poor bird can't even fly!"

Then I actually saw something click in her head and she ran to her room. I asked where she was going and before she could answer, she ran back and handed me a business card.

"Remember the lady we met at the library?! Who teached us how she saves birds that get sick!?"

(During the summer, our local library had weekly events for kids that taught them about local wildlife.)

"Yes, I do remember, but do you think these people who live in Florida are a little too far from New Zealand to help?"

"Yeah so maybe New Zealand has these kinds of people, too."

I asked her how she thinks they should clean up the oil.

"I remember in Diego he had a big oil vacuum! Maybe they can use one of those!"

It was a really neat learning experience for her to receive that letter with pictures. Thank you, Grandma!

Then it was time for Math. I brought out the connecting blocks again and built a tower. Then I asked her to build one the same size, one taller, and one shorter. Which she did. Then I had her put her pencils in order from longest to shortest.

Perfect. Worksheets complete. Math done.

For Reading Comprehension I read "The Amazing Little Porridge Pot". By the middle of the story Babe was saying the character's cooking command on cue, so I knew she was understanding the story. She easily recalled every detail I asked her about, and even remembered that porridge was the same food in Goldilocks and the Three Bears (without being asked about it).

With that, Reading Comprehension was done, and it was time for a simple, fun, neat activity.

Night drawings! I handed the each of the kids one sheet of black paper and spread out the sidewalk chalk on the table. I gave them each some sequins and glue, too, but they loved the chalk on black so much that gluing was hardly as interesting.

Z's. He loves scribbling.

Bubs's. She especially liked how all the colors seemed brighter on black.

Babe's. So cool. The moon and stars are my favorite.

After chalk dust landed everywhere, it was time to clean up for lunch.

After lunch and during naps, I pulled out "Tortillas and Lullabies" again and picked out a sentence. I asked Babe to point to a noun, which she did. Then I asked her to point to an adjective, which she didn't do, because there are no adjectives in that book! So instead, I asked her to explain to me what an adjective was. She did. Perfectly.

I then introduced her to another type of word - verbs. She picked up on this very quickly. I was actually surprised and impressed. We went through "Tortillas and Lullabies" again and this time, I had her point out the verb in each section of the story. She did. Easily.

After a brief discussion on strangers, which she knows all too well about due to a real-life scare that she still remembers from when she was about two or three, I handed her a brand new book to read for her reading log. Today we received our shipment of Scholastic books!!! WOOHOO I'm so excited. Probably more so than the kids. But I went through them all and picked a readable Fall one, and it was the cutest one yet!

"Dragon's Leaf Collection" by Becky Matheson.

And with that, it was time for dance!