6th Month. 4th Week. 3rd Day.

Today was another great learning day. Babe has been blowing my mind lately with how much information she has retained and continues to learn. Today I realized that it's an incredible feeling talking with a six-year-old about US History and the presidents. Especially when she knows the information! Crazy.

I started the day with seeing if Babe could read the 70 words that come in Calvert's Letters and Words book. We have never used the book throughout the curriculum, but with today being a review on sight words, I wanted to see what she could do. I cut them all out last night, and today I held them each up like a flashcard and had her read them.

She. Did. Amazing.

She read them all correctly, slightly hesitating on three words: now (which she pronounced know, at first, until she quickly corrected herself), pretty (she said a long e until she realized it was wrong), and ran (which she pronounced with a long a).

That's it. Out of 70 words, she hesitated on those three words. I had her write those three five times each, then had her pronounce them again. This time she did it in a flash.

Amazing.

We then went ahead with Math, and after we got over a rough patch, Babe was back to counting by tens starting at any number. Using the connecting blocks helps tremendously in visualizing the sets of ten changing. She has no issues once I bring those out. So she counted some coins, told me which pile had more cents, and did her worksheet. Then Math was done.

We breezed through Reading Comprehension. I asked her to recall as much as she could about yesterday's book, which she did. Then she did a worksheet based on the story. Done.

Babe has been dying to spell her name in Play-Doh like I've been letting Bubs do, so after her morning work before lunch, I brought out some to let her. Bubs finished her name, too!

After lunch, we did the Writing assignment, where I let her free-write to prepare for a report she will write tomorrow. I split a sheet of paper into threes and titled three columns: Wheels Can Be Fun, Wheels Can Help Us, and Wheels Help Us Go Places.

I then had her think of and write five different things with wheels pertaining to each category. I love when Babe free-writes because her pronunciation is usually spot on and she spells everything phonetically, or our southern accent kicks in and I'm left speechless at her spelling.

I think my favorite "what the heck" spelling of hers is "scherlerss." That's where our southern accent kicks in. haha

My favorite phonetic spelling of hers is "tacksy." That is just adorable.

I forgot to mention that while Babe was doing her school work, there is a tupperware of water freezing in the freezer. Babe knows all about water freezing into ice, then either melting or being evaporated, so I didn't go into this too much with her. But after she finished her Writing assignment, I brought out the block of ice and we observed it for the next hour, recording our observations at each assigned interval.

Babe had a lot of fun watching the ice melt. Especially because the way it froze, there was a hole in the bottom so it kind of looked like an igloo.

For an added challenge, I asked her to record the height of the block at each interval, too.

While our ice was melting, I found it a perfect opportunity to give Babe a little "quiz" about the three presidents she has learned about so far.

She answered all of the questions. She answered all of the questions correctly. I was so impressed. She was so quick with the answers, too.

For example:

"OK, who won the Civil War?"

"The North did."

"Why were they fighting?"

"Because the South wanted to keep their slaves and Abraham Lincoln said, 'NO MORE SLAVES!' Do you hear that, Abraham Lincoln? We are talking about you!"

(Our life-size illustration is still hanging up in the dining room, and both girls love to talk to him periodically throughout the day.)

"OK, how did he die?"

"Someone shooted him in the head."

"Why would someone do that?!"

"Because that man, I forgot his name, he wanted slaves, but Abraham Lincoln said, 'NO MORE SLAVES!' Oh, Abraham, you were just the goodest president, weren't you?"

I got the biggest kick out of that. That's just hysterical!

When I was asking her about Thomas Jefferson, she got so excited when I mentioned the Louisiana Purchase.

"What was that one really big thing that Thomas Jefferson bought from France?"

"More land! To make more states."

"Right! And who did he send to the land to write all about it?"

"Lewis and Clark! And you know what!? Thomas Jefferson had two grizzly bears in his front yard!"

hahahahaha. Love it.

When she finished recalling literally EVERYTHING about the presidents, I briefly introduced to her the man on the dime - FDR. I explained to her that he was our 32nd president and that he was president for 12 years, the longest of any president. So long that the next president made it a law that no one could be president for more than 8 years! I also started discussing the Great Depression with her, but made a decision to skip that, since I think it's way beyond her. Especially while she's learning about money in Math and then all of a sudden explaining to her that during that time, the coins had no value at all. ha

So I skipped the Great Depression and went right over to World War II.

"Why do you think it was called World War II?"

"Hmm. Because it was the whole world?"

"Yes! Because lots of different countries were involved!"

I explained to her the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan, and how Roosevelt made a decision to then bomb Japan with two atomic bombs "filled with chemicals that hurt and killed lots of people." I told her that after we bombed Japan, World War II ended.

Then I told her about how Roosevelt started a charity to help raise money for sick kids. It became known as the March of Dimes because he asked everyone in America to send him a dime! And that's why his face was put on the dime!

It was a lot of information to take in but when I had her recall it, she could. We will see how she does tomorrow.

Babe ended the day by adding her last book to her February reading log. She read "One Guinea Pig is not Enough" by Kate Duke. Again, another adorable book.

And with that, Wednesday was done! On to March!

6th Month. 4th Week. 2nd Day.

Well, Babe turned around real quick from yesterday and made today a great learning day. She sat down for Math and listened like a champ at my new method of showing her how to start at a number other than 10 to count by 10s to 100. I used the connecting blocks She was a little bummed at how easy it was to understand once she knew it, and actually apologized for yesterday.

"This is pretty easy. Sorry I was mean yesterday..."

Aww. So cute. We hugged it out and by the time we were done hugging, she was done with Math and able to tell me if she had enough money in her pocket to buy something at a certain cost.

For Reading Comp., I brought out the assigned book "Vroom, Chugga Vroom-Vroom" by Anne Miranda. Bubs and Z were doing their work but as soon as Babe said the title, Z ran over and saw what the commotion was about. It was so cute! So Bubs and Z sat and listened to Babe read her book.

At one point she showed them a punctuation mark.

"See, this is an exclamation point so that means we have to say it really loud. Say it with me. VROOOOOOM!!!!!!"

haha

She read this book very well, and even summarized it when I asked her the five Ws of the story! She is getting really good at that.

Next was our discussion on what else we've learned these past 100 days, and today we reviewed the alphabet - both capital and lowercase letters. I at first had Babe fishing for the letters, but that was taking too long because I also had Z doing one alphabet puzzle and Bubs doing another, while Babe was calling out each letter for them to find and put in their respective puzzles.

So I changed the fishing real quick to a system where I was picking out a letter card, showing Z the card along with three different letter puzzle pieces and having him pick the letter on the card.

Believe it or not, he completed the WHOLE puzzle doing this activity!!! I was very impressed!

For Bubs, I did the same thing with her, except I left out the letter card. I would put a few of the letters out and have her pick out the letter I called to her. She was able to do this with every letter, too!

As for Babe, she's known her alphabet for years and learned all of her lowercase letters last year in VPK, so this task was a breeze. As you can see, she matched every one!

After she lined them all up, I gave her a sheet of manuscript paper and had her write each letter, both capital and lowercase. She wrote a couple of letters backwards, but no big deal. I had her correct them and write them five times each.

And with that, lessons were done for the day. We continue reviewing all work tomorrow!

6th Month. 4th Week. 1st Day.

Today was kind of a rough day for Babe, so I let loose on the school work today and we really only did Reading Comprehension (where she read "The Wheels on the Bus" by MaryAnn Kovalksi) and started reviewing all previous work from the past 100 days.

While Babe was off doing her own thing, Bubs and Z were working with Play-Doh and spelling their name.

Bubs did really well with this. When their work was done, I rigged a fishing pole from a broom stick and a piece of yarn and had all three kids "fish" for different items. I then had Babe tell me the beginning letter of each item, then had her spell it. She did VERY well with this. There were ten items and she spelled all of them correctly (save for adding an extra 'n' to pen).

And that was pretty much it. Babe had a quick catnap before dance, then we were off.

Sixth Month. 3rd Week. 5th Day. --- HAPPY 100TH DAY OF SCHOOL!!!

WOW! Today was certainly a whirlwind, but all three kids had so much fun and everything ran so smoothly and perfectly that it was one of the best days of school yet!

I started the day by setting the timer for 100 seconds and letting them find however many Hershey Kisses they could in that amount of time. I gave them each a basket and they loaded what they could. Then we gathered them all on the table and checked off each number we found using the number chart.

After our first round of finding Kisses, I handed them each a gum ball machine print out. I had Babe add 100 gum balls (fingerprints) to her machine. Bubs and Z kind of did their own thing, but Bubs counted as high as she could (20) and then just had fun with the ink pads.

After another round of 100 seconds of finding kisses, the kids prepared their snacks for later - 100th Day Trail Mix. I put ten ingredients on the table and asked Babe how many of each ingredient we would need to make 100th Day Trail Mix.

"Ten!"

For Bubs and Z, I drew ten dots on a sheet of paper for each of them and had them put one piece of ingredient on each dot. Then they were able to put the ten pieces in their bag. For Babe, I had her leave her ingredients on the table and keep them sorted.

After we made the trail mix, we did one more round of finding Hershey Kisses, then went outside for more 100 play. We started by each running the fastest we could for 100 feet.

Then we walked 100 steps down the driveway. The pictures show how far each of them got in 100 steps.

Then, Babe jumped with a jump rope 100 times.

We then came in for lunch. While I was preparing lunch, Babe was hard at work on something "secret." The next thing I know, she turns around and is wearing a custom made crown for today!

So funny.

After lunch, we finish up finding the rest of the Kisses.

When all 100 Kisses were found, Babe had the job of splitting them all for each of them.

After enjoying a few of their reward, I brought out the coins again and asked Babe to sort the coins into piles of 100 cents of each coin. When she did, I then asked her to stack each pile! I did the quarters to show her what I meant.

When she got to the pennies, I warned her this was going to be really tough. She tried and tried to stack 100 pennies!

But after her stack kept falling at around the 75 mark, she settled for ten stacks of ten pennies.

I'm getting more and more exhausted as I write this, but we had two activities left for the day. The first was to measure 100 inches of paper, cut it into a snake, and paint it. They all LOVED this activity, even painting outside on a very windy day.

After clean up, we finally ended the day at Dollar Tree to each spend one hundred (and seven) cents to buy a toy. On the way, they enjoyed their 100 Trail Mix. :)

What a great day. Babe felt so proud of everything she did today, and that it was her 100th day of school. And she should be proud! She has learned so so much and has done a ton of work in these 100 days.

Here's to many more 100th days of school!