June - Beach Day 01

Doing something a little different for the month of June, I think. I've been working nonstop at getting some beach-themed bins done for Bubs and Z to work on while Babe takes a break from curriculum and concentrates on her education in other ways.


So today was a run-through of all the new bins. No Z today, so Babe and Bubs were willing participants in showing you how the new bins work.

 

I set them all up before having the girls come in and work. The left side of the desk is strictly Bubs' work - Z is a little too young to work on this stuff. The top shelf is pre-reading material (recognizing letters and their lowercase matches, figuring out which words begin with which letters, etc.). The middle shelf is strictly counting and number recognition. The yellow bucket is full of shells we collected from the beach last summer, along with beach-themed number flashcards. The bottom shelf is for pre-writing. It has a container of dry sand with beach-themed letter flashcards for Bubs to see how to draw each letters.


The right shelves have work for Bubs and Z to do. Five bins include: sorting beach themed foam shapes, pre-writing tracing sheets, sticking cocktails umbrellas into styrofoam, using beads to color match on magnet sheets, and finding beach shapes in sand to match them to shapes on paper.


That all might have sounded vague, but the following pictures will clear things right up. :)


Bin 1:
Finding beach critters (glow in the dark pieces from Dollar Tree) in a bucket of sand, placing them on correct traced picture.

  

 

Bin 2:
Unfolding cocktail umbrellas, poking them into styrofoam block.

  

 

I totally adore Bubs' use of space. :)

Bin 3:
Pre-writing tracing sheets (all printouts for this week's beach theme came from Homeschool Creations)

Bin 4:

Using magnet sheets to match colored beads (two of these sheets came from MakingLearningFun.com and the other two came from Confessions Of a Homeschooler).

 

Bin 5:
Sorting beach-themed foam shapes (from Wal-Mart)

 

After they both finished working with those and feeling them out, we moved on to the left shelves that contain work for only Bubs. She first picked the pre-reading shelves (she was enticed by the shovels and pails). 

What I did here was tape the capital letters W, F, S, and T, to the pails and their corresponding lowercase letters to the shovels. I first had her place the shovels into the correct pails (WHICH SHE DID ON FIRST TRY!!!)

I then gathered a bunch of beach-themed items, mostly toys and critters, along with flashcards featuring beach terms that begin with those specific letters (cards from Homeschool Creations). I placed them in a bin and went over the phonetics of each word, having her repeat the word and emphasize the beginning sound. When she figured out the beginning sound, I had her place that item into the correct pail.

Throughout this exercise, she challenged me a bit, placing the whale (for example) over the wrong pail. To show Bubs that different letters have different sounds, when she had it over the F pail, I'd say "Fhale?" And she'd laugh. Then she'd put the whale over the S bucket.

"Sale??"

"NOO! WHALE!"

And then she'd place it into the W pail. 

Fun! 

She hit a rough patch in the middle of this exercise, but after giving her time to relax and calm down, she continued until she was ALL DONE! I mean, she really went through every toy and critter until she placed them all into the correct buckets! Amazing!

When the pails were put away, she then picked the pre-writing shelf. Pretty self-explanatory here, writing in the sand. She did great with this, too. These letter cards (again, from Homeschool Creations) feature the same letters as above - F, T, W, S.

She only had one last shelf left that I wanted to show her, and I know I was pushing her to the max, but she completed it with little resistance. We counted the number cards out together and placed them in order.

She then grabbed a handful of shells and placed the correct number of shells over the cards.

Then she was done. Done done. Note exhausted-face. haha

But I gave her a million high fives and scooped her up for the biggest hug ever. She will not be doing all bins everyday. I think my limit is four on any given day, and we will be working with a new bin schedule where she will get to pick, then I will get to pick what she works on. 

Here's to June!!!

And as far as Babe goes, this month isn't a complete break from school. Her summer reading schedule will include at least two books per day, with a mini report at the end of the week about her favorite one.

Today she started with just that, reading "Hooray for Summer!" by Kazuo Iwamura and then "My Loose Tooth" by Stephen Krensky.

Yeah, her reading skills are going to sky-rocket. :)

Again, here's to June!!!

Blog updates may not happen everyday, so stay close as you may not want to miss an update!

9.4.4. - LAST DAY OF SCHOOL!!!

What a day we had!


Babe started by finishing the illustrations in her book. And after a few weeks of writing it, it makes the world debut right now! Enjoy!

"Let's Go to the Circus" 

"Let's go get some tickets," said the dad. Then the whole family got in the car. They turn to get to the circus.

Bananas gets ready. He puts on a red nose. Then Bananas puts on silly shoes. They are white with red polka-dots and with rainbow shoelaces. Then he puts on make up. He puts on blush.

The family checks in. "Let's go get some cotton candy," said the kid. The whole family goes to sit down. They wait for Bananas.

Bananas comes out. He does a dance. His shoes have slinkys at the bottom. They help him hop high. Then he ate a spider. He throws up pink. He honks his horn to end the show.

The family claps for Bananas. The whole family goes in the car. They sang a song called Hey Soul Sister. The baby cries because they are singing loud.

The family likes Bananas because he hate a spider.

The End

Pretty nifty, eh!? She thought of plot, genre, characters, etc. For the whole book! Then wrote it all by herself. I corrected spelling (but not grammar) yesterday, then she was all about the illustrations. Too awesome. She had so much fun with this.

Next, I brought out her self-cutout from the first days of Kindergarten. I remeasured and reweighed her and we learned that she gained one pound and grew two whole inches this year! 


Bubs grew one inch and gained four pounds!!!!


WHAT A GREAT YEAR!!! :)

 

We spent the rest of the morning swimming!!! Welcoming summer, of course.

For lunch we had a small celebration. I mean, finishing Kindergarten! Amazing.

Thanks to Pinterest, I made cute graduation cap-shaped candy pieces which everyone enjoyed.

After lunch, we took all her used crayons from Kindergarten, peeled them up, and melted them to make new crayons for First Grade! I thought this was a super cute tradition to begin.

And with that, Kindergarten was OVER. DONE FOR. COMPLETE.

We are all very proud of Babe and her accomplishments. She did an amazing job this year and we cannot wait for First Grade through Calvert.

My plan is to have a unit on Beach Life for all of June. We will be visiting different beaches across the area to compare and contrast, then learn about life, tides, etc. 

I'm taking my extra long weekend this weekend to go through the First Grade curriculum. The start of First Grade is still undecided, but we will for sure be starting before September. Whether we take a month off or a couple of weeks, I have yet to decide.

I will update on Monday or Tuesday with my plans.

I hope everyone has an incredible holiday weekend! Remember to take time to remember all those who fought and continue to fight for our freedoms. We would not be here without them!

9.4.3.

I'm going to (try) to keep this short because I have a ton of stuff to do yet for tomorrow.


But yes, today was the last day of scheduled lessons for Babe. 160 Calvert Lessons! AMAZING. We had so much fun and Babe said she can't wait to start First Grade already! The gap between the two grades has yet to be decided.


Babe started with Math and did a quick lesson on fractions, concentrating on one third. She completed her worksheets, and then we went ahead and started on completing her writing assignment - her own story!


I had her transcribe her original draft onto other paper, emphasizing the use of her "very best handwriting." She was so excited to begin.

 

While Babe worked on her story,  I worked a bit with Z and Bubs on recalling their shapes. Bubs was able to recall EVERY ONE OF THEM without hesitation, woohoo! Z still had trouble with rectangle and diamond, but with some repetition he was able to also say them all towards the end of the lesson.

I let them play with the tangrams a bit, then when Babe said she didn't want to take a break from writing, I brought out the Old King Cole bowls for Z and Bubs to start painting.

 

Babe ended up transcribing her whole story in one sitting (with minimal complaints about sweaty hands and tired fingers). 

"I think I'm going to illustrate after lunch."

"That's a good idea."

I then grabbed her bowl so she could paint hers.

"Can I have brown, pink, and black? I'm going to make a bear."

"A bear? You're going to paint a bear on the bowl?"

"You'll see."

I was very impressed with her creativity during this craft. She didn't paint an ordinary bowl, she literally turned the bowl into a bear.

I have no idea where she comes up with this stuff.

While lunch was cooking, I grabbed the US Map from the back room and had her collect all the postcards she has has received from her grandparents (they are traveling cross-country and mailing postcards at each spot). I outlined each state they have been to so far and circled the location of the postcard's origin.

I then had her put the postcards in order of when her grandparents travelled.

We then hung the postcards up on the mantle (in order) and I had her draw each state on a scrap piece of paper so she could easily see where each card came from.

"I can't wait to see where they go next!"

"Me neither!"

Before Babe spent the rest of the day illustrating her story, I handed her the book "Detective (Little Boy) Blue" by Steve Metzger. I waited all month to read this book and I wasn't disappointed! I told Babe it might be a little hard to read (it is in comic book format), but she got through it pretty easily and was wide-eyed at the mention of each Mother Goose poem's name or characters.

The plot of the story is that Miss Muffett went missing and Detective Blue is on a mission to find her. He questions a bunch of different characters from different nursery rhymes, until he gets a clue that leads him to her location! I don't even want to spoil the ending here but Babe was so amused at the ending. I'm so glad I found that book. Babe loved it!

After she read that, I read her "Kindergarten Cat" by J. Patrick Lewis. Very cute story.

Next was Babe's turn to read again, and she read "The Last Day of Kindergarten" by Nancy Loewen. She breezed through this book! Crazy!

Then I was up with "When It's the Last Day of School" by Maribeth Boelts. Another good one.

Babe saw the theme right away and previously knew it was the last day of school, but only got excited after reading these books. 

"I can't wait to go to the beach!"

ha!

She spent the next couple of hours illustrating her story and didn't even get to finish! I surprised them with a new movie that even I was excited to see, but my end of the day came before it ended, so I told Babe she needed to tell me what happened at the end.

"OK! But you have to remind me."

haha. What a grown up.

And with that, KINDERGARTEN WAS OVER! Today wasn't too thrilling because tomorrow is her real last day of Kindergarten, but today finished up the Calvert lesson plans. WOOHOO!!!

I have a four-day weekend to go through Calvert First Grade and plan out June's unit for The Littles: The Beach!