School of Tat2: Third Month. 1st Week.

Iiiiiiiiiiiiiit's Fall!!!

OK, not technically, but as soon as September comes around I swear you can feel Fall in the air, even here in South Florida.

So since I can FEEL Fall, we decorated accordingly.

Babe had a good time tracing and cutting out leaves and acorns, and Bubs helped a bit with decorating each. Then I hung them from the ceiling. They both loved the effect!

I brought out and checked out all Fall theme books as well, and started reading one or two daily to each of them. By far, the favorite one of both girls was "Fall Mixed Up" by Bob Raczka. Bubs was laughing at every page and Babe made sure to correct each mix up. It is adorable and I highly, highly recommend it for any parent and/or teacher to read throughout the season. You won't be disappointed!!!

I also printed and prepared a Fall-themed puzzle from HomeschoolCreations.com for The Girls to get into the spirit.

It helped a lot. Everyone is excited for end of the year festivities - starting with Fall!

Also, to start a new month, I cleared the classroom calendar and gave Babe a few date clues to see if she could set it up all by herself.

A few minutes later, Babe said she was done and I went in to check...

...and she did it perfectly! I was so impressed! So awesome!

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Math:

Babe is moving along so quickly and so smoothly in Math it's pathetic. haha. This past week she was introduced to different ways to subtract, from using a number line to counting up, etc. She picked up both ways very well and even surprised me by how fast and easy she filled in her part-part-total charts using only subtraction clues, since last year in Kindergarten this was a big issue.

But she recognized that the difference in the subtraction sentence is the total, and if she had one part, she had to find the other part. It was just so...neat to see how much she's already learned from last year. I love it.

She is well past the halfway point of First Grade Math. Woohoo!

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Reading:

Babe's reading skills have also flourished and she has been reading "Junie B. Jones and the Stupid, Smelly Bus" by Barbara Park all week. She's had a couple of rough spots with comprehension throughout, but it's expected since I know this is her first major chapter book and she's overly excited at the thought of "almost reading Harry Potter" (as she calls it). But since I'm reading it along with her, whenever she does put the book down, I'm able to keep up with details and have her explain to me what is happening.

She is well above the Phonics part of Calvert's lessons so I am altogether skipping those. But they are very slowly introducing the fact that some words can be changed by adding different endings. Though she is able to read the words fine, knowing how and why they change is a big deal, so I am keeping up with the daily Reading lessons provided.

She's definitely getting a good balance between 1st Grade grammar and Reading at her level.

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Science:

Babe is continuing to learn about plants as living things and what they need to survive. This week was all about how seeds are different from each other, and why the differences help each plant live. An activity was included in this week's plans, and Bubs participated as well!

The point of the activity was to teach Babe the different characteristics of seeds and why they are different. So I each had them pick two seeds - a vegetable seed and a flower seed. Babe picked a sunflower seed and a pea seed, Bubs picked a lupine seed and a bean seed.

They each took turns rolling, blowing, sticking, and dropping their seeds in water. Did you know sunflower seeds float? I don't think I would have guessed that, but out of all four seeds, the sunflower seed is the only one that floated!

No seeds stuck to their socks, and the pea seed was the only one that rolled (not slid) across the table.

After the activity, I discussed with Babe the reason for each seed's characteristics. She began to understand that for plants to keep making more of themselves, the seeds had to travel to different areas! And each thing she did with the seeds in the activity were ways that the seed could move!

A very cool revelation!

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Social Studies:

This week Babe learned about map symbols and reading Map Keys. She did well on her test at the end of the week and I am looking to try to create a scavenger hunt in her yard since she is set on reminding me everyday which way North is. haha

I think it would be so fun if I could make an elaborate hunt for her using ordinal directions with something huge at the end of the hunt.

The wheels in my brain are a-turnin'.

And that's it for Babe's first week of the third month of First Grade! Kind of amazing everything that's piled into a week but we are trucking along good!

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Bubs has been doing so so well in preschool so far and she comes home at lunch eager to work with me one-on-one. I've been preparing little bits of everything to keep her busy while I work with Babe on school in the afternoons, like this color-mixing activity that's based on a Montessori technique.

Since it's the Fall season (yep, saying it again!), I've been reinforcing the color scheme for Bubs to understand. She has been picking out the colors in each book I've read, so I thought color mixing would be a fun activity for her to do.

I set up a baking pan with three clear plastic cups. One cup had red-dyed water in it, the other had yellow-dyed water in it, and the third cup was empty. I asked Bubs to use an eye dropper to mix the colors into the third cup to see what would happen.

"ORANGE!!!"

Another cool revelation to see. She was beside herself and filled the orange cup all the way to the top. She asked to do this numerous times throughout the week.

For another color mixing activity, I handed both girls a large sheet of white paper and had them fold it in half. I then handed Bubs yellow paint and Babe red paint and instructed them to only paint one half of their sheet of paper. When they were done, they switched colors and painted their other half.