8th. 3rd. 3rd.

Note: I'm exhausted. Short blog tonight.

In Math today, Babe worked with doubles facts in addition (2+2, 5+5, etc.). She knows these by heart so we moved on to "Doubles Plus One", which to me is a weird way of wording things, but Babe understood it pretty well and it was more addition practice. I didn't dwell too much on the wording of it anyway.

While I set her up with a new computer Math game, Fish for 20, I went to the back room with Bubs and Z. Bubs picked the egg bin again and I modified it a bit to make it more fun/easier.

As she picked each egg, I had her tell me the letter that was on it, then I had her match the capital letter. I then had her tell me which animal she thought was inside the egg, the animal that began with that egg's letter. She did this really well until the last few.

I was excited that she was doing so well!

Next on the agenda was a discussion with Babe on the farm animals that provide us with eggs and wool. We discussed the characteristics of chickens and sheep, and she so wants to go watch a sheep being sheared. I'm not sure there's anywhere around here that has something like that but I've been doing some research and we will see what can happen. I'm usually pretty good about finding something awesome. :)

I set up a craft for Babe so she could visually see how sheep wool can turn into something like a sweater. She made a handprint sheep (thank you Pinterest!) and I had her glue cotton balls to her it. Then I drew the outline of a sweater and had her pull apart the cotton balls gently until they resembled fabric. She then glued the "fabric" onto the sweater. It turned out really cool but of course I forgot to take a picture of it. Here she is in the process of gluing though.

I'll get a final photo tomorrow.

After lunch, we went over the book "Mouse's Birthday" (again) and did the related worksheet. She then wrote a thank-you letter to Cow as Mouse. In the book, Cow gave Mouse a bowl of peas, and in her note, Babe thanked the Cow for them, saying, "I love swimming in it."

Um.

I have no idea why or how that came across her mind.

Anyway, after Reading and Writing, I expanded on Math a bit and brought out the connecting blocks. I had her practice telling me each addition sentence to get to the sums of 2, 3, 4, 5, etc., all the way up to 10. When we got to ten, it was almost too easy for her.

"OK, I'll start with 0. 0 plus 10 equals 10. 1 plus 9 equals 10. 2 plus 8 equals 10."

She did this all the way up to 10! She had it figured out so fast. She will be done with Chapter 3 for sure by Friday, and will also know pretty much every addition sentence there is with sums of 0-10. Amazing.

With that, I ended the day.

It is beyond crazy for me to think that we are closing in on her last month of Kindergarten.

Insane.

4.2.4.

More Math and Christmas today! Babe finished up Chapter 7 in Math. I can't believe it! We are flying through it. That's about two chapters a month! We will finish up 2011 with some subtraction, which she is definitely ready for.

For Math, I just had her review creating addition sentences to match a picture. But instead of using the dog manipulatives or connecting cubes, I surprised her with Christmas pencils and erasers. She was very excited.

After her chapter review worksheet to complete Math for the day, I read her "Silver Packages: An Appalachian Christmas Story" by Cynthia Rylant. Today I wanted to introduce Babe to the giving attitude of the Christmas season, and this was the perfect book to do it with. The book was about the Christmas Train in the Appalachian Mountains that started in the 40s. A man who felt indebted to the rural town that saved his life wanted to give back somehow, but when the citizens turned down his money, he decided to start the Christmas Train. It stops in the town every Christmas and gives toys to all the kids. The book is really a very good book, and when I was done reading it, I think it got Babe in the giving mood.

So I revealed to her what we were going to do next Friday, and that we needed the whole week to prepare. I will not reveal it on the blog yet, but today, to prepare, she started hand-making Christmas cards. All I'll say is that she can't stop talking about it and she is so excited.

"Don't you wish it was next Friday now?!"

Ha. Cute.

After lunch, she added another book to the reading log - "Hello, Snow!" by Hope Vestergaard. I again thought she'd have a bit of a tough time with this one but she breezed through it. Too awesome.

And with that, she got back to working on her handmade cards for next Friday and finished the day with a couple more!

4.2.2.

Today, and for the next week and a half, will be mostly about Math. And Christmas. Math and Christmas. We are pretty much right on track with Calvert's lessons, a little ahead actually, so I'm slowing that down and will start with Lesson 72 after the New Year (when new discussions start on Community Helpers).

So today, we concentrated on a solid understanding of addition. I brought out the number cards and had Babe draw the plus sign and the equals sign on two sheets of paper. Then I used the pictures on the Calvert worksheets to help her visualize the addition sentence before she wrote the numbers down.

We did a ton of work like this. Almost until she got bored, which I was fine with because I now know she fully understands the basics of addition.

I also know she's ready for the next step - subtraction - because during one of her number stories I had her create, she said:

"Here are two dogs, and then three more come, but the one of them leaves!"

I told Babe to leave the dog that wants to go away with the group, because next week we will learn about that, subtraction. She obliged.

So yes, we are cruising right along in Math, and she seems to be OK with it. So I'm not stopping!

After lunch, I gave her a book to add to her reading log, and she read this one so amazingly well that I want her to read it every day for the rest of December. It was so cute and Babe fluctuated the tone of her voice exactly how the story intended. She is becoming such a great reader. After every page I couldn't stop telling her "Good job!"

After she read it, I picked random pages and had her point out the nouns, verbs, and adjectives. She's also getting good at this. I'm so proud of her.

Yeah, today was a good day.

On to Wednesday! Where our discussions on Christmas begin!