Third Month. Third and Fourth Week.

I know I know. I'm a little late. Sue me. I'm enjoying life (and the new Fall TV season!!!) a little too much to sit and write. But Babe has been doing awesome in First Grade and believe it or not, we are finishing up Math and should be starting Second Grade Math in a few weeks!!! Crazy. Speaking of Math...

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Math:
Babe completed her subtraction chapter and this past week alone we fit in a two-week lesson into one week. I knew I'd be able to do this with confidence because the chapter was on money. Babe has been counting and playing with money since she could talk. haha. So yeah, we finished up that chapter pretty quickly, ending the week with taking real money to the local fruit stand and buying apples with exact change. 

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Reading:
Babe is averaging about one chapter book per week, and completes one story web and mini report about every book she reads. It's awesome. Her comprehension is off the charts and I'm just so proud of her. She just finished up a Scooby Doo chapter book and picked another one up from the library. They'd scare me at six years old but she seems OK with them! Every time we go to the library, though, she asks if she can check out Harry Potter yet. I really don't think she's ready, but maybe the first book will be a good 7th birthday gift... :)

We have also been immersed in learning the differences between contractions, possessive nouns, and plural nouns. She is struggling a bit every day with this, but she is getting there. When she finished her Scooby Doo book, I made a chart for her and had her look at the first page of every chapter. Then I had her find all the contractions, possessive nouns, and plural nouns on that page and sort them. She grew very frustrated, but when I stepped in to help, she finished strong. I asked her to do the last chapter by herself and she was able to. I think we will continue to do this with every book. It seems like good practice!

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Social Studies:

The past two weeks have been a more in-depth review of reading a globe and learning the names of each continent and ocean, and their locations on Earth. We've also been discussing the cultures of each continent. It was cool to learn that though no one actually lives in Antarctica, people can visit and others have extended stays for scientific research! They stay in igloos and/or brightly colored, one-room shelters. 

When I had two Google searches on a split screen on my laptop, I looked up "South American food" and "North American food" for Babe to compare each.

"What do you see here that South Americans eat a lot of?"

"Whoa! Lots of vegetables! And all their food is colorful!"

"Good! What do you see that North Americans eat a lot of?"

"Meat. And desserts."

haaaahahaha. That's all she said. It was hilarious. 

We discussed reasons for why there are such big differences between what we eat and it was cool to know that Babe is understanding that everyone in the world is different. 

We finish this up next week and I will introduce her to Christopher Columbus the week after!

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Science:

The past two weeks have been all about animals in Science - what they need to live, how their body parts help them get what they need, and how there are all different kinds of animals. It stopped Babe's heart for about two minutes when she realized that humans are mammals.

"I'm an animal?!"

haha

So we've been doing various things to learn about how animals live. We made bird feeders to learn how birds can reach food if it's off the ground.

  

 

 

We discussed how birds can reach food high in the trees because of their wings, and when we went and checked on our feeders the next day, both had some peanut butter/seeds missing! Bubs's feeder location was prime, though. Check out her big hole in the feeder!

Pretty neato. We ended the week by heading to our local rookery, a hangout of sorts for birds to nest and mate! While it was still a little too early in the year to see the huge amount of birds that are usually there, we didn't leave without the pleasure of watching a mother white egret feed her two babies!

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As far as other activities, I've been keeping up with the Fall theme and we've been discussing/reading about scarecrows and apples. 

One week, the girls even got to make their own scarecrows!

 

 

The next week we did some apple activities, including using their fingers to paint apples onto a big apple tree! :)

We read Arnold's Apple Tree by Gail Gibbons and they learned that apples are ready to be picked from the tree when the leaves are very yelllow and ready to fall!

 

 

We then ended September by making our favorite Fall treat...BAKED APPLES! Babe remembers making them last year so I knew we had to do it again. They truly are delicious and it's a great food that both girls could easily helped with.

So I gathered up the apples that Babe bought at the local produce stand and halved them while the girls made the mix for the center of the apples.

 

Then they each helped me core out the apples!

 Then about 45 minutes later, we got to enjoy the deliciousness! 

"Tat2? I think you made these TOO good this time!"

hehe

So that's it! That's September! What a great month! 

October will see lots of pumpkins, Christopher Columbus, and other spoooooooky things to ring in Halloween at the end of the month!

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. 

 

 

Then I had them fold their sheets in half and squish all the paint together.

 

Then it was time to unfold!

 

Bubs yelled, "ORANGE!" again and I laughed so hard. It was so funny to see her realize what she did.

And what do you know, with two huge sheets of paper all yellow and red and orange, we can hang these up in the classroom as Fall decorations! :)

See you next week!