Sixth Month. 3rd Week. 2nd Day.

Today was another review day, this time on Abraham Lincoln. But first in Math, we went over telling/writing time, and counting money. Babe did well with both, though she needed a quick reminder of how to count by fives starting at a number other than 0. But once she had that figured out, she was good to go. By the end of Math, I was giving her random amounts and she was able to figure out all the ways to use coins to get to that amount. It was cool watching her mind work.

I then had her tell me everything she remembered about Abraham Lincoln, and she still has all the important details down pat - he freed the slaves, the North won the Civil War, and he was the 16th president. Perfect. By then, it was time to go outside for some much needed outside play. Bubs and Z were chomping at the bit to go outside. The weather has been perfect!

After lunch, it was time for an Abraham Lincoln craft, and I was excited about this one. I handed Babe two paper plates and an empty canister of dry oats and told her all of this stuff needed to be covered in black.

"You can color it, you can cover it in black paper, you can do whatever. But it has to be all black."

"OK, that's easy!"

haha

She did great covering the canister with black paper. When she rolled the paper around it, she marked with a pencil where the paper needed to be cut! I was impressed.

When she got to the paper plates, she started cutting out paper and gluing it on, but then she resorted to the black crayon.

While she was creating this part of the craft, I was warming up a glue gun. When she was done, I told her to put the oat canister on top of the paper plate. I then asked her what it looked like.

"It looks like a hat! Like the hat Abraham Lincoln is wearing in that book I read!"

She was exactly right!

As soon as she put it on, she started repeating, "NO MORE SLAVES!" and then told me she was going to go write some rules (laws). So I put on PBS Kids for her to digest the day, but she kept the hat on and grabbed a pen and a notepad.

ha!

She came to me about 20 minutes later with her list of rules.

"No hittin. No slavs. No smackin butt.

Too. Stinking. Cute.

I asked her where she was going to keep her list of laws and she had a great idea.

"Since I'm Abraham Lincoln I'll keep it in my hat!"

And she did. She opened the top of the canister (all planned as part of the craft), and put the sheet of paper in it (along with a calculator).

And with that, she ended the day and started getting ready for dance.

Thus concludes Tuesday!

Sixth Month. First Week. Fifth Day.

Today was definitely Friday. Structure went out the window today and lessons ranged from telling time, to fourths, to George Washington, to Valentine's Day.

We started off in Math. I brought out the teaching clock and showed Babe random times, to which she answered correctly each time (even times beyond the hour and half hour!). I then brought back the discussion on fourths, since we were learning about George Washington and quarters, and frustration ensued once again. I tried to keep it short but I definitely wanted her to understand that a quarter was one fourth of a dollar. It took a lot of patience, but at the end she finally figured out that there are 100 cents in a dollar and that 25 is a fourth, or a quarter, of a dollar.

We ended up doing a craft that failed miserably, so I won't even share the pictures. I tried Family Fun's harm hearts made with glue and forming the yarn with cookie cutters but that didn't work. At all. It was a bummer, but the kids quickly got over it. We did a lot of other things the rest of the day.

After our failed craft, I brought out all the stops so they could make their own Valentine's Day mailboxes.

By the time they were done decorating, it was lunch time.

After lunch, Babe and I prepared Calvert's Cherry Tart recipe and they were DELICIOUS and very popular. Her mom and dad enjoyed them as an after-lunch treat. We may make these again on Valentine's Day because they were so easy and yummy.

We then spent the rest of the afternoon preparing cherry bread and making Valentines for the elderly ladies we will visit at the nursing home, the same nursing home we visited at Christmas.

They cherry bread turned out quite yummy!

Before we headed off to the Dollar Tree to pick out a toy with their four (five) quarters, Babe read "Who Will Be My Valentine This Year?" by Jerry Pallotta. So. Cute. She was able to read it all and it just amazes me every day when she can pick up a book and start reading!

When she finished, we were off to the Dollar Tree, where Babe learned a good lesson about taxes and how the President is paid with the money we buy stuff with! She wasn't thrilled. ha!

And that was Friday. Have a great weekend!

Sixth Month. First Week. Third Day.

Today in Math, Babe learned the difference between analog and digital clocks, and how they both are measurements of time. I was adamant today about making sure she looked at the time frequently throughout the day and telling me the time. With her worksheets, I had her use our teaching clock to match what the digital clock said.

She really enjoyed this activity. Babe loves using that teaching clock.

And with that, Math was done! She completed it in a breeze.

From Math we continued our discussion on presidents, today focusing on George Washington. We have this great book called "I Grew Up to be President" by Laurie Calkhoven. I turned to George Washington's page and read about what Washington did as a young man - how he couldn't afford to go to college, so he drew maps of Virginia and became a surveyor. Babe was fascinated, so I read on about how the colonists elected Washington to be the first president. About how he's the one that led the war on Great Britain, and ended up winning, and the colonists liked that about him! Babe remembered immediately our previous discussion about the first Thanksgiving.

"I remember they came to America because England didn't let them pray to God! So they came here!"

I was so proud. I told her that even though the pilgrims were in America, England still wanted to tell them what to do, but George Washington led the people in war, and kicked England out of America!

"Wow he must be really strong if he kicked that hard!"

I totally laughed out loud on that one.

Then we discussed how George Washington is also famous for his teeth. In another book, "George Washington for Kids" by Brandon Marie Miller, there is actually a picture of one of his sets of dentures. Babe couldn't wait for her parents to get home to tell them all about George Washington's teeth made out of hippo and elephant bones.

By the time our discussion was done, Z and Bubs work time was over so I set up our Washington craft. All the kids loved this and even Bubs was excited to be building her own George Washington.

After clean up, we headed outside where Babe did a quick weather report, reporting that it was 72 degrees outside! 10 degrees cooler than Monday! Crazy Florida.

After lunch, Babe did her online lesson on typing numbers, then I had her type the alphabet, her name, and random words I called out for her to spell. She did amazing with this, and after all that work and discussion today, everyone deserved downtime and we ended the day.

On to the second half of the week!

Sixth Month. First Week. First Day.

Holy heck. Six months of home schooling! Half a year! Crazy. I'm kind of having a blast though, so no complaints here.

In Math today, Babe started learning how to tell time. She can somewhat already do this, but today we sat and actually learned about each hand of the clock and the numbers, etc. Apparently in Kindergarten all she needs to know is how to tell the hour, so today we worked on that. She understood this with ease, and did the worksheet in a flash. Then I practiced with her using the analog clock teaching tool and she got every hour correct.

We moved on to Reading Comprehension where Babe added her first book to her Reading Log for February, "All to Build a Snowman" by Samuel Tang. Such a cute book. It even made Babe laugh out loud! I love when that happens. She summarized this very well and then we read the article at the end of the page about what to do in different types of weather.

We moved on to our first discussion of the month on...presidents! I briefly introduced Babe to George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Barack Obama, telling her that these three men were and are presidents of our country. Then I got out a quarter and a penny and showed her each of the men on the coins.

"Is Barack Obama on any money?"

haha Cute. I told her that we pretty much have all of our money covered with other presidents.

Then I showed her a picture of all the presidents we have had, and had her point to Washington, Lincoln, and Obama. She was able to recognize each one! Then she counted each one. 44. I didn't even know that. So after our brief discussion, we headed outside to play and record today's weather.

I had Babe write three sentences about the weather. I told her to use two adjectives to describe the weather, what she was going to do in the weather, and the temperature by reading a thermometer.

"Today it is windy and sunny. I will jump rope. It is 82 degrees."

Perfect. Then we had playtime.

During playtime, she stood on her shadows from last week and I had her tell me what time it was (since we color coded each shadow and recorded the time with specific colors).

"It's 11 o'clock! My shadow now is on the orange shadow!"

Again, perfect.

Then I drew a big clock on the driveway, but left out the hands. I gave her red and blue pieces of chalk and had her draw in the hands to say 11:00. She did! I was very impressed! Then I let her really go play.

After lunch, Babe did her Science lesson on where rain comes from. The sky was looking pretty gross so I quickly helped her make a rain gauge with a paper cup. We ran outside and put it on the ground before there rain started.

We got back in and I set up a little experiment. She already knows that clouds are made out of water and that "the sun soaks up all the water and brings the water into the sky" but I figured a visual would help her better understand it.

I had her cut out a sun from yellow construction paper and I taped it to the microwave about the stove. I then told her I was going to pretend that a pot of water was a pool. I filled it with about a half inch of water and put the stove on high. Then I told Babe that when it gets really hot outside, the sun soaks up all the water (I left out the word "evaporate" to use in a future lesson). When the water in the pot started to boil, the steam started to come up and I asked Babe what that was.

"Smoke! It's hot!"

"Do you think it's water?"

"I don't think it is but I know it is."

hahahaha Wow. I totally understand her thinking though.

I showed Babe the lid to the pot and how dry it was. Then I held the pot lid over the pot, but didn't cover it. After about a minute, I showed Babe the lid.

"It's wet! It is water! I knew it was water."

I told her this is exactly what happens to the water in pools, lakes, rivers, and beaches. That the sun soaks it up when it's hot out, and that water goes into the sky and makes clouds. Then when the clouds are so full of water, they break and it rains.

I asked her what she thought would happen to the "pool" if all the water soaked up into the sky.

"Then there'd be no pool!"

It didn't take long before the half-inch of water evaporated, so I showed her the very dry pot. She was fascinated. She really liked that activity.

After the experiment, she wanted to go outside in the rain and check on her rain gauge.

Before we left for dance, I had her grab the gauge and tell me how much it rained.

She added a new sentence to today's weather report.

"It rained .5 inches."

And with that, our day was done (after Checkpoints and online Math games). It's supposed to rain some more this week so we will keep the gauge out and record the rainfall. Maybe if it rained more than two days, we will make a graph on Friday.