*Second Month, 15th Day

Today was a very special day. Aunt Dani came for a visit for the last half of the day, so Kindergarten was only held in the morning before lunch.

We did Math pretty quickly again, with it being a complete review of shapes, patterns, sets, etc. Babe was a bit hesitant in remembering how lettering the patterns worked, but after a small reminder, she was easily able to name all the patterns I created for her, including a "tough" one - ABCDC pattern. I was very impressed and pleased.

We then did the last two colors of our color project, brown and black. I was so excited to show the kids what my plans were with their sheets, but by the end of the day, I only had time to assemble one, which I did for Z so he could take it home.

And voila! I think it's a great tool to hang up and keep color at front of mind awareness for the time being. I love it.

With the help of my sister at the end of the day, we tied each sheet together with yarn. Z's mom and dad loved it and like I said, I love it too. I almost want one myself!

By the time we were done with our brown and black sheets, it was lunch time, so I closed Kindergarten for the day. Aunt Dani arrived for lunch and it was playtime for the rest of the day!

However, Babe wanted to show her aunt how good she was at reading, so after lunch I gave her a book to kick off Halloween. She read "Pumpkin Heads" by Wendell Minor. Aunt Dani, a preschool teacher, was VERY impressed with her reading skills, so it made me feel good, too.

I don't have a book-to-reading-log photo...oops. But after THAT "lesson", Kindergarten was officially done for the day. Woohoo Friday!

Next week I have awesome Halloween things planned for each day. I'm pretty excited about all of them. I hope my excitement rubs off on the kids!

Second Month, 14th Day

As usual, today we started off with Math. It really seems like we've been doing least/less/one less all week, but tomorrow ends it, so that's good. I first had Babe estimate which color dog had the least amount in this pile.

She guessed red. Then I had her sort them by color, and estimate again which color had the least amount.

"I still think red. But maybe yellow. I think they are really close."

So, then I had her create a bar graph with the dogs themselves.

"I knew blue was the most! Look how tall the bar is! Red and yellow look the same, so that means we have to count to see which is least, right?"

Well OK then. So, she counted the dogs. Red had 11, yellow had 12.

"Oh they were so close, but I was right!"

I'd say Babe has made huge progress in her estimation skills from a week ago. Even she knew how well she did today. She was really proud!

So she did her worksheets, and Math was done.

We continued with the normal routine and worked on our color project, today being white. Z is officially a gluer - he's no longer pouring the glue all around the paper. He's actually using one dot at a time, putting the glue down, putting something on the glue, and continuing the circle. AMAZING. Not even two years old!

Because of the amazing cold front, I stopped the lesson for the morning and we went for a walk and played outside before lunch. They didn't even want to come in after 40 minutes! But it was time to make lunch, and all three of them will do anything for WordWorld.

After lunch and naps, I went over punctuation marks with Babe. She knew what each one was, and she knew that with an exclamation point, you are supposed to say it really loud or excitedly. She loves pointing those out in all the books she reads.

With the question mark, she knew what it was but when I asked her to read an asking sentence from "In the Big Blue Sea", she read it as if it was a statement. So then I read it, but I asked her to pay attention to what my voice does at the end of the sentence.

"Your voice kind of goes up."

Exxxxactly.

So I had her try and she did it perfectly. I then told her that from now on, when reading a book, she has to pay attention to the end punctuation mark to see how she is supposed to read the sentence - loudly, as a statement, or by making her voice go up at the end.

After Reading Comp., I did a little exercise with her about shades of color. I brought out my 120 crayon box and had her sort them by color.

Bubs actually did her own little sorting exercise and told me she made a pattern.

"See? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10!"

So cute.

After Babe sorted, I grabbed up the purple pile and had her draw a little box with each color, then keep the crayons in order of what she colored (to remember which purple colored which box). Then she numbered them and I cut them out.

I then had her put the purples in order from lightest to darkest.

There were eleven shades of purple so no doubt it was pretty tough, but I was very impressed with her work.

She was very confident in her choices and I really couldn't tell her otherwise, so when she was done putting her little boxes in order, I had her glue them and draw bigger boxes with her order.

It sounds pretty confusing...sorry! But she completely understood it. As she was coloring her bigger boxes she said, "It looks like a bar graph! It's like a color graph!"

Ha. Cute.

I plan on doing this with another color tomorrow. It's good practice and she had fun with it.

To end the day, I handed her "My Many Colored Days" by Dr. Seuss for her reading log. I've never even heard of this book! I loved it. Babe was ready for the day to end by now, but during her second read-through, she caught her second wind and finished strong.

And with that, our day was done!

Second Month, 13th Day

Today was a very purple day. Beware.

As usual, Babe and I started with Math today and kind of blew through that again. I had her do a quick exercise to show me that she knew what "one less" meant, then I had her do her worksheet.

Math done.

Since today we finally had a sunny day, I was able to do a quick Science lesson with Babe about keeping our skin healthy. I brought out some construction paper and sunscreen and she immediately recognized it as an activity that Sid and his class did on Sid the Science Kid (on PBS Kids). I was more interested to see if what he did really worked, and to my surprise, it did!

I mentioned to Babe that in order to keep our skin healthy while out in the sun, we have to put sunscreen on, otherwise our skin burns. To demonstrate what the sun can do to skin, I had them each smear sunscreen on their paper. We had the stick kind and the lotion kind, so Babe had fun writing letters and drawing shapes.

Once they were each happy with their designs, we headed outside! Babe chose a nice sunny spot and we laid down the paper to catch some sun.

While the paper was catching some sun, we went inside and did our color of the day activity with purple.

I then read them all one of my favorite books when I was little, "Harold and the Purple Crayon" by Crockett Johnson. Z was quick to point out the moon that Harold drew, Babe recognized the city skyline before I even read that page, and Bubs thought the dragon he drew to protect his apple tree was very scary. They each loved the book and Z even stayed glued to each page the whole time. And what better way to end the book than to give each kid a purple crayon and a white sheet of paper?

Z's scribbles.

Bubs's sketches.

Babe's drawing.

By the time we were done with this activity, which they each actually really loved, we headed back outside before the wind picked up to check out our sunscreen activity. And what do you know?! It worked! Totally cool!

With the sunscreen dried up you can totally see that the paper faded a bit, but their designs and smears are completely as bright as the original paper color. Pretty neat!

After lunch and naps, Babe read the Reading Comp. book, "In the Big Blue Sea" by Chyng Feng Sun. I extended the lesson a bit and brought out another fish book she owns, "Rainbow Fish to the Rescue." She knew the difference between the real and imaginative fish, as I knew she would, but it definitely got her mind going. It kind of threw her for a loop that I was even asking. I noticed that it made her realize there was a difference, and that books can be "true" and "pretend."

Today she read her tenth book and is well on her way to her goal of 20 for the month! We'll see!

We ended the day with a discussion on good habits and how to keep our bodies healthy. We went through the Calvert-assigned Science worksheet featuring a daily chart on things to do everyday. She noticed that she already completed two of the habits today, so I gave her some star stickers to put in the boxes. She is already adamant about doing all six habits each day this week.

We got a ton done today and it felt good. I think Babe felt really accomplished when she saw all the stuff laid out for her parents to see. I hope tomorrow is just as accomplished, however, with a cold front approaching our area tomorrow, it's likely we will be spending all day outside.

Second Month, 12th Day

Today was kind of an off day. The rainy, cloudy, windy weather made everyone, including me, feel like not doing anything today. But I tried to at least get in the important stuff.

We started with Math and blew through that, with it being "least." I had her point to a pile with the least amount of connecting cubes, had her build a tower with one less cube than mine had, and she completed her worksheets with ease.

Done.

We spent the rest of the morning doing our color activity for green.

Right before lunch, we had a bit of time, so while Z and Bubs played, Babe read, all by herself, "It Looked Like Spilt Milk" by Charles G. Shaw. Is anyone else shocked this book was written in 1947?! Sheesh! Anyway, Babe was able to read every word without my help, so it was an instant add to her reading log. She was confused as to why we didn't read it twice, but was really proud of herself when I told her it was because she didn't need my help at all!

After lunch, I read her "Caps For Sale", which she is familiar with because of a yearly activity at the library with this story. Since this week is about colors and shades, I had her use her crayons to illustrate how the caps were placed on the man's head.

So starting with the brown one, she added all the shades of orange, blue, yellow, and red. I told her we would do some more activities this week with shades of color, especially learning that pink is actually a shade of red and does not belong in its own realm of color. Babe is definitely all girl.

We finished this Reading Comprehension lesson with a little bit of time before dance, so I handed Babe her SECOND book to read herself today, "Little Green" by Keith Baker - so cute. Babe was trying to guess the whole time what the boy was painting on every page (you don't see his work until the last page), and when she saw what he painted, she said it was really cool.

"I wish I could watch a hummingbird like that and paint how he flies!"

"It would be fun. Hummingbirds fly really fast, it's hard to see them!"

"Yeah that's what Kratt's Creatures said!"

Ahh yes, more proof that PBS Kids is stinkin' awesome television to watch.

(Kratt's Creatures is a show featuring the Kratt brothers, probably most known for their older show Zoboomafoo. Each episode of their new show focuses on one or two animals in the wild and how they live, what we can do to help, etc. It's a cute show. Even I like it!)

Anyway, back to "Little Green."

And that ends Tuesday! Here's to better weather with better moods all around tomorrow!

Second Month, 11th Day

Over the weekend, I assigned Babe a fun estimation exercise that I remember doing practically every year of elementary school - counting M&Ms!!!

I put some mini M&Ms in a plastic container and told each family member to guess how many were in it. They went above and beyond and ended up guessing how many of each color were in there, too! It seemed like they had fun over the weekend with it. I looked over their guesses and had to laugh at Bubs's guess - 2000. That would be her heaven, her being a chocoholic and all. Anyway, Babe had some pretty good guesses herself.

I began the lesson by laying out six paper plates around the table. Then I had all the kids sort them by color. Even Z was helping for a few minutes! Everyone did an awesome job.

After they were all sorted by color, we went around the table again and I asked Babe which color she thought there were the most of. She guessed yellow, which was different from her original estimation. Then I asked her which color there were least of, and she guessed brown, which was also different from her original guess.

Then I showed Babe an easy way to organize each color to make it easy to count. She can count by tens, so I had her put each color of M&Ms into rows of 10.

Like so.

Then we started counting! We went through each color and she wrote down each one until we had six numbers! Before we added them all up, I had her build a bar graph using connecting blocks - one block for every ten M&Ms. She got the hang of that pretty quick and by the third color she was doing it herself.

Once the bar graph was made, I expressed how much easier it was to see which color had the most (yellow) and which color had the least (orange) because of the size of the bars. She agreed.

"Look at how red is just barely touching yellow, because there were almost the same red as yellow M&Ms!"

She was right! The difference was only three M&Ms!!! Amazing.

After the bar graph was complete, we did the real math. I taught her very simple two-digit addition a few months ago, and she remembered how to do that, but this was much harder because of the whole carrying-the-one issue. So before we even started this math, I told her that it was completely OK if she didn't understand it. I needed to let her know that so she wouldn't get frustrated two minutes in.

She said OK, and we used two sets of hands (mine and hers) to do all the adding up. By the last number, she was understanding how to carry the one and did the very last sum herself! Just to check all the math, I had her use a calculator. She was so proud that her number matched the calculator's number!

So voila! Here's all the math!

That was a really fun morning. Bubs was dying to eat every M&M when we were done, but she settled for one of each color, as did Z and Babe...and me.

After math was completely done, we did our quick little lesson/discussion on the color of the day: orange.

After lunch, we had very little time to do the rest of the day's work, so we rushed through a reading of the wordless story, "My Red Boat." Babe, again, did very well with that.

We did little practice with the word I, very little practice with beginning sounds, and by the time we finished that, I had no time for Science. That will be saved for another day.

So I handed her a book on colors to add to her reading log. "What Color is Nature?" by Stephen R. Swinburne was a really neat book on where you can find all the colors in the rainbow - basically everywhere! It seemed a very easy read for Babe. She is getting very good, especially with sounding out words she doesn't know yet. She read "salamander" and "surrounded", both completely new words, with ease by sounding out each letter! I was very impressed.

By the time she finished, it was time for dance. And I was ready for a nap.

Here's to me learning how to slow down for tomorrow!

2nd Month, Tenth Day

Today's blog will be very lacking in photos. I've been fighting off something of a head cold for the past couple of days, so things like taking pictures slipped my mind today. I apologize ahead of time.

As mentioned in the previous post, I started Math today with another estimation exercise. It went MUCH smoother than yesterday - she was completely OK with being "wrong." I will have to continue with these exercises until she gets better with at least estimating which color has the most in the pile and which color has the least in the pile. Babe is more concerned with the numbers than she is with most and least, and I think the latter is basically the point of estimation at this age, right?

After her worksheets, Babe was done with Math.

Instead of doing Reading Comp. after Math, I changed it up a little and we all did a Fall craft to keep with the holiday theme. I found the idea on Pinterest they really loved it, especially when I painted their whole arm! Z had an issue with it at first ("dirty! dirty!"), but after he saw both girls go through with it, he was fine and let me do it. Here are their finished products. I love love love them.

Z's turned out super cute. Very Jackson Pollock-like.

I think Bubs made my favorite one. Hers actually looks like a tree where all the leaves fell off. I mean, look at that pile of Fall under the tree! Beautiful.

Babe turned hers into some sort of weird tree-man creature.

With shoes.

Not really sure where that came from, but whatever. Art is her time.

After lunch, we did Reading Comp. and read "What's My Favorite Color?", a mini-story about the colors of fruit. Then I had her make a graph - colors on one axis and fruit on the other. We thought of five red fruits (the most) and one blue fruit (the least). I thought the graph was a cool integration of Math and Reading, and Babe had fun drawing each fruit on the graph.

"Look! I'm using my fine motor skills!"

Apparently the graph was a good integration of Science too. Dang!

After Bubs and Z woke up from their nap, we did our color craft for yellow.

Tada!

I will now leave you for the week with the cutest little voice ever singing her newly mastered song, "Yankee Doodle Dandy."

2nd Month, Ninth Day

Today in Math, I introduced Babe to graphing. I put a pile of connector blocks on the table and gave her five seconds to look at the pile. Then I hid the pile and asked her how many of each color there were. She had a really hard time estimating - she did not want to be wrong. She became physically upset when I wouldn't give her any more time looking at the pile, so I explained to her what estimating was. I told her that most estimations are wrong because they are very basic ideas. After I talked her through it and she understood, I gave her five more seconds to look at the pile, which was probably a mistake, because I think she was frantically trying to count them all (as you can tell from her "estimations").

After she wrote her estimations, I then had her put the blocks together to make bars, like in a bar graph. Then, I had her trace each bar and count how many of each color there really were. After she traced each bar, I explained to her that graphs show the information you want to know much faster than looking at a messy pile. She was able to instantly see that red had the most blocks, and that blue actually had less blocks than yellow, which was opposite of her estimation.

I may throw in another estimation exercise tomorrow so she can ease her mind about being "wrong" first, before she figures out the real answer.

After her worksheet, Math was done. Whew!

We ran right into Reading Comp. because I knew the lesson was going to take a bit of time. My sister guessed it right in her comment under yesterday's blog - I had Babe write her own book based on what she saw during her walk (wagon ride) to connect with yesterday's book, "I Went Walking" by Sue Williams. The pictures from her camera were printed and she cut them out, put them in order of when she saw each item, then authored the book mostly all by herself!

Her book.

Is.

Adorable.

Pay attention to the dedication, because it made my heart melt a little.

Creating her book took a majority of the day, but when she finished I had her read it back to me. Then I had her read "Here Comes Trouble" by Larry Dane Brimner. So cute.

When everyone else woke up from their naps, it was time to do another part of their color project, and today's color was blue. These pages turned out especially pretty.

I can't wait until nine colors later when we can officially complete the project. I'm slightly excited for it.

Anyone else excited for it to be FRIDAY!? I can't be the only one.