Kindergarten Today

      We started today after I laid the little man I babysit down. (He's about four months old and gets a solid nap in the morning and afternoon.)  We've been beginning with Calendar Time which consists of adding the new day, counting all of the days previously put on the calendar, and checking the weather. Then we review our sight words of the week. This week is "the," "a," and "of." Last week I got the book "Th" at the library which shows an array of "th" words (including "the") in sentences on each page so I read it and allowed Aubree to read each instance of "the."

      In math we're learning to identify the numerals one through ten and the actual words one through ten, so we started by writing our numbers (again) on our dry erase boards.

      Last week, I taught them how to play "War" with dominoes. The only dominoes I have are cardboard, so we switched to the actual game of War with playing cards and they loved it. Today we played again after they finished their numbers.

      Science this week is about pets. I began talking about our dog, but they were interested in hearing about other kinds of pets. When fish was mentioned, Aubree expressed that she'd like to cut a fish open to look inside. I found this link after a search on google:
http://library.thinkquest.org/05aug/00548/DissectionGame.html
which takes you to a great interactive dissection of a salmon. You first identify it's fins and jaw, then slice open the bottom with a scapel. Once inside you remove each organ, scoop out eggs, and even blow up the swim bladder to later remove. I think it was simple yet very interesting.

      At this time, the baby woke up so I quickly drew pictures of the fish for the kids to color. I drew a whole salmon with eyes, fins, etc for Raulee and then drew the dissected fish with labels for Aubree to color. She requested that I use dotted lines to outline each organ. While she colored I explained what each organ did and what role the organ played in human bodies (if applicable.) That wrapped up our morning session.

      After I pick up their friend from half-day preschool we eat lunch and lay down for an hour. Today I let them all go outside when they got up. Their friend does a new letter each week so I've been able to focus on that during the week with my girls, too. I prepared a "Butterfly with Buttons " snack (because the letter this week is "B") while they were playing. It really looked super lame but they liked it enough to eat it. I used graham crackers for wings, a piece of apple for the bodies and antenna, and stuck raisins on with a dab of frosting for eyes, buttons, and to decorate the end of each wing. After they ate they each did their "B" alphabet page where they trace the letter and circle all of the right letters in a line. When they finished we made butterflies with a piece of cardstock and two pipe cleaners each. I cut out three little butterfly bodies while they were snacking and taped on the wings of one while the others colored. Very simple.

      While they were finishing up coloring, I read them our Bible story for today which was Genesis 1:1-25. It covers creation up to the sixth day. Convenient for me because last week their friend chose a movie called "The Reef" and today we have time to watch it. When I finished reading, I reviewed which days what was created and segueyed into the fish movie--ha. Everything can be tied together if you're determined enough...!

        As you can see, Raulee generally tags along in our activites at her level.