Here is a little glimpse of life in our homeschool. I'm so grateful we did "preschool" last year because it made the transition into daily "school" much easier this year. I'll admit, I was quite nervous about starting kindergarten with Abby. I was filled with all kinds of doubts, but it has been such a rewarding experience so far. I'm very grateful for this time with my kids. I've seen such growth in Abby, in particular. We focus mainly on the basics: reading, writing, and math, but I'm also finding that there are many opportunities for character development each day. I've noticed a change in Abby in recent weeks. She's becoming much more confident and joyful. She also is developing a spirit of compassion for others as well as learning to treat her brothers with understanding and patience (much more than I have most days!)
Caedmon has started pre-k....and he gives me about 10 minutes a day of focus...and I'm okay with that. He bounces in and out of the room while I teach Abby. He's picking up random facts. It's cute to hear him talk about the moon and its phases. He joins us for all of our hands-on activities and I usually try to adapt the crafts and the lessons so that it's challenging enough for Abby but simple enough for Caedmon. An example would be a letter exercise where I have Abby spell out words with textured letters. While she's creating words, Caedmon would be working on letter recognition. I would lay out 4 letters and have him find the "S" or the "M" and then tell me the sound they make.
We are also involved in a local co-op. I debated becoming a part of a co-op this year. It's not really a necessity for kindergarten...but I'm really glad we decided to join. It has been a wonderful thing for Abby to attend once a week and meet other homeschool kids. She is taking an art class and is enjoying finding new ways to express herself. And it's been really good for me too. I no longer feel like a space cadet "out there" on my own.
Enjoy our picture diary of Kindergarten Beginnings!
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| Happy 1st Day of Kindergarten! |
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| Happy 1st Day of Pre-K. |
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| Table work...cutting and pasting. |
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| counting buttons. |
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| playing with shapes. |
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| First day of school! |
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| Coloring creation days. |
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| Creation days. |
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| Show and tell...a favorite doll. |
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| Show and tell...he brought his Thor hammer. |
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| Sentence practice. |
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| sorting buttons |
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| Feet people...this was my favorite craft in Kindergarten. |
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| Toss the inflatable globe and point to land and water. |
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| Lounging in the shade |
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| Outside reading is THE BEST! |
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| Found a moth and made a home for it in the leaves. |
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| Ice cream cone color and number game. |
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| 1st one to get all the colors and put a cherry on top wins! |
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| Okay...I'm really not one to make the kids do housework and then call it "domestic living class"...but in this case we were practicing sorting and I needed help with the laundry. So we played "sorting basketball" for all the clothes that needed to be folded. Fun times...especially all the underwear jokes we made up! |
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| Gluing yarn is always fun! |
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| Learning to trace the letters with glue. Good for hand-eye coordination practice. |
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| Abby got a finger print kit. She now has all of our finger prints on file. Next she will learn how to collect and identify finger prints at the scene of the "crime". |
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| Sun-dial fun. I was really happy to see that it actually worked! |
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| Learning about shadows. Caed is the shadow as Abby dances around. |
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| Always drawing. |
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| Work book. Abby loves workbooks. |
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| We go to the library every Friday to get books, play with puzzles and play on the computer. | We LOVE our library! |
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| Introduction to oil pastels. |
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| Tracing shadows. You can see Caed's blue shadow with his hand on his head. :) |
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| Letting the sun bleach out construction paper. |
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| Cuisinart Rods are great for math and spacial play. |
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| Making raisins and charting the progress. |
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| 16 or so days later. |
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| More cuisinart fun. |
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| Art class at the co-op with her awesome teacher and friends! |
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| Abby and her newest friend, Ava. Such a sweet girl! |
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| The starting place for our "moon jump". |
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| This is how far they jumped on earth. It was great fun teaching them to use a measuring tape. |
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| Jumping on the moon will land you 6 times farther than it does on earth. This is how far she would have jumped on the moon. Great discussion about "6 times more" and about gravity. |
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| Making rock candy. |
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| Measuring and pouring. |
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| It never actually formed rock crystal candy...not sure what we did wrong, but we will try it again sometime. |
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| Moon rock painting. They put marbles in paint then rolled them around on a paper inside a cake pan. |
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| Finished product of moon rock painting. |
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| Anything so that I can have a few minutes to teach Abby. |
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| "Badges" that Abby makes each week to help her remember the Bible lesson for the week. |
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| More tape measure fun. They measured each other and found that Abby is only 9 inches taller than Caedmon! |
