Kindergarten - Day 9

First field trip today! We had a blast. I would like to publicly thank our local Lowes Foods for giving a great tour. I've added pictures of that to the end of my post.

On another note, don't look for a blog post from me tomorrow. I will be doing things which are more fun than being on a computer. I'll probably blog tomorrow's day on Monday, since we'll take Monday off for Labor Day.

Prayer time, pledges, and repeating our verse of the week (Acts 16:31):

 Bible time: Discussing the beginning of the feud between Jacob and Esau.

Today in our encyclopedia, we talked about housing in the past. This was so interesting! She was NOT impressed with Egyptian toilets. She was very impressed with their gardening skills, though. I'm really enjoying the topics in this encyclopedia. There are lots of ways you could do tangents off these pages.

Math: starting on the number 4 today. She's always written her four with the straight lines - like a box shape - instead of the triangle, so practicing writing it with sharp angles was new and fairly difficult to her. By the second worksheet she had already gotten the hang of it! (By the way, for anyone wondering, she begs me to check mark her numbers - or at least, the "best" ones. I'll keep doing it as long as she's not being too crazy about it. It makes her giddy when I put the check marks on there though!)

Mother Goose rhyme of the day was "Alphabet Pie". This was so cute! I've never heard this rhyme before! We really enjoyed it. And then from our "Llama" poetry book - "Butterfish Bay".

 This was going down during poetry time:

 Next up was language. She had to practice writing the letter B and also match some uppercase and lowercase letters.

 This is her explaining to me that she already knows the story of Noah and the ark and giving me the most detailed version of the story possible. We were about to do history and talk about God's promises.

 A "B" worksheet. She had to find ten objects in the picture that start with the letter B and write them down. She had a blast doing this. She did it brilliantly. It didn't seem to bore her at all. I could probably do this bit for the rest of the evening...

Pictures from our field trip: Julie was our tour guide. Billy was the product manager who showed us the avocado, handed out cotton candy grapes (I am completely serious) and sliced up some fresh pineapple for us. Yum! We were also given fresh whole-grain bread dipped in olive oil, from the bakery. Next we went to the seafood department where Charlie fished out a lobster for the kids to pet. We went through the meat department, dairy, snacks, frozen section, and then the checkout line (with all it's "poor" and "unhealthy" choices).

Possibly the best moment for me was when Julie was asking the kids to tell some healthy snacks they could eat. The kids are yelling out "Carrots!" "Blueberries" and here comes Hunter - "Pop Tarts!" Haha!

I was super proud of both my kids for answering questions and doing great considering it was an hour long tour.

Kindergarten - Day 8

So, I forgot to mention the biggest accomplishment that happened yesterday! I blogged in such a hurry that it completely slipped my mind!

Brianna learned how to swing by herself! Okay... I know... she is almost 5 1/2 years old. That is probably pretty late in the game to be learning the leg pump and everything. But this girl rarely gets to be on a swing set. We don't have one at home, so she plays on my parents' occasionally on Tuesday afternoons, and she swings at church some Wednesday nights, and whenever we go to the park (a couple of times a month). She hasn't had anyone around to learn from, and so I guess she just had to have it "click" for her. I couldn't believe it when I went to my parents' house yesterday and she wanted to show me how good she was doing! I was seriously blown away! A huge milestone for my sweet girl.

On to our school day:

Prayer time and pledges. Our prayer list is growing every day. But that's fine with us, especially when we get to mark off answered prayers!

 In Bible time, we talked about how Abraham's servant found a wife for Isaac.

Brianna saying her Bible verse (Acts 16:31):

In the encyclopedia, we talked about transportation on water:

 Math time:

Our Mother Goose rhymes: "On Saturday Night", "Pussycat Mew", "It's Raining", "Jingle Bells" and "Queen Caroline". 

 Our language arts story of the day: The Old Woman and the Pig. This was a great story for teaching some new words. There were several that Brianna asked me the definition of. I remember this story from when I was a kid.

For her literacy lesson, her assignment was to write an invitation to someone. I'm not going to post all the pictures - especially not the final project - until I know the invitation is in the hands of the recipient(s)! I was so proud of her work on this.

Break time! This includes a snack (of course) and a wild game of one of our favorite board games, Scooby-Doo.

 Back at the "school table", Bri did some Do-A-Dot pages while I read our history lesson. She answered my questions correctly from the first two units, so I'm glad she's been paying attention. We also talked about Cain and Abel, and how the entrance of sin in the world caused so much division (and still does!).

 Then we had an "artistic expression" idea. I remember doing this all the time as a kid. Okay, as an adult too. You color on a white sheet of paper with a lot of different colors, pressing very hard on the crayons. Then you color over them with black. Then you use coins/scrapers/paper clips/etc. to write designs. I told Brianna she wasn't coloring hard enough but she said she couldn't press down any harder. So I dedicated my page to her. I foresee lots of this being done in the future. She thought it was the most beautiful thing ever!

 Oh, one of my favorite things! My dad loaned me (handed down) a ton of books. Every time I read one I am seriously thrown into a sea of memories. This is my favorite series. It's an entire book series about all the issues that your kids have. Interrupting, fighting, whining, teasing, bullying, you name it! It's quite funny. Like Dad mentioned yesterday, you never realize how many issues kids have until you start naming off all these books! Today we read "Let's Talk About Interrupting" and "Let's Talk About Fighting". I felt those two were the most necessary for today. Haha! I told them tomorrow we are reading "Let's Talk About Whining"!!

 Brianna in a sweet hand-me-down dress:

Tomorrow is our first field trip! I can't wait. I'll try to take some pictures if I'm not trying to wrangle the kids too much!