Friday, August 22, 2014

Kindergarten - Day 5

Whoa! End of week one! Everything is moving right along in our class. I truly am so thankful everything has gone so smoothly this week regarding school stuff. I told my mother-in-law how I felt it just confirms that this is right for us right now. I have gone to bed every night content, and several nights smiling, feeling successful. Anyway, on to the day's events!

We started out with prayer time and pledges as usual. We had to add Daddy to our prayer list today because he drove up to Virginia to compete in a race! We're very proud of him but also a little concerned that he may come home beat up!

Next was Bible time. Today we talked about Abraham again. We watched a couple of videos through YouVersion's "Heroes of the Bible" plan. This is great for kids, if you're looking for something for your children. Brianna went over her scripture (Romans 3:23) again and we talked about what it means.

Here is the scripture:


 Today was our first day in our book, "I Heard the Good News". This book tells some Bible stories, but many of the stories are of missionaries and Christians all over the world. Our story today took place in Africa, so we looked at a map to see how far away Africa is. Brianna said, "It really isn't that far! Look!" :-)  Gotta love it! We also talked about our friends who are missionaries, and why missionaries are needed in other countries. We had a great discussion. The story we read was really good. I can't wait to read some more of these stories.


Then it was time for math. Today Brianna was still working on left and right (she was much better at our game today than other days!), same and different, and the numbers one and two. Her number "2" has really improved! I showed her how much she's improved and she got a huge grin on her face. The material is mostly very easy for her, but she says math is her favorite subject. She's always been very good with numbers.


 We read our poetry for the day from Mother Goose: "Three Blind Mice", "Davy Dumpling", "The Kilkenny Cats", and "The Cuckoo". Some of these nursery rhymes are so odd! I feel like there is probably some wacky background story to most of them.


I forgot to take a picture of history, but today we talked about the beginning of creation. It wasn't just the story of Adam and Eve, though, which she knows back and forth. It was about the decisions they made, and we talked about what sin is, and our decisions. I really enjoy the discussions we have together.

For language arts, the assignment today was to finish a story. I read a paragraph of a story which didn't have an ending, and Brianna had to finish the story. I just let her lead because the purpose of the exercise was just to see if your child understands the concept of creating a story, having the characters act things out, create details, etc. etc. 

Here is the video of our story. It's about 2 1/2 minutes long.



Our school day was complete! Outside for some fun time!

 We had a visitor - a grasshopper. Unlike our last grasshopper that showed up, this guy was very much alive! Although you can tell in the first couple of photos, Brianna was very concerned because he wasn't jumping away.


 After our break, we headed off to two different libraries. First, we went to the Carthage Library. They were having a huge book sale. Unfortunately we didn't find anything there but we were surprised to see our own librarian, Ms Patty, was working there! We enjoyed seeing her. Also unfortunately, the animal shelter had these incredibly cute kittens available for adoption. I sent Stephen a text of these pictures, saying, "The library is dangerous! Bri is begging me to adopt!" and he texted back saying, "Run away! Run away!" (We're not quite ready for a pet).


 We also stopped by our community college library. I forgot to mention yesterday that we finished "Ralph S. Mouse"! We needed to return it, plus I promised the kids they could each pick out a movie to take home to celebrate the end of the first week of school.

Later that afternoon, school continued for my kids, unbeknownst to them. Brianna asked me to play a game with her, which just so happened to be a spelling memory game I got from one of my favorite local consignment stores. You really need to know how to spell to play the game. It's great. Even Hunter is starting to pick up on some of the words. They love this game and I do too. Very tricky, these fun educational games!


 Our books of the week:
We are so obsessed with reading. We always have around 5-10 library books and I can't stop buying new books on top of that. It's a real problem! But we have found some books we really really love!

Since we finished "Ralph S. Mouse" we have started the first "Boxcar Children" book. This is a book in Bri's curriculum this year from Sonlight. Even though it's "required reading" it doesn't feel like it. We love chapter books. I have the next four or five in this series, so I'm thinking this will be a series we really get into, especially as the kids get older.


These are a few of our very favorites from this week:


And some that we enjoyed but didn't blow me out of the water:


I don't plan on photographing the books we read that we own. I just can't keep up with all that. :-)

And now, for our first weekend off - EVER! Do you realize my children probably never even understood what the purpose of a weekend was? Now they'll know - you're out of school! Two days off! Woohooooo!

The great thing is, school is going so well that I think Bri and I will both look forward to Monday!

1 comment:

Ken Loyd said...

I wonder if they'll even let you have Labor Day off. Three days without school would be unbearable!