Nov.-Jan. Months in Review

We had busy months during the holidays.  I did not keep up with the blog properly during that time.  Here is a quick photo run-through of our goings on during the holidays.

Gingerbread Making Party

Birthday Time!

Birthday Gift (LOTR Lego Set!)

Cookies for Santa!

Clothes???

Working Hard!

 

Playing Hard!

Mardi Gras!

Haircut!

We finished kindergarten math and language arts before Christmas.  We have started first grade, but are taking our time with it.  There are lots of concepts in math to master instead of rushing through them.

K12 is working well for us in this manner.  It lets us plug away when we need to and move quickly, but also allows us to slow down and take our time when needed. 

We are doing lots of extras on the side.  We do co-ops.  Yes, plural.  We have one co-op that is music, art, and drama as well as Spanish.  Wiggles name for Spanish class is Juan.  Our other co-op provides classes such as science, storytime, and crafts. 

This is working for us to round out our day and provide ample play time and friends.  

October 2012

Wiggles went to the Revel and got to make sand art and get his face painted.

He helped his older sister make pottery for art with air dry clay.

He had a tooth extracted!

He got a horrible tummy bug and got to be a skeleton for Halloween.

 

Mostly, he just had fun!

School Re-Cap:

Reading-Peter Rabbit

Math-Subtraction Skills

Handwriting-almost through HWOT Kindergarten

Science-Plants and Animals

History-Asia and it’s countries…

Month in Review-September 2012

Corn Maze Flashbacks and Present Day

Wiggles @ 2 and Wiggles @ 5 at the corn maze!

Artspace Field Trip

4H Cloverbud Fun

K12 Learning

The history for K12 kindergarten is really pretty neat.  The kids make a passport in one of the first few lessons and learn about travelling.  They then go on to make suitcases for the continents and “travel” to each country. 

Wiggles already knows how to read and write.  He is in the making creative writing stage and wanting to make words into sentences.  His birthday kept him from starting 1st this year even though he was ready for 1st grade work.  We are working hard to finish out the kindergarten work quickly.  Here he is doing his non-k12 work. He is practicing spelling these words.

He was practicing subtraction with the counters.  Just for fun, I threw in the picture of Wiggles Lorax.

Week in Review Week 1&2

Reading About History

We learned that history is made up of true stories about many important people and events.  We learned our lives have a history and made a mini family tree.

science discovery

We learned about light and all of the different colors, textures, shapes, and sizes of things that we see.  We took a flashlight and beamed it around the room.  We described the objects with words like numbers, colors, textures, shapes and sizes.  We also discussed and described things that are outside in nature or in space. 

Later in the week, we took 2 pieces of construction paper side by side.  They were brown and blue.  One represented the land and the other represented water.  I called out different animals-both land and water animals.  Wiggles had to jump from one to the other depending on the animal.

artistic expression

fine motor skills/phonics

Wiggles enjoys his R&S Preschool books.  He is working on Do It Carefully right now.  He still needs to work on his fine motor skills a lot.  He is a young kindergartener (4.5 yrs old) and a boy.

His current phonics program is Reading Eggs.  I got our subscription through Homeschool Buyer’s Co-op and it was well worth it.  He is already through Map 1 and can read small sentences.  He read I am a cat after completing the above page.

I originally purchased A Reason for Handwriting K for him.  His older brother had used it and all of my other kiddos had learned traditional ball and stick manuscript.  However, his worksheets for Reading Eggs are more of a Getty & Dubay Italic style.  He gets handwriting practice with these worksheets.  I also feel it is easier for him.  I wish that I would have done this style with my older son who still has horrible manuscript. 

storytime

Wiggles is really enjoying Reddy Fox and his attention span is doing well with it so far.  Here is his warning to Reddy about being so bold.  He wanted to tell Reddy not to go in the sunlight to catch chickens.  The drawing on the top is Reddy Fox catching a chicken and a hen house and well I am not sure what else.  He enjoyed it though.

math exploration

Wiggles is using Singapore Essential Math Kindergarten A&B this year.  I chose this for several reasons. 

I plan to have Wiggles run through LHFHG over 2 years.  I did not want to start him in the Singapore Earlybird series as his fine motor skills are not ready for some of it.  This is a nice compromise and the B book is comparable to the Earlybird series.  The A book will get him some much needed coloring and writing practice.

I am not requiring him to write in pencil for anything.  If he chooses to do so that is fine.  He is mainly using very fat crayons.  This is really helping him. 

Wiggles also still switches back and forth for writing and coloring between his left and right hand.  I am not giving any sway in this at all.  I just help him with his grip and paper placement for whichever hand he chooses at the time.

Homeschool Group

We went to the corn maze and it was a blast.  We belong to a great homeschool group.  The kids all got to ride on the hayride to the pumpkin patch and pick out a pumpkin.  There was an animal show, pig races, zip line, and much more….

We have a super homeschool Dad at the co-op that takes our school pictures for our co-op yearbook!  Here are Wiggles pictures.  They turned out great.  My oldest dd, Spiritheart, is in the yearbook class this year and will help put the yearbook together.

This was our first Unit in LHFHG.  We are taking it slow and spread it out over 2 weeks.  It is a great start though and we are really enjoying it!