Homeschooling Kindergarten and Preschool - Weeks 3 & 4

Sept. 15 - 18

Monday ~

Prayer and circle time - same poems and songs as last week

Talk about the ducklings in The Ugly Duckling.  Read Ducks Ditty from The Wind in the Willows.  I love that poem!  I love Rat and Mole.  I can't wait to read this book with them.  Anyway.  

Drew ducks down a dabbling, heads down, tails up, in the shape of a D.  Wrote the letter D.

Sorry for the terrible upside down photography.  It is not my forte.

Made drop biscuits.  Everyone helped add, Sparrow stirred.  Chickadee set up the table for a tea party.  Ate drop biscuits with copious amounts of butter and raspberry jam, Country Peach Passion tea, apples with peanut butter.  Practiced having a polite tea time.  Bluejay LOVED the biscuits.

Tuesday ~

Prayer and circle time - sang I've Been Working on the Railroad for Sparrow, because he was feeling sad.  The children asked for a different poem, so I started on When the Frost is on the Punkin'.  This was a fall poem that I could think of off the top of my head.  We are jumping the gun on fall, I was going to try not to do that.  Oh well.

Talked about the nature of the number 3 (synergy).  Father, mother and baby. The Trinity.  The three primary colors.  A triangle with three sides and three points.  Drew a triangle in the workbook, using the primary colors.  Wrote the number 3, using the primary colors.

Had snack time. 

Practiced writing G, Z and D. 1, 2 and 3.

Wednesday ~

Prayer and circle time.

Got out all of our (non-workbook) drawings and paintings and writing from the last two weeks.  Decided who we wanted to send it to.  Bluejay wrote notes on each piece of his, to the respective recipients, using especially the letters he is working on.  Chickadee dictated notes to me and I wrote them in.  We put together packages and then took a field trip to the Post Office.

Closing prayer.

Thursday ~
Because we were blessed with rain, the children spent the early morning running around in the wet back yard.

Prayer and circle time.

Read from Genesis (Children's Bible Reader) - Noah's ark. Warmed beeswax while we read.  Then modeled apples (red, green and yellow) from the beeswax and put our apples on our end of summer table.

Painting - free choice, not directed.

Homeschool group music class, followed by 6th Hour prayers for the homeschoolers and a picnic lunch with everyone.


Sept. 22 - 25 

Monday ~
Prayer and circle time.  Talked about it being the last day of summer. Sang our songs and working on our new autumn poem, which is the first verse of "When the Frost is on the Punkin'" by James Whitcomb Riley.  I love this poem, and still remember this verse from my own homeschooled days.

Read "The Fisherman and His Wife" from Grimms Fairy Tales.

Closing prayer.

Tuesday ~
Prayer and circle time, same as Monday.  Talk about it being the first day of fall!  Chickadee always corrects us to say Autumn.

Read from the Children's Bible Reader, at Bluejay's request.  He is VERY anxious to get to the story of Samson.  For today, we read about Abraham, Sarah, the meeting with the three angels and the birth of Isaac (which means laughter).

In our workbooks, the kindergartener and I drew a picture of a Fish, in the shape of an F.  Even better, Grimms calls out this fish as a flounder!  Wrote the letter F.

Closing prayer.

Wednesday ~ no school - I had to go in to work and Aaron took the day off and took the children to the beach, where they climbed the cliffs and watched the extremely high tide.

Thursday ~
Circle time and prayer.  Bluejay already has most of When the Frost is on the Punkin memorized, and asked me what a "shock" was, so we got to talk about harvesting wheat, and harvesting and preparing for winter in general, the autumn activities.  I was VERY grateful for the homeschooling I got, which allowed me to know what a shock actually was, having helped to build and stack one at a harvest fair long agow.

Talked about the nature of the number 4 - how strong a square is, how tables and chairs and cars and things have four legs or wheels.  The four elements, earth, air, fire and water, and how everything is made up of them, in some way.  The four seasons.

Kindergartener and I drew four pictures, one for each season, in our workbooks.  Bluejay still needs to finish his.


I think I have let the drawings get a little too complicated for Bluejay and what he is ready for.  I need to remember that he is just in kindergarten, that two colors and simple lines/shapes are more than sufficient, and that he does not need to be pushed out of his comfort zone in any way yet, but rather to be made stronger and more confident within it.  So I will be trying to pull back a bit especially with the numbers... maybe go back to drawing shapes, a square, a pentagon, etc.  

Off to our homeschool group music class and sixth hour, picnic with all of the other homeschoolers and lots of fun outside play time with the bigger boys, which is just what Bluejay needs and thrives on. And that is it for this week!

This Girl

This girl...

She is such a three-year-old.  

She is passionately involved in what she's doing, and yet can spend hours walking around half-dressed singing songs she makes up as she goes along, with lots of real and made-up rhyming words.  

She is the most motherly and loving little thing, toward her babies and any children younger than her (as long as they don't try to play with a toy that is "special to her").

She goes toe-to-toe with Bluejay when there is a dispute afoot, and has a well developed sense of justice.

She cheats at games, in full knowledge and

without remorse.

She has a remarkable sense of style, and can throw on a hat and look chic in any outfit.

She is still so little and darling and such a pain in the neck when she wants to be.  She looks you right in the eye and defies you to stick to your guns.  God help you if you don't.

We adore her.

Homeschooling - Week 2

September 8 - 11

Monday ~

Feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos.  We went to Liturgy, wore blue and talked about the feast.

Play National Parks memory game.  Talk about the parks.  Letter recognition - both children spelled out the names of the parks to me as they turned over cards.  Chickadee blew me away - I didn't know she had site recognition of ALL the letters.  This was their idea.

Tuesday ~

Prayers and circle time

Read the first part of The Ugly Duckling (Hans Christian Andersen) - to be used for Z and D.

Drawing - free drawing with block crayons.  They both drew apple trees.

We went very slow this day.  Chickadee and Sparrow were not feeling well and had been up a lot the night before (and of course I had too).  We took long breaks to play outside and eat food.

Wednesday ~

Prayers and circle time

Read the rest of The Ugly Duckling.  Kindergarteneer - Drew a picture of the duckling zig-zagging in a Z shape across the freezing pond.  Talked about Zig-Zagging and froZen. Talked about how Z has straight lines and sharp corners.  Wrote lots of Zs.  Three-year-old had plenty of z words up her sleeve, she's tricky like that.

Played outside, baseball, climbing, wacking things with sticks.  Bluejay had a lot of strength to get out.  Some buckets were broken.  Sparrow climbed very high and made me nervous but I didn't intervene.

Prayers.

Thursday ~

Prayers and circle time

Talked about the quality of the number Two.  Opposites.  Boy and girl.  Daytime and nighttime.  Sun and moon.  Land and sea.  Mama and Daddy. Kindergartener - Drew a picture of the sun and the moon.  Wrote the number 2.  Two has two shapes - a curve and a straight line.  Practiced writing two.

Three-year-old - drew a picture of an elephant in a nest.  

While Bluejay finished his drawing and colored in all the white space, Chickadee, Sparrow and I did dishes.  Chickadee helped wash.  Sparrow sat on the counter and rearranged everything we put in the dish-rack.

Homeschool group music class and picnic!!!

Record Keeping ~ With thanks to Scholé Sisters

Homeschooling - Week One

September 1 - 5

Kindergarten, plus a three year old

I am going to try out using this blog as a little record keeping for our homeschooling activities, with grateful thanks to Scholé Sisters.

Disclaimer #1: This looks so nice and fancy when all written down.  In reality we are spending less than 1-2 hours per day on "school".  Sometimes it stretches out, but that's because we take breaks to clean up, and I send the kids outside for recess!  Hahaha.  Or I have to spend a while holding the baby and paying particular attention to him.

Disclaimer #2:  I am using a simple Oak Meadow curriculum, with a bit of a Waldorf bent, plus a lot of work my mom and others did for homeschooling many years ago.  But I am not spending very much time actually planning (not counting the months I spend mulling over things in my head without doing any actual research).  I sketched out my day/month in the course of a short hour a few weeks ago, based on the curriculum, and I did know what story we would read and picture we would draw for G and 1 by the end of the day Sunday.  But I picked the poems/songs ad lib at the first circle time, and added to them ad lib as well.  I added the Bible reading every day unplanned, because Bluejay was so eager for MORE THINGS.  I'd planned to use it as an occasional supplement when we'd worn out our letter or number for the week.  I added the cookie making on Wednesday morning because I hadn't spent much time thinking about/researching crafts.  So I'm kind of winging it every day.  And that's working GREAT.

First Day of School.  Isn't he adorable?  This boy is just a joy.

Monday ~ 

Prayer* 
Circle Time - 

• Poetry memorization: Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater & Cockadoodledoo (from Mother Goose)
• Music: This Old Man

Kindergartener:

• The letter G.  Read the story of the Golden Goose (Brothers Grimm).  Draw the goose picture in his school book.  Practice writing capital G.

I started each drawing first, Bluejay watched me and then began his own drawing, imitating my crayon strokes, etc.

• Write name and year and decorate first page of school book.
• Read from the Children's Bible Reader (Genesis) and craft - make a G shaped goose with beeswax.

Circle Time (everyone) - repeat from morning

Prayer and Song*

Tuesday ~

Prayer and Circle Time as on Monday (added One Misty Moisty Morning)

Read from Children's Bible Reader (Genesis repeat plus new chapter) and make beeswax geese again (everyone).

Kindergartener:

• Talk about the number One.  How One can encompass many things.  Focus on one Sun.  Draw the sun and write the number 1 in his school book.

• Practice writing capital G's and finding G words in workbook.

3 Year Old: Work on writing her name. Work on being respectful to others.

I have minor regrets about sending my oldest to preschool, but it was largely a play-based preschool and only minor introduction to letters and numbers, which I do not think will counteract our homeschooling plans.

Circle Time (everyone) and closing song and prayer as on Monday.

Free painting time, 3 colors per person.

Wednesday ~

Prayer and Circle Time as on Monday (added plus other poems, they pretty much have the first two down.)  Added Mary Had a Little Lamb song, all verses.

Read from Bible (Genesis repeat plus new chapter).

Nature walk.  Talk about the time of year, still summer, fall approaching.

Do puzzles (Kindergartener needs more complex puzzles, but loves to do the ones he knows too.)

Talk about the year.  Beginning of the Liturgical Year on September 1st, and first feast of the birth of the Theotokos.  Bluejay told me in detail, with no prompting, about the last feast of the year, the Dormition of the Theotokos.  Talked about Autumn coming up, then Winter.

Three-year-old: painting.

One-year-old: learn to say "poop".  (Oh my goodness, it's the cutest thing ever.  He worked really hard on that word.)

At baby's nap time: Make cookies.  Help add ingredients, stir and try to put "evenly sized" (hahaha) scoops of dough on the pan.

Prayer as on Monday.

Thursday ~

Prayer and Circle Time as on Monday.

Read about apple orchard/growing apples.

Draw a picture of an apple tree using block crayons.

Practice writing 1 and G/g.

Closing prayer and song.

And that's it.  We are not doing school on Fridays as I have to work that day.  They'll be doing activities with Aaron all day, and at this age, we can easily fit in our curriculum in 4 days. Plus our whole life is pretty much homeschool.  

As a side note, I was beyond happy with our first week.  Bluejay is so engaged, especially in the combined story/drawing lessons.  My mom came over on Wednesday, and he pulled out his book, showed her the picture of the golden goose, and told her about the three brothers cutting down the trees, and sharing or not-sharing their "beer and snacks" with the little old man.  We only read that once.  It made my feel fuzzy all over.

*For our prayers we used the standard Orthodox Christian prayers, Oh Heavenly King (prayer to the Holy Spirit) for our opening prayer (both children know this one fairly well) and the prayer for the end of lessons (We Thank Thee Our Creator) to close.  I added the song Joy of All Who Sorrow at our closing prayer, because I love it.  I think it will be a little while before they learn this one.

A Normal Moment in a Normal Day (and I only have 3 kids)

So at last, I sit down at the computer to read my blogs. Finally, the kids are all playing by themselves.  The baby has stopped grabbing at my skirts whining, for the first time all day (he's going through something lately, I haven't figured out what yet).  There are lots of good juicy blog posts from my favorite bloggers and I'm only a few minutes into it when there's a crash in the kitchen. "No one is in there!"  I think, and wonder if someone snuck by me (they're not usually that sneaky yet).  Sure enough, no one was in there, but a cup, one of Aaron's favorites from his childhood, has mysteriously jumped off the shelf and shattered on the floor, amongst all the plastic children's dishes that are already there, due to the fact that I let Sparrow play in the plastic drawer, to detach him from my leg for a minute, and haven't picked them up yet.

No one in the house, including moi, is wearing shoes.  I dispatch Bluejay as the kitchen guard to make sure no one goes in with bare feet, and run off to get my shoes to clean up the shards.  Bluejay takes this very seriously and precedes me down the hallway, shouting to the shoeless masses to stay out of the kitchen!  He reaches the bathroom and announces "Boozy's playing in the toilet!"  (Boozy is the nickname Chickadee has given Sparrow, and it's stuck).  Yes, Boozy is playing in the toilet, dunking the diapers he's pulled out of the trash can.  

I choose to ignore this (he's already gross, how much grosser can it get in a few minutes?), and head back to the kitchen with my shoes, to prevent a more risky situation.  And then I sit down to blog about it.  I guess I better go clean Boozy.

Answer Me This!

Here's a new blog-along blog-along (which is really from here) that I haven't participated in before, and which looks like fun.  I love answering questions.  In fact, my husband and I spent many a delightful dating moment playing "answer questions", instead of "would you rather". So here are my answers to this week's questions:

1.  What's the scariest thing that's ever been in your yard? I can't think of anything scary that has actually been in our yard.  BUT, I have a running joke with Aaron that a cougar pooped in our yard when we lived in Santa Clara.  I found an enormous fumit, of some sort that did not look like it came from a dog.  And since I thought it looked cat-like, but too large to be a neighbor feline, I argued that there must have been a cougar in our yard.  It still comes up in conversation eight years later.  The cougar that pooped in our yard was, in fact mentioned yesterday. Always by me.

2. Beards.  Thumbs up or thumbs down?  Thumbs up definitely.  Aaron has an adorable goatee.  And I'm Orthodox, so liking beards is a requirement for baptism, I'm pretty sure.

3.  If stuff breaks, can you fix it?  Yes. I once even took apart and fixed a VCR!   But I pretend I can't fix the big stuff these days, unless it's sewing or craft related.  "Oh, maybe when Daddy gets home he can glue that back together for you."

4. What was your first car?  A Nissan Stanza wagon.  It was my mom's and she passed it off to me, mostly, I think, so that I could drop my brothers off at school in the mornings, and sit in the high school parking lot at 11 at night, waiting for the bus to get back from basketball away games.  Those were pre cell phone days, sheesh.  Anyway it was a great car, sitting in the driver's seat was like sitting in a nice upright chair, and it had this long, marvelous stick-shift.  I'm so glad I learned to drive on a stick.

6.  Why is your hair like that?  I always cut my hair short when I need to take control of a little something in my life, and, after the first baby, (eg. during pregnancy number two) it was just such a relief not to have that long, long hair of my youth (although even then I would cut it short every few years, it grows back so fast).  I recently had this awesome bob, longer in the front and shorter in the back, and when I went in a few weeks ago to have it trimmed back up, it just didn't look the same.  Also, I colored it recently because all of a sudden the grays just APPEARED and it was a little shocking.  I'm totally going to have a white streak in the front on the right side. But the color is growing out, and I'm left trying to decide if I should leave the awful line of demarcation, or color it again.  I can't afford the professionals, these days!  And I don't have much experience with coloring my hair, I've probably done it 4 or 5 times in my life.  What is a girl to do?

April Daybook

Outside my window... A sunny spring day.  Trees in bloom.  Birds chirping.  That kind of day.

I am wearing... A black and white polka dot knit shirt, a little gray cardigan, jeans and my favorite boat-shoe crocs.

I am thankful for... Those moments when I realize I need to take a break.  For real.  A physical, emotional, spiritual break from all the juggling I constantly think I "need" to do.

I am thinking about... Things I need to do.  See above.  It is a terrible rut I've dug!  I need to start smoothing that out.

Learning all the time... I think we'll revisit this another time.  Trust me when I say that it is, of course, happening.

From the kitchen... Homemade pizza.  Yum.  Shrimp curry, lentils and rice (mujadara).

I am creating... Order in my house.  Somewhat.

I am working on... Resting.

I am going... to my mom's house, once my rest is over for the day, to help create some order in her home.  

I am hoping... to feel the physical and mental effects of the rest I am trying to take.

I am reading... Still Wodehouse, albeit intermittently.  I got some new books for my birthday that I'm really looking forward to picking up (Wendell Berry and GK Chesterton).  In the effort to rest, I have found curling up with a good show has been a bit more in order than reading lately.

I am praying for... For my family (immediate and not-so-immediate), and for the poor efforts and the moments of peace of this Lent to work it's healing in our life.

I am hearing... The dryer.  And the birds outside.  Nothing else!  It's a rare quiet.

One of my favorite things... Made beds.  A kind husband.  A few minutes to make myself look nice in the morning.

A few plans for the rest of the week... It is the last week of Lent.  There are plans but I need to remember they are not as important, so they are not going to be written down.

A picture thought I am sharing with you... 

For whatever reason, this daybook did not capture much of my current thoughts, activities, emotions but I want to get a new post and new pictures up on the blog, so this will have to do for now.

   

The Simple Woman's Daybook