Kindergarten Week in Review #8
Here’s what Madeline did for school this past week:
Bible/Character: We did a couple days of reading in Leading Little Ones to God. We skipped character this week (whoops!), though on one day when I couldn’t find the Leading Little Ones to God book we took out a book we enjoyed last year, “Big thoughts for little people”
Reading/Phonics: We studied the -ap family in Alphabet Island this week. I made Madeline a phonics flip chart (I got the file to make it here. Thanks to Homeschool Highway for the inspiration!), and this seemed like a helpful tool to be able to make lots of words quickly and easily for her to sound out. Here she shows that she knows the word she made is “tap”:
Math: We did a several review pages in her workbook about number sequencing (such as “what number comes between these two numbers”), and greater than/less than. I tried to touch on counting by fives again, but that was just a no-go for her, at least at the time I tried. I think we’ll let that topic rest for a few more weeks before we try it again! We also got out a book with lots of Tangram shape puzzles, and did those on several days this week. Madeline seems very visually oriented, and she really enjoyed them. There’s a picture in my tot school post of her working on them.
Handwriting: We combined handwriting with Alphabet Island and used the dollar store dry-erase handwriting book again this week. The late in the week, on her own (not even during school time) Madeline got out the “Draw, Write, Now” book I purchased at the beginning of the school year. She was really intimidated by the “write” portion of the book initially, though she liked the idea of the drawing lessons. Then this week, she both drew the picture and copied the paragraph of writing for one of the pages all of her own choosing! I’m excited about this development and we’ll probably include this book now in our regular rotation of handwriting materials.
History: We read about the discovery of the Americas. Our textbook had a short section about Christopher Columbus and then we read a library book that covered several explorers. I’m excited to continue this topic as we read a couple of explorer biographies!
Science: Our topic was trees and leaves, appropriately enough, as we spent several hours outside in the leaves on Monday and Tuesday afternoons. We read some basic information about trees in our science textbook, as well as a page I printed off from the internet about tree/leaf identification. And we had lots and lots of discussion about leaves as we spent time outside enjoying them.
Read-alouds: We typically do read-alouds in the afternoon, and since we spent a lot of time outside early in the week, then cleaned our house in the middle of the week, then made cookies later in the week, and packed and left for our overnight trip at the end of the week…not much “serious” read-aloud time happened. 
We still did lots of the light fluffy stuff (like fairy books) here and there during the week.
Fun stuff: One of Madeline’s favorite fun boxes this week involved making a Halloween card, which she decided to give to her friend Josie:
For our fun outing this week we went to an indoor play area called “Eagles Nest.” It was a blast and I got pictures of the boys, but didn’t get any pictures of Madeline. Maybe next time!
