Kindergarten Week in Review #10
Madeline got a very special treat this week — she got to spend three days at Grandma Karen’s house! Needless to say, our school week didn’t look quite the same as usual. Our field trip to the week was our trip to St. Cloud. Instead of Grandma picking Madeline up and dropping her off, as she sometimes does, the kids and I drove up to St. Cloud. While we were there, we went and visited a replica of the “T-Rex named Sue” at the Stearns History Museum:
Here’s the other things we covered this week:
Bible/Character: We read a couple chapters of “Leading Little Ones to God”.
Reading/Phonics: The last “short a word families” lesson in Alphabet Island covers three families…-ab, -ax, and -am families. We introduced the families at home on Monday, and then Madeline practiced them with Grandma Karen on Wednesday and Thursday. Madeline and Grandma also reviewed the previous Alphabet Island games we have played and played many of the Sight Word games we have played in previous weeks. There’s a little story book with the short “a” family words from Alphabet Island I was hoping Madeline could breeze through on Friday. She had a little more trouble with it than I was hoping, so I think we’ll do more review this next week and try the book again at the end of the week, and then wait until after Thanksgiving to introduce the “short i” word families.
Math: Telling time was our math topic again this week. Having the geared practice clock from Lakeshore Learning did help ease the confusion a little bit…but telling time is just kind of a confusing subject I think. We worked on time to the hour and half hour the two days we did school at home. I thought Madeline would work on it at Grandma’s house, but since she was not eager to do it, Grandma didn’t push the issue. I was hoping to get to the 15 minute increments of time telling before moving on, but since it was like pulling teeth every time we pulled out the clock, I think we’ll move on for now and attempt to revisit the subject later in the year.
History: We read “Leif the Lucky” for our history reading this week. Next we’ll study the Pilgrims and a little bit about Native Americans between now and Thanksgiving.
Science: This subject definitely got the short end of the stick with Madeline going to Grandma’s house. We read the next section in our textbook (on birds) and that’s it. Our intention was read and study more on a bird of Madeline’s choosing (she picked the Swan), but we forgot to get the appropriate books at the library last Friday. We’re headed to the library today, and we’ll look for some Swan books then!
Handwriting: Not much handwriting practice for Madeline this week, except for doing a page in her Alphabet Island workbook. I’ve noticed she is still struggling when it comes to writing certain numbers when we do math, so I think we might review how to write numbers this coming week.
Read-alouds: Madeline and Grandma read a little bit more of “Mrs. Piggle Wiggle’s Magic.” Grandma and I also read Madeline several of her current love, fairy books.
We’ll be starting a mini-unit-study on Thanksgiving on Monday! I need to spend some time this weekend getting ready for that, as well as looking ahead to what special Christmas activities and reading material I would like to use during the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas.