Kindergarten Week in Review #17-18
I wrote a couple posts earlier about two curriculum changes we’re making for science and phonics. Here’s what Madeline and I have been up to in general for the past couple of weeks during her Kindergarten studies.
Bible: We’re continuing to work on the memory verses from church and read through the take-home devotionals from the 252 Basics. Since there are four of those per week and we usually only do 4 days of school per week, this hasn’t left a lot of time for other Bible readings, like “Leading Little Ones to God” (which I have missed the last two weeks when we haven’t read it). I’m still pondering what to do about this. The 252 Basics devotionals are short, but Madeline usually seems ready to move on to other subjects after we have finished one.
Math: We’re now through (I think) the first 12 lessons of Right Start Math level A. Madeline is improving at using the Abacus and being able to quickly enter or identify any number from 1-10. Most of the other material in the lessons is still review for her, so we are able to get through one (or sometimes even a bit more than one) lesson per day. She is really looking forward to getting past the review section and getting on to something other than just the Abacus being new and challenging. But since using the abacus and visualizing quantities is so important to this curriculum, I don’t want to skip any lessons. She’ll just have to be patient a bit longer. 
Phonics/Reading: As I mentioned in my other entry, Madeline finished Level 1 of Alphabet Island. Yeah! We’ll be moving on to using Explode the Code books 1 1/2 and 2…and you can read more about that in my recent entry on the subject.
Geography: We started studying the continent of Asia, and specifically the country of India the last two weeks. I had hoped to spend no more than two weeks per country that we plan to study. But due to only having seven days of school in the past two weeks with Madeline visiting Grandma during week #17 and restarting our co-op this past week (and some other distractions on days we did do school), we didn’t get as much done as I was hoping to. So, we’ll continue to work on India this week as well. So far for our India study we have read the chapters in Hero Tales about Amy Carmichael (a missionary to India), a folktale and a couple of non-fiction books about what India is like today. This week we will read another folktale (from this book), a picture book story, and a “Magic Treehouse” book that takes place in India. We’ll also make a couple of lapbook pieces for a lapbook about the whole continent of Asia.
Science: Okay, so I slacked and we didn’t get science done. 
I had planned to not do science during week #17 since we only did three days of school that week. Then I held off preparing for science this past week until late in the week, and then by Friday we had other distractions and we just did the basics, skipping the science lesson. We’ll remedy that this week and start having a block for science planned in earlier in the week!
For fun: Madeline (and Erik) really enjoyed making valentines almost every day this week!:
