Horn Homeschool: Week 2

Have we truly completed two full weeks of homeschooling already?!?!? I'm perplexed, amazed and thankful to God for His grace in this kindergarten venture. Looking back at the busy week, I'm agog, simply agog at how much we were able to get done. It helps that Chloe is an absorbent little sponge and a quick study!

Our week 2 theme was "All About Me". Since it's standard for kindergarteners to learn all their basic personal info, it was a natural fit along with our letter A activities. It worked beautifully with our phonics lessons too. This week we tackled the "ah" sounds (i.e. "all", "aw", and "au" words).

Here's the day-to-day breakdown of our week's activities:

Monday, August 30
* Reviewed long A sounds
* Read "You are Special" by Max Lucado
* Made t-shirts out of construction paper representing Chloe & Clive. Chloe had to cut hers out and color/draw her favorite foods, activities and likes on the t-shirt.
* Learned Psalm 139:14 and drew it on a poster
* Learned and sang "God Made Me" together
* Talked about how God made us and our bodies
* Traced C & C's bodies on paper bags. Colored and wrote names on each paper body outline
* Handwriting page (from A Reason for Handwriting Level K)
* Read James Herriot's "Only One Woof"
* Drew pictures of our favorite scenes from "Only One Woof"
* Watched Veggie Tales "God Made You Special"
* Reviewed "all" ending words

Tuesday, August 31
* Began All About Me booklet -- made cover and did three pages (linked here)
* Made "A" shaped pretzels from bread dough
* Reviewed "all" ending words
* Constructed a poem about Clive using interchangeable "all" ending words (this got pretty silly!)
* Reviewed Psalm 139:14
* Sang "God Made Me" and "All Creatures of our God and King"
* Talked about how God made each person different and unique with special talents/abilities
* Read part of Peter Spier's book People (FANTASTIC book! Perfect lesson extension human differences throughout the world and chocked FULL of illustrations and information.)
* Rhyming game using a ball (On the porch Chloe and I bounced a big ball back and forth. For each bounce we had to say a word that rhymed with "ball")
* Read "I Can Draw" and "I Can Read" (To emphasize the abilities God has given Chloe to develop)
* Handwriting page
* Math workbook page

Wednesday, September 1
* Labeled body parts on body outlines and introduced new body vocab to Chloe (i.e. shin, calf, waist, shoulder blade, collar bone, wrist)
* Simon says game using body part vocab
* Completed three more All About Me pages and bound the booklet with ribbons
* Read all of Peter Spier's People (This took us about 45 minutes, believe it or not! It is a good sized book but also very involved. After reading each caption, I had to do some further explaining to nail the concepts for Chloe.)
* Introduced "aw" sounding words on the blackboard
* Handwriting page
* Math workbook page
* Read James Herriot's "The Christmas Day Kitten"
* Drew favorite scenes from "The Christmas Day Kitten"

Thursday, September 2
* Reviewed "aw" words and introduced "au" words
* Read "The Oak Inside the Acorn" by Max Lucado (Beautiful book! Warning though, it may invoke some mommy tears when you get to the end. )
* Sang "All Creatures of our God and King" and "God Made Me"
* Reviewed Psalm 139:14
* Read "Just Me" poem from I Can Make a Difference by Marian Wright Edelman (This book was not as good as I hoped but the poem was just right for our level.)
* Annos Math Games, Chapter 1 (Somehow Chloe got it into her skull that she doesn't like math. NOT allowed in this household! I'm hoping to throw in more manipulatives and math literature so it doesn't become too boring. Annos Math Games has been terrific so far! Chloe asks for more and though an adult can easily see the math applications it feels more like a picture book than actual "math".)
* Handwriting page
* Chloe read the reader "I Can Draw"
* Chloe typed sentences (This is Chloe's newest hobby. Matt has been giving her typing lessons and Chloe enjoys typing "stories". It's usually just 3-4 sentences but it's good spelling practice for her since she already knows that red squiggly underlining means something is wrong.)

Friday, September 3
(Didn't do much in the morning since everyone was feeling sick and I was feeling tired from caring for sickies.)
* Reviewed "aw" and "au" words
* Played silly sentence game (I made three columns on the board for crafting simple sentences -- articles, subjects, verbs. Most of the subject and verb words came from our "all", "aw", "au" words from the week. Chloe and I took turns seeing who could make the silliest sentence using the word from the board.)
* Annos Math Games, part of chapter 2
* Chloe wrote thank you cards (Maybe we'll get these all finished before her next birthday!)
* Began Charlotte's Web by E.B. White (Since we are almost done with our current read-aloud, Dr. Doolittle, Chloe asked that we try Ramona the Brave next. After half of one chapter I knew Chloe was NOT ready for Ramona Quimby. Charlotte's Web is a much better fit.)

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Ready for week 3 -- Airplanes!