Kindergarten Week 3

Reading:

We finished Little House in the Big Woods:

..."What are the days of auld lang syne, Pa?"

"They are the days of a long time ago, Laura," Pa said. "Go to sleep, now."

But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa's fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the firelight gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting.

She thought to herself, "This is now."

...They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.

It's a must-read for children, and a must-read-again for adults.

Our Little House reading led to us watching a couple of YouTube videos about threshing wheat. That led to us watching a two-part video of a man who grows his own wheat, threshes it, grinds it, and bakes it into bread. Gemma also asked how cloth is made, and watched a video about that, too.

We also read Life of Fred: Goldfish, Prince Caspian, and Training Hearts.

Gemma re-read Life of Fred: Apples...

...and some Winnie the Pooh...

Foreign Language: 

She did two Duolingo Spanish lessons.

Co-op:

It was my week to host co-op. What started out as a home(pre)school co-op has transitioned into a co-op of preschoolers, TKers, and kindergarteners.

The theme this month is Transportation, so I wanted to do something to introduce the topic.

I started by reading the kids Ox-Cart Man, for two reasons. The first reason is that I love it. The second reason is that I wanted to ask the kids why the man needed the cart in the beginning, and why he didn't need it on his way home. This is the reason for transportation. We use transportation to carry things (including passengers) from one place to another place.

Then, I gave each child a ziploc baggie of  images (a dugout canoe, a chariot, a steamship, a space shuttle, etc.), and we categorized. I started by asking the kids to find all of the things that had wheels. (Gemma surprised me by saying, "Well, airplanes have little wheels." I'm not sure how she knew that, considering she was the only kid in the group to have never flown on a plane.) Then I asked them which things could fly. (Gemma said that the ship could fly if it were sprinkled with pixie dust. We all agreed. One little girl said the horse drawn carriage could fly if a pegasus were pulling it. We all agreed with that, too.)

Next, I talked them through taping the images in order. (Figuring out how to use tape is a skill in itself.)

Here is Gemma's finished timeline:

Piano:

She learned "Rockin' Tune" (which introduces flats), and also "Marching Song."

Nature Study:

Gemma's butterflies emerged from their chrysalids. All five survived!

We enjoyed watching this video of a caterpillar pupating:

http://lifecycle.onenessbecomesus.com/pupae.html

What else?

She danced, she swam, she practiced her song for Cerub Choir.

Mother Culture:

I've been watching Hollow Crown: Wars of the Roses, Shakespeare's Henry VI parts 1 and 2, and Richard III. It's very bloody, but excellent.