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| Indian Letter Craft |
I ordered a Kindergarten curriculum complete with handwriting, phonics, math, science, history and bible from Christianbook.com. I should have gone with my gut and ordered Sonlight's program, but because of the lack of funds we got what was cheapest for the time being. I hate it. The boys hate it. Well...they are getting used to it (and used to doing "school" altogether). After the beginning of the third week I had to ask myself, "what is the point of homeschooling if we will ALL end up this frustrated? I might as well ship them off to public school!"
So I started looking for more multisensory things to do with the boys. I'm still working on it. They would rather play and I would rather teach them playing than have us all in tears by the end of the day. They love board games and playing with dice. I found some great dice math games from Kidscount1234 and made up a quick Number Matching Go Fish game out of index cards to help the boys with recognizing their number words.
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| Number Match Go Fish |
Since we were working on learning the short vowel sounds I decided I needed a board game for that too. Thank goodness for photography and knowing how to use Photoshop!! I found a blank board game printable at the ESL-Lounge, opened the PDF in Photoshop, and filled the spaces in with pictures that had the short vowel sounds (at the time we had only covered A and E so only pictures with those sounds are in the photo). If you would like a copy of this PDF game, or the PSD file to add other photos to it, please message me. I'd be happy to share.
I got some blank colored cubes from SchoolAids and on one cube, wrote both the lower and uppercase letters for the vowel sounds we were working on. The boys each chose a colored cube as a game piece and took turns moving through the board. It proved to be a success! (Thank GOD.)
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| Short Vowel Sounds Game |
This last week I attempted to add History. We are using Christian Liberty's History for Little Pilgrims. We've only gotten through one unit so far so I'm not sure if I will continue to use this curriculum for next year. I decided not to stress too much if they don't get it since it is technically for first grade. I will also use some of Abeka's Social Studies worksheets for Kindergarten.
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| Hard at work with handwriting practice |
So far we've had two piano lessons via Skype with my sister. I'm hoping things go a little smoother for our future lessons after some of the excitement of seeing their Aunt Jackie wears off. :) They've learned finger numbers, one clapping song and completed two book pages. How exciting!! I can't wait to hear those little hands play their first song!
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| Piano Lessons |
I got a great Geography program from the Homeschool Omnibus package sale last week. The Geography program is from Erica at ConfessionsofaHomeschooler. She has a free preschool curriculum and some other great printables on her blog. Not to mention she is an awesome homeschool mom!! Definitely check her out if you haven't already.
Although we do bible to start off every morning, I think some of the stories in CLP's bible books are a little over my youngest son's head. I could be wrong, but for now I am filtering most of the books for next year. We have been watching Superbook and Veggietales episodes to supplement our readings and by the end of this past week, I decided I was going to go through Proverbs instead. Their little brains are stimulated much more with Proverbs as its something they can actually relate to.
During the week I let the boys play educational computer games. They love these and I love that its reinforcing what we're learning through the week. So far their favorites are Jumpstart Advanced Kindergarten & First Grade, Reader Rabbit's Balloon Town, Reader Rabbit's Capers on Cloud Nine, and Mickey's Kindergarten. Occasionally they will ask to play Charlie ChurchMouse Kindergarten & First Grade which is great for bible stories. You can download demo Jumpstart games and other learning games here.
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