Kindergarten Weekly Wrap Up

Hi guys! We've officially started our homeschool year and completed our first week. We are in the middle of our second week. Today I wanted to share with you what my kindergartner has been up to. He recently turned 5 and here in Canada we do two years of kindergarten a Junior year and a Senior year. So, this is his senior year of kindergarten. He has always struggled with language and is currently in speech therapy. He really didn't start talking and having conversations with us until he was about 4 1/2 years old. So for that reason I am making this year lots of hands on learning and focusing on vocabulary and just getting comfortable with doing a little every day.

So far he loves doing school and is excited about learning to read. I decided to start his reading by working on word families. After he gets comfortable and is use to sounding out words, we will move to All About Reading. We completed the -at word family this week with a community helpers theme. Here is all the activities he worked on.

Here is a our kindergarten shelf and Tot-shelf. I keep all his center activities. These are independent activities that help cement what he learned during his phonics lessons.

I introduce each word family by making an anchor chart. We talk about each words ending sound and circle it on the chart.

I am using this curriculum to help guide my teaching. 

Tara West

Word Family/Phonics

After each lesson with me he goes to his work shelf and picks activities to do. I try to make each activity correspond with what we just worked on.

Here he is matching the word to picture. This is part of the curriculum I mentioned above. 

This was his favorite one. He picks an envelope, says the name of the picture, and finds the matching stamp that has the correct word on it. If he gets it right he can mail his letter. I purchased this mail box from amazon, it's a Melissa and Doug one. 

This was another fun activity. Lacing the alphabet to spell each word. This gave him lots of fine motor practice. 

 Say the name of the picture find the corresponding clothespin and clip it.

This was another great activity to help him learn to spell the words. The words are hidden and he looks at the picture, spells it with magnetic letters, he writes the word, and finally he opens the clothes pin to check his work. Easy and independent activity. 

Math

This worksheet is from the word family curriculum.

Along with his phonics he also does math activities. His main curriculum is Math U See Primer. He completes one page a day and practices the rest of his math using Moffat Girls Fun with Math kindergarten curriculum. 

Number order puzzle. After he finished the puzzle he wrote the numbers down. 

Hundreds chart activity. 

Bottle cup missing numbers activity. 

Handwriting

This year for handwriting we are using Handwriting without tears. This is difficult for him because of his weak hand muscles. We do one page a day and the page its self is very short. 

Logic/Fine Motor Practice

I put together a shelf that he can pull activities from while I am working with his older brothers. These shelves contain fine motor activities, puzzles, and logic material. He is welcome to explore and create and strengthen his hand muscles through out the day.

This game is from learning resources. I purchased it off of amazon. He has to recreate the picture on the card using the pieces. 

Fine motor practice using a pegboard and elastic bands. 

That's it you guys. I hope you enjoyed reading all about his week. I'll be back next week with our -an word family activities.

Back To School 2018-2019

Hi guys! We are officially back to school for the 2018-2019 homeschool year. We took the summer off which was much needed but now we are back to routine and schedule. Which I love by the way.

This was our first week and it went really well. This year I have a 5th grader, 3rd grader, Senior Kindergartner, and a toddler. That's a lot of grade levels to joggle so, I broke our schedule down into 4 parts.

1. Morning Independent Work for my older two-during this time they work on typing, Islamic studies, map drawing, sentence diagramming (5th grade) and math facts (3rd grade. While the older boys are busy doing that I do circle time and phonics lesson with my K student and toddler.

2. Morning Basket- after morning snack we all gather back and do read-aloud, map drills, states and capitals flash cards, poetry, etc. During this time all the boys are either building Lego, playing with playdough, drawing, or doing a puzzle. I'll share more about what's in our morning basket.

3. Independent Work (for the older boys)- the big kids work on spelling, grammar, independent reading, geography. While I work with my K student on math, sight words, and play with my toddler.

4. Group Studies- After my littlest one takes a nap which is right after lunch. We come back the school room and work on history and science, and ELA interactive notebooks.

Now that I've shared all that lets get to the fun pictures of our first week of school.

On the first day of school we always have a pancake breakfast and open a small gift I put together for the boys. This year I made them a monogrammed clipboard, coloring book/trivia book, some brain putti (they love this stuff) and their favorite candy or chocolate bar. It just motivates them at the beginning of the year.

Tot/Kindergarten shelf.

I keep all their hands on activities for phonics, fine motor, sight words, writing on this shelf. After our phonics lesson (K student) he can come here and do extension activities that reinforce our phonics lesson. He is currently doing word family study. My toddler can explore this shelf all day. The bottom half is his material. I keep an alphabet basket (he's currently doing the letter A) sensory play, a book, and some kind of math or puzzle.

I switched the activities in the middle of the week.

Tot School Activities:

This week he is doing activities for the letter A. He already knows all his alphabet and sounds but his too little, so I want to keep doing fun activities with him when ever he wants. He usually will do a couple of activities and walk away and that's fine with me.

Blue rice fine motor scoop and transfer activity. I colored the rice to go with our A is for airplane theme. 

Letter A sensory bin. Dig and find objects that start with the letter A and match them to the cards. He loved this activity. After he found all the objects he played with the beans all day long.

Name recognition bottle cap activity.

I'll share more of his tot school activities on another post.

Kindergarten Activities:

Like I mentioned my K student is going to work on word families for the first half of the school year and if he is ready we will start All About Reading with him.

Here are some of the fun hands on activities he worked on this week.

-at word family lacing activity. 

This week he is working on a community helpers theme so all his activities correspond with that. He reads the words on the stamp and matches it to the envelope with the correct pictures. If it's right he gets to mail his letter. 

Number puzzle and writing from 11-20.

Handwriting with out tears. 

This was his favorite activity. It was fun and completely independent work. Say the name of the picture, build the word, write the word, and open the card to check if you did it correctly. 

Since this post is already getting way to long. I'll share more pictures and fun activities in another post. Have you already started school? How's it going?