A little bit of School

We have been so busy since I last posted.  My laptop's hard drive died and it has taken me this long to get back into the swing of things.  Is it horrible that I didn't really even miss my computer/internet?  I rather enjoyed the tech vacation...

Now, onto school.  I am reluctant to say, "I am going to do a post about...." because it seems like every time I do, something happens and I am unable to post for quite some time.  So instead I will just not tell you what I have in my drafts and just let it be a surprise :-)

We are half way through our second week of kindergarten/very structured days, and I am very pleased with what we have accomplished.  We did school work Monday through Friday last week, and Monday and Wednesday this week.  I had a Migraine on Tuesday and since we have been cruising along, we skipped yesterday so mama could rest, and O did some work sheets and puzzles.

I wasn't exactly sure how long it would take us to get through each activity, but so far we have finished everything in the morning time frame.  We only do school work from 6:45-8:45/9:15.  As far as I am concerned that is plenty of time for O.  Here are a few photos of the first days of school.

To begin the morning, O has a 3 ring binder with sheet protectors covering worksheets that I have bought and/or made.  She works on these for about 15 minutes right after she is finished with breakfast.  This gives mama a few minutes to finish getting around.

O and I made these robots last fall.  She loved them for about a week, then I tucked them away and have brought them out a few times since.  They were perfect for the first week of school.  Each robot has a number written on it, and an equal number of bedazzles on it.  It was a good reminder for 1-5 (she already knew those) and great practice for 6-10.

This cutting activity is a modified version of something I found on Pinterest.  I liked the variety on the big one, but in all reality we are tight on space and attention spans around here, and this smaller one works quite well.  Plus the container to hold the paper was only $1 at Target.

 Here Miss O is doing Metal Insets.  It's a Montessori activity I picked up last year.  She has improved a lot since we first started doing this.  The purpose of the insets is to help with handwriting.

Nomenclature cards.  These 3 part cards were fruit themed.  She is improving in finding the word to go with the photograph.

Hundreds board.  After having all the number tiles in one large Ziploc, and having to fish through for just the numbers we are using (we have yet to go past 20) I finally smartened up and put each set of ten in their own baggie.  Much quicker to pull the numbers out.

I found this particular science work interesting.  I arranged 3-4 objects on the counter for O to describe to me.  We just talked about them the first day (the order they were in, the size of the objects, the shapes, the colors, the textures, etc).  The next day we traced the objects on paper.  Finally the last day we arranged the objects on the counter again and O drew them (Her drawing is shows the crayon in the wrong place because for whatever reason she decided she would like it to be moved).  This work is obviously a precursor to bigger scientific experiments, but I wanted to really work on the "observation" portion of science before we dig into the whole baking soda and vinegar etc. etc.
We also worked on describing things.  I had her close her eyes and picture a dog, then describe it, and finally draw it.  When she has to stop and think about the object rather than me just saying, 'draw this' she adds so much more detail.  It's crazy what prompts can do for a child!

Geography was easy peasy this week.  We learned about compasses, maps, and made our own primitive map using sand.  We traced simple shapes that represented water and the moon and then traced them in the sand.  So far, geography has been a big hit.  I was planning on doing it twice a week, but O kept asking when we could get the compass out again, so we may increase it to 3 times a week.

And finally, I have a "first day of school" pose with O holding a sign of what she would like to be when she grows up.  It changed about a dozen times before we got to princess.