One Week Down

Our first week of kindergarten was a success. The schedule had to be tweak a bit after the second day. My 8 month old decided it would be a good day to start crawling! I’m still trying to nail down our schedule, but I know that it will all work out…by the end of the year!

Here’s a look at our first week. I didn’t get a chance to “document” a lot, but I was able to get some photos of the crafts we did.

Intro to the World: Cultures (Core A): This week we learned all about the first people. To go along with our readings we did several crafts.

First People’s Homes

The boy loved doing this cave painting craft. There are lots of great ways one can go about imitating a cave painting, but we took the simple route. I just mixed up some different shades of brown tempera paint and cut down a brown lunch bag. He crumpled the bag to give it a “rock like” texture and then painted an animal.

First People’s Clothes

We also learned about how the first people made their clothes and other accessories. In the book we’re reading, Living Long Ago, there was a suggestions for making a “mammoth tusks” necklace. This was another big hit. The biggest part of this task was drilling holes into the cork, but it didn’t take that much time at all…and gave my husband something to do while watching “Duck Dynasty.”

Reading: This year we are using a combination of reading curriculum. The boy picked up on decoding quickly, and all by himself, so we usually breeze through our activities. However, he still needs to work on his fluency and blends. We’ve been using this week to review.

All About Reading

We are using All About Reading Level 1. Right now, he is learning how to blend letter sounds together to read words and reviewing beginning letter sounds. It is really easy for him, but he still enjoys moving the letter tiles around and reading the new words that he creates. I went with this level because it has fluency practice lessons, as well as lessons introductions to consonants blends and various sounds the vowels make. I could skip ahead, and I still might, but reviewing never hurts.

Science A: Biology, Botany, and Physics: We are basically building up our background knowledge in science this year. This first week we read all about Earth. We learned what the Earth looks like, how it takes 24 hours to spin on its axis, where the sun sets and rises, and seasons.

Seasons

To elaborate on the seasons, we will be observing a tree in our yard and documenting how it changes. I provided the boy with this template. He colored in the trunk of the tree with a marker and painted leaves with a q-tip for our summer tree. We talked about what color the leaves were, so I gave him two shades of green. I hope to turn it into a book at the end of the year.

I’m linking up to Weekly Wrap Up.