Our Week :)

August 15th-21st,2010...Here is the run down of our week...
*More practice of writing Lili's whole name. She still has trouble with Louise. It is a tough one.
*Learned what initials are. Figured out her own initials along with many family members initials.
*Lili likes doing our word lists on the board so we made a list of "og" words this week (dog, fog, frog, log, etc...)
*Using our bodies to show opposites. Such as taking giant steps across the living room and then the other person has to do the opposite, take tiny steps across the living room. And so on.
*Started a recipe book. Lili drew a picture on each page of a favorite meal or snack and then wrote the ingredients. I added in any cooking instructions at the bottom. So far we have a page for...peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, hard boiled eggs and pizza.
*We read a stack of books from the library, including one about feelings. So for art day we divided a sheet of paper into 4 squares. In one square we drew something that makes us happy, another square for something that makes us sad, another for mad and the last one for scared. Lili drew...happy-coloring with Gabi, sad-when Gabi is mean, mad- when Gabi is not sharing and scared- when daddy says...BOO!!
*Lili has started speeding through her level 2 reading books. She read one on her own with out any help from me. She sounded out any word she got stuck on and figured it out. AMAZING JOB!! She has been reading to Gabi a lot more lately and helping teach her to sing her ABC's and count to 10. Gabi is doing both but the alphabet is not completely clear yet. But for being 22 months old I think she is doing GREAT!! I guess I'll need to start adding in Gabi's school accomplishments here too. She is getting involved with some of our lessons. She loves painting with Lili too.
*Had a couple outings this week with friends/family that will be going back to school soon. Tuesday we went to Jump Central and inflatable jumpy place. The girls had a pretty good time. Then Wednesday we went to Aunt Robin's house to visit and play with Jake.

Another fun week with the girls!

Another Week of Fun!

August 8th-14th, 2010...
Lili is learning to write her full name. She is learning about estimation. She estimated how many of several groups of objects then counted them to see how close she got. One group she was only one away from estimating the right number.
We went to library of course. Even though the summer reading program is over and there are no prizes the girls are still managing to bring home close to 20 books each week. Although my library bag is quite heavy I don't know if I see any other reason to limit how many books they can get. They LOVE the library so why mess with it :) It has been a relaxed week, we have been playing a lot inside since it has been so hot and humid out. We have been playing tons of board games and coloring, painting, etc... Pretty much having FUN!

Time for Kindergarten!!

August 1 - 7, 2010... We hit the back to school sales on Monday morning. The girls loved picking out their supplies. We bought notebooks, paper, folders, markers, glue, a ruler and a set of math manipulatives. After our morning shopping trip we came home and got started. Gabi got a notebook to draw and color in and she loved playing with the triangle math manipulatives. Lili got a few notebooks (a black one for whatever she wants, a green one for her science/activity journal and a purple one for her writing journal-she writes to mommy or daddy and then we write her back in the journal). She also got a couple folders. She loves worksheets and activity pages so I am keeping some in one of her folders so she always has some available. The rest of our Monday consisted of...writing practice (Lili's name, capital and lower case Bb and the number 2. We also played a rhyming game with color words and made a list of words on the board that we could make with the -ick sound. We also read books from the library.
The rest of our week was filled with...alphabet games, math worksheets, a painted turtle art project, learning to use our new ruler/measuring things/making a graph to show our measurements/which item was the largest? smallest?, lots of reading and we finished it off with a trip to Lili's favorite park in Schererville.

Laid Back Summer School

July 25th - July 31st, 2010... We sort of homeschool year round but during the summer I think it is nice to have some weeks that are not completely free of school but more laid back. Before we get into a lot of new stuff I think Lili needs a review on writing her letters and numbers. She has started writing some of them backwards. So we are taking these last few weeks of summer to practice writing the alphabet (upper and lower case) and numbers. Since we have the time we are also spending a little more time on math. We have been so busy ready and keeping up with the summer reading program at the library I feel more attention to math is due. This week we practiced addition and subtraction of the number 1. We also read...
Alexander and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day / Judith Viorst
Aunt Minnie McGranahan / by Mary Skillings Prigger
Just a school project / by Mercer Mayer
Arthur's Mystery Babysitter by Marc Brown (we get a lot of Arthur and D.W. book from the library. Both of the girls like them.)
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin
Dino-Baseball by Lisa Wheeler
Gingerbread Pirates by Kristin Kladstrup
My Food = Mi Comida by Rebecca Emberley (You are interested in learning Spanish. I found a free site online where you can learn
spanish. You have looked at it with me once. More time on Spanish is on our list for Kindergarten this year. This book teaches the names of foods in Spanish.
We also made a list of "at words" on the chalk board and you wrote them all.
We made sound patterns by clapping our hands and slapping our legs.
You learned how to set the table. How many plates, cups, forks, etc... do we need?
We made more sock puppets. Now we have the dog and a new pig. You also want me to make a cat and a priness with long hair.

That is our week. Soon it will be time to hit the back to school sales for supplies for this coming school year.

Z-WEEK!

July 18-24, 2010...This was the last week of our "Letter of the Week" theme. Twenty-six weeks actually went by really fast. For Z-Week we read books about zebras, zippers and the zoo, how to make zero in math a created a zoo in our living room. Lili found every stuffed animal that you could find at a zoo and set them up in the living room like it was a zoo. Then she pretended to be the zoo keeper. She pretended to go around feeding and checking on all of the animals. She even helped Gabi (playing little girl visiting the zoo) feed some of the animals. We also played some new games outside with sidewalk chalk, an alphabet game and another game called "London". It is kind of a cross between hopscotch and hangman. Lili also learned how to play a few new board games. We played Guess Who, Connect Four and Hands Down. She really loves Guess Who! We have been playing it everyday.

Time to move on to new topics to learn about and Kindergarten work.

Y-Week

July 11th-17th...I am finally posting within a week of my last post...amazing!! I figured I was all caught up so better to keep it that way. Our Y-week was pretty laid back. We have been enjoying the summer before it is over. We still spent time each day on school and we are finishing up the summer reading program at the library. It ends at the end of July. The girls are having a great time turning in their books for prizes every week. I have already warned them that soon the prizes will be over. We will still get books every week but no prizes for reading them besides the enjoyment of the book.

Here is a look at what we did for Y-week...
We read books about yarn and how wool yarn is made from sheep's wool, yo-yo's and yawning. Strangely enough while trying to read the book about yawning I yawned at least 3 times. I tried to show Lili that sometimes when someone near you yawns it will make you yawn too. She saw me yawn all 3+ times and never yawned. She said, but mommy I didn't yawn. Hmmm.....
We also talked about the word yesterday and what it means. We told each other everything we did yesterday. We also talked about what a year is and how it takes one year from her 4th birthday until she will turn 5. This next activity was a huge hit. We will definitely be doing it again and again. I brought out a few magazines (Family Fun mag. mostly). We each took a magazine and found a picture in it that we liked. Then we made up and told a story based on the picture. Lili had a great time and got pretty creative.

June 6th-july 10th

T-Week...books about teddy bears, trains, trucks, triangles, and telephones. Practiced time/clock. Reviewed using the telephone and calling 911.

Project this week...Ice Magic!
"Fill a glass with water and add one ice cube. Let a child lay a piece of string across the ice and try to pick up the ice with the string. Sprinkle a little salt over the ice cube, count to 10 and have child try again. Show child how the salt melted the ice just enough to bond around the string." This took us a few tries but worth the time for the excitement when we finally picked up the ice with string. Very cool!



U-Week...books about umbrellas, uncles and up. We talked about uncles and what makes someone an uncle. Uncle Carl! Couldn't find much to do for the letter U so we filled our time with workbook pages (Lili loves them), extra reading for the summer reading program at the library and fun with daddy (he had 2 days off this week).

V-Week...books about vegetables and volcanoes. Learned what a vertical line is and the difference between vertical and horizontal.
We made our own volcano!! "Place an empty baby food jar on a tray. Surround the jar with playdough. Form the dough to look like a mountain. Put a drop of red food coloring and a tablespoon of baking soda in the jar. Then add some vinegar to it to make it erupt." Lili and Gabi both thought this was FUN!! Especially all the bubbles when it "erupted." Next time I will stir in the red food coloring better. It all sat at the bottom so our lava wasn't red. The girls didn't mind though.

For our Friday art project we made sun visors for V-Week. We decorated them with lots of foams animals, hearts and their names.


W-Week...books about wagons, winter and wacky Wednesday! We reviewed the days of the week. Played with water outside in our water table. Lili and Gabi "painted" the driveway with paint brushes dipped in water. Then watched the sun make their art disappear. Daddy was home Friday again and joined in on the water fun. All three of them were soaked and smiling.

The girls also enjoy helping mommy water the garden.


Gabi is enjoying the summer fun too.



X-Week....not much starts with x so we went with words that have an x in it. So our books were about boxes, foxes, exercise and a taxi. Not exactly using the letter x but ideas were limited so here is our project this week..."Inclined plane.. slower and faster... do above.. except roll the ball down an inclined plane that is very steep vs almost parallel to the floor.. which ball rolls faster?" It was a hit! The girls continued to come up with games using their "ramp" while I made lunch. For art we each decorated a large letter X with stickers, markers and crayons.

Our Letter of the Week is approaching its end. Lili started writing her own list of topics to cover next. Time for mommy to get busy planning.