Kindergarten Week 2

I’m so impressed with veteran homeschooling moms!

By Tuesday of this week I was wiped out! Trying to juggle home life –cleaning, cooking, finances, the laundry beast, understanding health insurance– and school requires a lot of energy for me. I certainly feel at the end of the day that I have accomplished a lot.

But we had a good week. We started doing our Five In A Row lessons this week, and we started with The Story of Ping. The way Five In a Row lessons work, is that you read a book for five days in a row and each day you do an extended activity in the area of art, literature, social studies, math or science. On one day, we made a trip to feed the ducks with friends. (No pictures unfortunately, our camera has been shipped to Canon for repairs hopefully.)

Yesterday, I also hosted our first FAMILY MATH morning for Totus Tuus. I think the kids had fun and they were engaged for a good hour or more doing some nice exploratory math for young children. I came across FAMILY MATH in college when I was working with an AmeriCorps program at a local elementary school. We’d host FAMILY MATH night for the parents and children. I love the activities in these books because they teach kids to think and develop strategies. Yesterday, we explore estimation, measuring with non-standard units, symmetry, developing mid-point strategies, understanding and verbalizing greater than and less than, and observing and finding rules for sorting objects. The activities are open ended and the supplies needed are things you already have at home.