My Father's World Kindergarten: P is for Penguin

This week we learned the letter P and talked about penguins! It's the end of February, but here in Louisiana it feels more like spring than winter. We still enjoyed the topic this week!

MONDAY:

Zeke colored and cut apart his sound cards, and he put them in an envelope. I printed off a few extra penguin worksheets from The Mailbox for this week, and he did this one today where he had to fill in the missing numbers. 

We read through his word list for this week, and then we reread his story "The Sled" from last week. I'm so glad he actually enjoys this reading practice. He wants to just recite the story instead of reading the words, but it's all part of the reading process. Sounding out words is still a little confusing for him, but he really does get better every day.

TUESDAY:

Today Zeke did his handwriting and sound discrimination worksheet. He was trying to spell "penguin" by himself, and he wrote down "pngw" - pretty phonetically close! He could hear the sounds in the word and that was pretty impressive to me.

He did this page from The Mailbox - he had to listen to the words and fill in the missing short vowel. He got most of them correct, but as most beginning readers do, he confused the short /i/ and /e/ as it's harder to distinguish.

We did a page in Abeka math, and he learned about telling time to the half-hour. He does great with his addition problems!

He also completed a few pages in his Rod and Staff workbooks, which he loves, and he read his word list again.

THURSDAY:

No school on Wednesday because we babysat for my oldest daughter's two little ones, Daniel (3) and Mikenna (5 months). We're getting pretty good at condensing school into four days lately!

Zeke started out by reading his word list again, and he did fantastic today! Then we did his blend ladder worksheet and his cut-and-paste worksheet.

We measured how tall an Emperor penguin can get to (3.5 feet!) on the post in our kitchen, and we measured Zeke. He is just a smidge under that height! They weight up to 90 pounds, and Zeke weighed in at 43.6 today.

I found a cute worksheet on The Mailbox where Zeke had to sort the pictures by what a real penguin would do, and what a real penguin would not do.

We did a page in Abeka math, and he is getting pretty good at recognizing the number words to ten. We need to do a few more games/activities to help with this! He is also getting quicker with his addition problems. He did several pages in his Rod and Staff workbooks. I love how he gets so much extra work using his critical thinking skills and fine motor exercises with these workbooks.

We read two Tacky the Penguin books that we found at the library.

FRIDAY:

We started today with a new calendar for March, and we're going to use rainbow colors to make a pattern with the dates. Zeke did his Abeka math page first, and I'm so pleased with how quickly he picks up new math concepts. 

I had one more penguin themed worksheet from The Mailbox - a rhyming worksheet. He caught on to the rhyming concept today, and he got all four correct. 

He drew and labeled four pictures that begin with /p/ - pencil, penguin, panda, and popcorn. I love his big popcorn tub!

We didn't work in the Rod and Staff workbooks today, but we read his word list again and his new story - Sam's Pet. He did pretty good with sounding out the words, but after reading it twice he had it memorized. He kept "reading" the story, which is great practice since he was pointing to each word as he recited it. 

Zeke did our Arctic World puzzle.

Lastly, we painted a penguin! We looked at the picture in the God's Amazing World book, and I think Zeke's penguin turned out so cute.

So sweet to see them together like this.

That was our week in homeschool kindergarten! Next week - kangaroos!

My Father's World Kindergarten: E is for Elephant

We learned the last short vowel sound this week, and Zeke has really improved with his reading practice. I really wanted to plan a zoo trip this week, but it's looking like next week will be better. We live over an hour from the nearest zoo, so it's always a full day experience.

Tuesday:

We took off of school Monday for President's Day since the big kids were home, so we did Monday and Tuesday's school on Tuesday. Zeke colored and cut out his letter cards, and he realized that he would be able to do the entire blend ladder page this week. I was excited that he thought about that!

He did his handwriting and sound discrimination worksheet. 

I printed out the following worksheets from The Mailbox. One is on rhyming words, and the other is discriminating between the beginning short vowel sounds /o/ and /e/.

Zeke read his word list today. 

Wednesday:

I read "Elephant Families" to Zeke and Zoey while they ate breakfast. I love this series of books, and we've had this one for a long time.

I had printed out a few elephant-themed worksheets from The Mailbox, and Zeke did a few of these today. I introduced the concept of subtraction to him, and he caught on quickly, completing this entire page by himself.

I thought this map of Africa was a great way to introduce geography and mapping. He colored the map according to the key, and then we glued the animals to the correct areas of the map. There was no elephant, but we discussed that this is where African elephants live.

His math page was completing a dot-to-to with the numbers 1-30. It was an elephant! 

He cut out the words, read them, and glued them to the correct pictures.

I had him read his word list again. This is so helpful to do this each day. Zeke did several pages in two different workbooks from Rod and Staff. He loves these workbooks! 

Thursday:

We went ahead and did Thursday and Friday's schoolwork since I won't be here Friday. 

We started out reading his word list and then doing his blend ladder worksheet. He was still excited about filling in all five words this week.

Next he drew four things that begin with /e/ - egg, elevator, elephant, and elbow. 

I had a few more worksheets from The Mailbox for him to work. One was addition and one was subtraction. He did great on both! 

The hardest thing he did today was read "The Sled," his first mini-book from My Father's World. He did pretty good, and he read it three times. By the last time, I could tell he had it memorized - but that's okay, because that's part of learning to read!

We read about elephants in God's Amazing World, and then we called it a week!

My Father's World Kindergarten: H is for Horse

Zeke is using My Fathers World God’s Creation from A to Z. He is five years old. We finished the farm theme this week with H is for Horse! 

Monday: 

(We did Monday and Tuesday’s worksheets today since I was going to be gone on Tuesday.) 

We started out with some Valentine fun! I have some worksheets and activities that are Valentine themed to add to his school this week. Today I handed him a box of conversation hearts which he sorted by color. Then we counted each color and graphed them on the worksheet using dot markers. We didn't have a white dot marker, so he used gray instead!

Then we practiced stacking the conversation hearts as high as we could before they fell over. He got eight and I got ten! He ate them while he did the rest of his school. 

We did a CVC valentine-themed worksheet next. I said the words and he wrote the letters for each sound. He did so much better on this worksheet than I thought he would! 

We read about horses in the God's Amazing World book. Then Zeke colored and cut apart his sound cards and put them in an envelope. Next Zeke did his handwriting worksheet and sound discrimination worksheet.

I printed out this worksheet from The Mailbox. He colored the pictures and cut them out, gluing them on the correct farm animal (p for pig, c for cow, and h for horse). 

I had him go ahead and read his word list from this week (even though it wasn't scheduled until Thursday). He is getting better and better every week, and I feel like he will benefit from the practice.

In his journal, I had a valentine-themed tens and ones counting activity for his math activity today.

WEDNESDAY:

We started out with a few fun Valentine-themed worksheets. First was a color-by-number dinosaur themed page. He loves these! Since he isn't reading yet, I color code the numbers with crayons first.

Next he traced the numbers 1-20 using pink, purple, and red. We played this fun "game" (he likes to make worksheets into games). The instructions called for a paper clip and pencil to make a spinner, but I decided to use a dice instead. I wrote the numbers 1-6 in colored markers, and we took turns rolling the dice, finding the number, and using a dot marker to dot any balloon on the page with that color. The color with the most balloons wins! We had a 3--way tie with yellow, green, and blue.

Then we completed his math worksheet from My Father's World. He had to listen to the story and glue the horses in the correct boxes. Super easy for him.

We then read through his word list again, and he did even better today. 

He had a cut and glue worksheet where he read the words and glued them to the correct picture.

The last thing he did was make a shape horse. The directions were in the teacher's guide with exact measurements to cut. I eyeballed it! He figured out where each shape went to form a horse, then he added eyes and other embellishments to his picture. It turned out super cute!

THURSDAY:

We had a pretty quick morning of schoolwork since I was babysitting my grandson, Daniel. We started out reading the word list again, and while he still needed some help, I'm glad I did this each day this week. There are 15 words on this week's list! Next we did the blend ladder worksheet. I just took a marker and wrote the letters in the boxes today because I didn't think pulling out all of the magnetic letters would be a good idea with a three year old and a 16 month old around. 

Zeke colored a page full of animals, and then he cut them out and we sorted them by "farm animal" or "zoo animal." We talked about the animals in our zoo - we don't have a dolphin, and he doesn't remember seeing the camel. We are actually planning a trip to the zoo next week. Our nearest zoo is over an hour away.

That's all we managed to do today, and Zeke had speech therapy in the afternoon. My mother-in-law took him since I was watching Daniel. It's also an hour trip there, and an hour trip back. When you live very rurally, everything is about an hour away!

FRIDAY:

We didn't' get school done until after lunch today because my parents just got in from Nicaragua, so we went over to visit them this morning! After lunch and Zoey's nap, we went outside to the porch where it was lightly raining and a bit chilly to finish school.

Zeke drew four things that start with H - hot, horse, heart, and house. I love his drawings each week!

Then he read four sentences and glued them to the correct picture. 

I had one more worksheet from The Mailbox where Zeke had to glue the pictures to the hay that begin with H. 

And that wrapped up our week! We’re really enjoying My Fathers World, and I am so proud of how quickly he is getting the hang of reading.