Zeke's Kindergarten Year in Review (in pictures!)

It's wild to think that I'm bringing Zeke's kindergarten year to a close. We had such a fun year this year! We used My Father's World God's Creation from A to Z alongside Abeka Math and Rod and Staff workbooks (the ABCDEFG series). I'm not going to write reviews of the curriculum we used. The fact that we stuck with all of it and finished all of it speaks for itself! I just wanted to leave some pictures and a summary of some of the fun activities we did this year. 

Zeke is reading CVC words now and learning some sight words. He can also count to 100 by 1s, 5s, and 10s. He can write and read any number from 1-100. He can add and subtract in 10. I'm really proud of his skills and how much he learned this year!

The Purple Cow - he loved this poem

He used magnetic letters to make words on his blend ladder worksheet each week.

We still use his kangaroo pencil holder!

Sorting by farm animal and zoo animal

He was so proud of his penguin.

Puzzles were a big part of our school year.

We did a lot of hands-on math activities.

He loves pattern blocks, and we incorporated them quite a bit.

He packed shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child.

More hands-on math with graphing.

He had a Mario birthday party for his 5th birthday.

Fingerprint insects - these were so cute!

Hands-on science lessons!

His handwriting keeps improving.

I made sure to have some fun fine-motor activities to round out his themes.

He loves to play with our magnet set!

He continued in speech therapy this year, and he loves all of their office decorations.

He enjoyed his math journal!

The worksheets from My Father's World are all great.

The Mailbox is a great source of worksheets, too.

He loved his crayon resist zebra.

He made a map of Africa with African animals.

His Rod and Staff workbooks were a favorite.

We also hatched butterflies from caterpillars, but I can't find that picture!

Lots of recess at the park.

Zeke had a fantastic kindergarten year. It's hard to capture everything he learned and experienced, but I tried! I've already received his first-grade curriculum in the mail, and I'll be sharing that soon!

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!