Kindergarten - Day 5

To see what Brian, Sean & Colin did on their 5th day of school, check out their substitute teacher's blog.

ETA: Here's a video of Brian and Sean singing the Apple Blossom Fairy song.

Kindergarten - Day 4

As I wrote about last week, Chris' car is out of commission, so we started our morning out by taking Daddy to work. After a quick run through Dunkin' Donuts I took the boys to our favorite park to have our nature morning. Brian, Sean & Colin all ran around the park and had a ball. Brian and Sean pretended that they were waiters at Cracker Barrel and took my order, put it in to the "kitchen", and then delivered the meal. Colin, just ran around getting sweaty. We only lasted about an hour before the sweat was pouring off all of us - let's just say summer is nowhere close to over!

After we got home and cooled off, we went upstairs and said our Morning Prayer and got started with school. Today was a lighter day. We talked about the apple blossom and what comes after the apple blossoms fall off the tree. They boys colored in a picture of an apple blossom. Okay, Brian meticulously colored his picture and Sean colored his all brown. I read Meet Mrs. Applebee again while they were coloring. Colin is very cute, because he comes up to the folder I have the Alphabet Path Storybook in and points to the picture of Mrs. Applebee and says "bee". See, even Colin is listening!

We alaso reviewed this Sunday's Gospel reading. Brian actually sat in his chair and told me he was going to pray while I was reading. I changed up my reading, and paraphrased the Gospel and really talked about what it means to deny yourself something.

We worked on more pages in our Explode the Code books. I swear, I think Brian would just work straight through that book if I let him. Today was not as good a day for Sean when it came to doing work. He put his book away and went off to work with the movable alphabet. Sean hasn't been napping at all this week while we've been schooling, and it was starting to show.

Finally, I had the boys pick out some books and bring them in our room and we all laid on the bed and read books to calm ourselves down. Afterwards we had some lunch, and then I decided that there would be naps, at least for Colin and Sean. I told Brian that he could play in the playroom until I got Sean to fall asleep, but Brian didn't want to be alone. So instead, Brian, Sean and I took a nap together in my bed. It really made the afternoon go so much better.

Our final activity today was to make aluminum foil "A"s. I found a template of a capital and lowercase letter a and we took glue and tore up some aluminum foil to make sparkly "A"s. The boys really had fun with this project.

Like I said, today was lighter on academics. Tomorrow I have to help out at church in the morning, so maybe Daddy can lead some lessons!

Rain Forest Narrations

I forgot to put these up yesterday. The rain forest is really entrancing both Brian and Sean. Yesterday afternoon I heard them playing rain forest. They were each a different animal that we had learned about - Brian was a toucan, Sean was an anaconda, I was a kinkajou and Colin was the tapir.

Here are some stories that Brian and Sean narrated to me about their Animals of the Rain Forest Book.

Brian’s Rain Forest Animal Adventure

Once upon a time there was an anaconda and toucan who were looking for food. And then the anaconda found some food and they were walking and walking to share the food. Then they found the blue morpho butterfly, and then the anteater and poison frog and then the big gorilla and then the kinkajou and then the tarantula too. And then the capybara and pirahnas. And then they ate food and then they had a stomachache. They went in their cozy homes and went to bed.

The End.

Sean’s Rain Forest Animal Adventure

The toucan was looking for anaconda and then he found him and then a morpho butterfly then a howler monkey and a giant gorilla and a poison arrow frog and then an anteater and then a tarantula.

The End

Kindergarten - Day 3

I am REALLY enjoying learning at home with my kids. I know, I know, remind me of this post when we have a bad day! :-)

Today began our day with our Morning Prayer. It really warms my heart that both Brian and Sean reminded me (not that I had forgotten) that we needed to say our Morning Prayer. Both boys read the prayer loud and strong. We then re-read the Gospel - this seems to be the hardest part of school, they have a hard time focusing on the Bible stories. But I am reading it nonetheless, because I just know they are still hearing the Word of God. I also read them about the life of St. Monica as it is her feast day. They colored a picture of St. Monica while I read to them. Brian remembered that St. Augustine was her son and that he lied to her. He also remembered that St. Monica worried about her son. I was very proud of him for listening so well.

For the Alphabet Path, I found a game that utilized the Letter "A". I said a bunch of different words and when the boys heard me say a word that started with the short "a" sound, they had to say "achoo". They got so silly, and had such fun with the game. I heard them later in the day playing it with each other.

We did a few more pages in our Explode the Code workbooks. They are still really enjoying this work. I have been very impressed with how much Brian already knows. Sean is just a maven at reading, so this is more of a review for him and it makes him feel good reading. But Brian actually knows how to read better than I knew - he just lets Sean do it for him normally!

When Colin went down for his nap we brought out the Cuisenaire Rods. This was a huge success. Both Brian and Sean had different ways of working with the rods - and boy did it correspond with their personalities!

Sean is my expressive, free-spirit child.

And Brian is my organized, rational thinker!

After exploring the rods for a while we moved on to M is for Music. We read about the letter "A" - for Anthem. We talked about our National Anthem, and also John Philips Sousa - and then the boys marched around to the Stars & Stripes Forever. They had so much fun marching; they just kept wanting to march and march and march around the room!
We ended our day by starting along the American History Trail. We read about what children looked like and wore in Colonial times. We will add in some crafts later this week, but we were about at the end of our attention span, and I needed to get to a doctor appointment and then pick Chris up at the airport.

Kindergarten - Day 2

Day 2 was a really good day. We began our schooling day around 10 am. In general, I'm not a morning person, so this seems to be working (so far) for the boys and I. We began our morning with our Morning Offering. Both Brian and Sean read the prayer that I have printed out and put in a frame on our prayer table. Sean then read the prayer for Colin so that he could be part of the morning process - it was very sweet.

We then moved on to reading the Gospel for this coming Sunday. We also discussed the word of the week, "forfeit" and what it means. We also talked about the word "deny" - Brian seemed to like the new words and was using them in sentences. We then continued our religion discussion by reading about the Angel of God in Letters From Heaven, and coloring a picture of an angel. We talked about guardian angels, and Sean ran into his room, calling me in there to show me the angel plaque that is hanging between his bed and Brian's. He told me that it shows him that he has a guardian angel. We then talked about St. Anne again and colored a picture of her. Are you seeing a pattern here? Brian is now into coloring and I am running with this one!

We read Meet Mrs. Applebee again and listened to the Song of the Apple Blossom Fairy - Sean read the words along with me as the song was playing. I then told them the story of St. Albert the Great and St. Ambrose. While I was reading about St. Albert, there is a part of the story that asks the reader if they know where the largest astronomical observatory is - and Brian looked up from coloring and said, "No, Mommy, where is it?" - yay, he was listening!

We read our rain forest books and talked about the different animals that live in the rain forest. We also read Angus Lost - to tie in to our Letter A week. The boys really liked this book. Brian wanted to know why Angus left his home. We talked about what it is like to think the grass is greener.

After lunch and putting Colin down for his nap, Brian, Sean and I worked with our Gnomes and their gems. They got a little rambunctious and starting throwing the gems all over the school room, so I put an end to math!

Reading and handwriting came next. I had Brian and Sean work with the wooden letter pieces from our Handwriting Without Tears set. They marched around to the music. Then we polished the pieces. I put the pieces in a pillowcase and had them reach in and try to figure out which piece they grabbed. And finally we played a little game of follow the leader with the pieces. Both Brian and Sean love working with Explode the Code. They don't know how to write yet, so we are working around the writing part of the lessons, but Brian and even Sean are getting good at circling items.

We ended our day with a reading about the letter "A" in our S is for Sunshine book. We aren't going to follow along the Geography Trail, but rather utilize our state book and N is for Nation's Capital to remember our old stomping grounds.

All in all a pretty good 2nd day. I really feel like I'm spending more quality time with my children. Despite the fact that I have been home with them every day of their lives I am really getting to know them better now.

First Day of School

Today was our first "official" day of school at St. Anne's Academy. I remember my mom always took pictures of us on our first day of school, especially when we headed off to kindergarten, and I didn't want to miss out on those memories with my own kids just because we are schooling at home.Brian - 5 years old

Sean - 3 years and 10 months old

Even Colin wanted to say "cheese"

Our school room was at the ready last night. I made sure everything was neat and tidy to set a mood and feeling for our school year. The white shelves and tables have manipulatives for Colin to work with while Brian, Sean and I are schooling. The large brown bookcase houses our language work. The computer (which is not hooked up to the Internet) is in the corner of the room. The table is good for Colin to color on (his paper, not the table!), and you can see Brian and Sean's desks on the right side - they were a gift from Gramma & Grampa for Christmas a couple of years ago. That large print between the windows is an actual poster from a bullfight in Spain back in 1947. My mom's high school Spanish teacher went to that bullfight, and gave my mom the poster. She had it mounted, and when I became a middle school Spanish teacher, she gave it to me. It now has a place of honor in our schoolroom.

This view of the schoolroom shows out other large bookcase. This one houses the CD player at the top (to keep small hands from playing with CDs!), our science/health work, math and religion. I really love having this loft as our schoolroom. With the 2 windows and the half wall, there is a lot of light that comes in this room and makes it really cheery. As an added bonus, there are 2 closets!

So what did we do today? Well, we started out the morning with a meltdown about 5 minutes into our day. There were tears, and a door was slammed hard enough to knock a picture off the wall. Oh yeah, and I was the one having the meltdown! I really need to pray a lot to remind myself that while Sean is so very smart, he is still not even 4 yet, and his attention span is not always going to align with what I'd like it to. Brian was so sweet though. He knocked on my bedroom door, and told me that he was going to have Sean come in and tell me he was sorry - and Sean did.

I sat down with Brian and Sean and told them that I want school to be fun, but that sometimes we just have to listen when Mommy is telling them about something. I asked them if they could work with me on this. They both agreed that they wanted to do school. So we headed back to the schoolroom with a spring in our step.

We started our morning with a Morning Prayer at our prayer table, and then I read them the Gospel from yesterday's Mass. We talked about keys and what they are for and made the inference that if you were in charge of the keys to heaven that that would be pretty amazing! I also prepped them for the fact that we are going to be reading each week about saints (discussed what saints are) and some special saints called Doctors of the Church.
After religion, we moved on to the Alphabet Path. We read all about Mrs. Applebee. I sensed Brian, and especially Sean, getting antsy, so I pulled out the modeling beeswax. I asked them to keep it in their hands the whole time I was telling the story. It actually worked! We listened to the story, and when the Apple Blossom Fairy introduces Michael to St. Anne, we paused and read about St. Anne in our Catholic Alphabet of Saints book. Then we formed the wax into letter "A"s. I had the boys color the Apple Blossom coloring page while we listened to the Apple Blossom Fairy song on the CD player.

At this point we took a break since the plumber arrived to fix the toilets, sink and dishwasher. I fixed lunch for everyone and afterwards went and put Colin down for his nap. I decided that since Sean was still running at a good pace that I wouldn't put him down for a nap. Instead Brian, Sean and I went back to the schoolroom (since they asked to do more school work) and I introduced the Gnomes. We talked about Roman Numerals 1-6. Sean dumped the whole basket of "gems" out on the floor, so instead of getting upset, I asked the boys to put the "gems" back in the basket by using different numbers - "put them back by two, now put four in at a time." It worked out really well.

We opened up our Explode the Code books and the boys took the 3 page consonant pre-test. They loved it! They wanted to do more and more work. I convinced them to only do the first page of short a sounds so we could save more work for tomorrow! And finally we talked about rain forests since that's what's in the Science Baskets for the month of August. I had the boys color a picture of a gorilla and then had printed out an Enchanted Learning book of animals of the rain forests. Now that Brian is getting into coloring he wants to color all the time. I'm letting him use his creativity when it comes to coloring - if he wants to add blue to a picture that doesn't have blue in it, go for it right now.

This afternoon we headed out to our church to sign Brian up for CCD, which starts tomorrow afternoon. I had to explain to Brian that he will be going by himself without Sean. He asked me why. I had to tell him that Sean is not old enough - what I didn't say is that it's that old arbitrary age issue rearing up.

Tonight while we were eating dinner, I asked the boys what their favorite part of the school day was. Brian told me it was coloring the tarantula. I asked him where tarantulas live and we learned the sign for rain forest. When I asked him if he thought the rain forest was wet or dry, he answered correctly. Sean's favorite part of the day was working with the gnomes. Both boys remembered a lot of the story of Mrs. Applebee.

We had a very good first day. I was surprised at how well it went once the meltdown was behind us. No one was whining to watch t.v., and everyone was peaceable and enjoying our "work". I pray that all of our days will go so well.