End of week nine

At the beginning of the week we started our farm unit. Jenna created a farm scene which is poster size and is on our school wall. I will get a pic up soon. We read some books and created a barn yard barn babble book. We made a farm word list that she will use when she is writing about farm related topics.


Fall is here! We kicked off the new season with a welcome Fall party. We had some
yummy apple cider and mini apple pie. We then played some party games and read a fall story.

Jenna received her first two stars this week. She was a very good girl in school. And went above and beyond with her school work. She took it upon herself to do extra math and writing.

We also learned about acrostic poems this week. Jenna wrote her first acrostic poem about Fall. I will get a pic of  it posted, but for right now I will post what she wrote.

Fun with leaves
Autumn is great
Leaves are fun
Love apples

I will be adding this to her Fall poetry book that she is creating with her poems and others. She also, started a Fall word list.

Math - Horizon k book 1 is done. We reviewed her 2 addition math facts and started on the 3's. We also reviewed the clock, measuring and money.

Reading - OPGTR - we are on lesson 96 and she is doing very well. Of course we do our daily reading and I have been challenging her in what she is reading. She still reads the books that she can pick up on her own to read, but she is the type of child that needs to be challenged as well.

Writing - She is still improving daily.

It's been a great week.

Week eight is done

Wow, 40 days of school so far this school year. I am trying to keep up with Jenna, she is blowing me away how fast she is picking everything up.

We had another good week her at Jenna Academy.

Math - Horizon K - 2 pages left in the first book. This week she learned about finding the perimeter of a rectangle, we are working on the 3's addition facts and started to learn about the minutes on the clock. She knows all her coins, how much they are worth. So we printed out a piggy bank and she decorated it (googly eyes, pink pipe cleaner for the tail, crumpled up tissue paper and some fun foam for the ears). Then we made it into a book. She wrote This is Jenna's bank. Then we cut and colored pictures of each coin, which she glued in her book and wrote what amount each coin is worth.

Reading - Ordinary parents guide to teaching reading - I love this book, it is so easy to use. We are now on lesson 81. This week we have learned about silent e, soft c and g. In the beginning we just used the book, but I could see that was too boring for her. So we went to the dry erase board and I write out the words and sentences on there. She started using starfall again, which is what we used when learning her letters and cvc words (before OPGTR). And of course she's been reading daily to me and I am to her as well. She did some pages in her Eplode the code 2.



Writing - Handwriting without tears 1st grade - started this past week. She wrote her second letter to her penpal Satori (she had hiccups and an itchy eye while doing this so some of her letters are squiggly lol). We have some new penpals that we need to write to next week.

Spelling - We stopped testing each week, but continue to learn new words. And I can tell if she is spelling them right because she uses new words in her fun writing. I am going to continue this way using our phonics program and spelling rules.

She wrote a book and gave it to her older sister. It was a story about how she would like a pet(a dog).

Next week we are having a welcome Fall party, with goodies and games. This will kick off the start of our Fall and farm unit.

Mid week Updated 9/10

Jenna received her first penpal letters in the mail this week. She was so excited. Thanks Satori and Aunt Pat. She was able to read most of the letters by herself. We will be writing back real soon.

I found this cute money bingo game here http://lets-explore.net/blog/2010/08/learning-coin-values-with-money-bingo/ and we also made up another game that you need to count up the coins. By the weekend she should be able to go over to the store and buy a treat with her $1 in change. I made a deal with her when she knew all her coins, their amounts and was able to add up the change, she could buy a treat from the store.

I scored a bunch of books at a teacher's yard sale. The reading books are a mixture of science, social studies, chapter books and much more. I also picked up some workbooks and teacher guides for different subjects. A set of about 100 wooden blocks to use with our scales and to have fun with math. Jenna and I have already been putting our new books to use.

We watched the movie Ratatouille the other day. After that Jenna got the cooking bug, so she made some pizza bagels.

We have been fishing this week with our phonics and our magnet letters have been used alot this week. I noticed that Jenna is not only learning to read with our phonics program, but she is also learning to spell at the same time. I went through alot of the words from previous lessons and she knew how to spell alot of the words. So we are working on th words for reading and spelling this week. I keep changing our spelling around because I haven't found the right fit yet. Hopefully this will be our spelling program as well as our phonics. I am going to search out some spelling rules to go with.

This week I will be working on making more games up for reading and math. Anyone know of any good sites? I am also on the lookout for some creative writing program for my little writer. I had one ordered a while ago but it was back ordered for so long that I ended up canceling it. I need to google to see if there is anything online.

updated 9/10

Math- coins mastered and we have less than 10 lessons left in our Horizon K book

Reading - OPGTR - we are up to lesson 62 - Jenna is doing great when it comes to reading, she loves  her lessons on the dry erase board. She has been reading to me daily from a variety of books and I am reading to her as well. I am going to be adding this sometime soon to our reading time http://earlybirdhomeschool.com/2009/10/story-maps-download/

Writing- Handwriting without tears k is done. We will be moving on to the first grade book next week. Jenna wrote her weekly penpal letter, she is enjoying this so much. She picked up some more penpals this week. I think she will be writing penpals more than just once a week. We started working on writing complete sentences, capitalization and punctuation. She is catching on fast.

Another good week here at Jenna Academy.

The end of our 6th week

Jenna and I had another good week and are looking forward to all the fun we have planned for fall. I am so glad that I have two years to do Kindergarten, when it comes to Social studies and Science. I would never be able to fit all I would like to do in one year, before starting classical education(4 year cycle in History and Science) as I plan to do starting in first grade. When it comes to reading, grammar, writing, spelling, vocabulary and math, she will advance to first grade in all of these subjects by the time we start our second year of Kindergarten (some may start sooner like grammar and writing).

Here is what we have done this week

Lots of playing (because that's all part of being a kid), mostly inside because of the weather. We played Bank, Hotel, kerplunk, I Spy, Tic tac toe, you draw I draw, Soccer and much more.

Reading - OPGTR - finished consonant blends, working on Digraphs, working on ng,sh,ch and th sounds, she is moving through this part fast. We were given some old reading books, so she has been using them as well.

Spelling - working on some words that she uses in her everyday writing and spells wrong, like went, are, want, dear and from. She mastered are and went, but we didn't work daily on these this week so we will work on them some days next week.

Writing - HWOT - We are at the end of the k book and will be starting the 1st grade book soon. Her writing is really improving and she is writing on line paper. She wrote a bunch of Thank you's this week for Community and she wrote to her new pen pal.

Vocabulary - Wordly Wise k - She loves this new program and so do I. But I do admit that we will be tweaking this to the way we want to use it. Right now it's not scheduled in, but will be scheduled more later in this month.

Math - Horizon K - We have mastered counting by 5's, addition facts up to the 2's, she now knows her penny's, dimes and nickels (quarters are next even though they aren't introduced in her math book until later), and some other review. We will be done with the first Horizon K book by the end of the month.

Social Studies - We started Community this week, I already posted about it here http://myblogbysusan.blogspot.com/2010/09/fun-week-so-far.html. We had fun and will continue this next week.

Art - Jenna drew me some pretty flowers in a vase and a fall picture of a tree and falling leaves.

In her free time this week, she has been busy drawing up inventions and writing stories.

Here is a sneak peek to what we will be up to in Fall, learning about Farms (lots of books, field trip and fun projects), investigating the Fall season, apples, leaves and much more. Poetry writing and fun with Nursery Rhymes coming soon.

Fun week so far

This week is Community for my little K4er. So far we went to the pizza shop to see how they prepare their pizzas, had a tour of the Post Office, went to the hair salon for a haircut (pic is posted above) and learned about the hair salon, had a tour of the bank and opened up Jenna's savings account (she left with alot of stickers and cool items to play bank with), toured the Hardware store, visited Dunkin Donuts and the little store that is connected and checked out the man next door to us business. Every place that we visited was filled with wonderful owners, who took the time out of their day to show my little girl around.

We also made sure to make thankyou's for everyone. They are all now delivered to each business owner. Jenna wrote Thank you on each one, drew picture on each and signed her name. They are now hanging up at each of the businesses.

Jenna was very happy this week to find out she has a new penpal named Satori. She wrote to her this afternoon and mailed it right out.

We have had some fun playing soccer, old maid and bank (thanks to her bank slips and information on how a bank works). Homeschooling is the best!