Insect Unit

Last week we learned about insects. The main things I wanted G-man to get were that insects have 6 legs and 3 body parts (head, thorax and abdomen). At the end of the week we made a model of a ladybug using a small balloon and paper mache. When it was dry, we popped the balloon, cut the paper mache part in half length-wise, and painted it and decorated it to look like a ladybug. G-man wasn't too into the paper mache part, but he liked decorating.

Fish Prints

Here's a picture of the fish prints we made during our fish unit. We read A Fish Out of Water by Helen Palmer and did several fun activities with a fish theme.

1) We played Go Fish.

2) We used goldfish crackers as manipulatives for adding and subtracting.

3) We talked about the food groups and made a book with each page representing a different food group. We cut out food pictures out of the newspaper ads and glued them to the correct page of our book.

4) We talked about fresh water fish and salt water fish and found areas of fresh water and salt water on a map.

5) We made fish prints.

6) We read the stories of Jonah and of Jesus feeding 5000.

A Name!

We have FINALLY decided on a name for our kitten! From this day forward she shall be known as Kiki. After all that deliberation, we finally came back to the name G-man had originally chosen.

Also, an exciting little side note: We bought a CitiKitty cat toilet training kit and it arrived yesterday. This morning Kiki had her first successful poop on the toilet! I really hope the CitiKitty works for us! It would be SO NICE not to have a litter box at all!

Contemplating Kindergarten

For the past few weeks my thoughts have been geared toward G-man's upcoming kindergarten year. We'll officially start in the fall, although I have been realizing that we've been doing kindergarten stuff for quite some time now. For future reference, I'm just going to list some of the goals I have and things I plan to do or use for our kindergarten year.

G-man has really been thriving on the unit studies of Five in a Row and http://www.homeschoolshare.com/ . The curriculum provides a great jumping off point for many subjects including social studies, geography, art, and some math. So I plan to continue with this into his kindergarten year. We'll also do some of our own unit studies. I plan to do units on frogs, each of the continents, and a quarterly musical composer unit. I'll also leave some flexibility in our schedule so that we can follow G-man's personal interests and make unit studies around those. Space is one subject I know we'll be learning about as he is very interested in all things space right now.

I plan to work weekly Bible verses into our units so that G-man can begin hiding the word of God in his heart. We'll also do daily children's devotionals and perhaps a Bible story of the week which I would work similarly to the Five in a Row curriculum. The repetition would help familiarize him with the stories.

For phonics, I will be using Bob Books and various other books and games including http://www.starfall.com/ and the phonics games on http://www.pbskids.org/ .

For math, I plan to use some of the Funtastic Frogs curriculum and maybe a bit of Math-U-See along with just everyday counting and number recognition games. My goals are to teach him to count to 100, count by 10s to 100, count by 5s to 100 and count by 2s to 20. I also want him to be able to tell time to the hour, recognize coins and understand their values, and be able to read a calendar.

We will continue to learn Spanish vocabulary through Boca Beth (possibly ordering another video from them) and My First 100 Words in Spanish.

For an introduction to history, I'm thinking of using History For Little Pilgrims.

For science, I'm planning to use the Let's Read and Find Out Science series. I also have a great book with tons of fun experiments in it called More Mudpies to Magnets: Science for Young Children.

We'll also be involved with the local homeschool group for social activities and field trips, we'll continue to enjoy storytime at the library, and we'll have regular playdates with Seth. I'm also thinking he'll be ready to start martial arts in the fall.

G-man's Dot to Dot

G-man made his own dot to dot the other day. I thought it was cute.

New Kitty

Yesterday we finally got a kitten! G-man was so excited! He loves his little kitty and wants to name her Kiki. We'll see. She was born on March 8th, so is 8 weeks old. She is a little snuggle love! She's definitely a lap kitty. When she can't find us, she cries. She is just so sweet, and G-man and I already love her. I'm not sure about Daddy yet. :-)

Only Child Stereotypes

I had my first two encounters with peoples' only child preconceptions yesterday and today. They both happened at the dentist's office. First, after I declined a second set of x-rays for the year for G-man, the dentist asked if he was an only child. After I told him that he was, he made some comment on how mommy is protective of her only child. So....what, people with more than one child don't care about them and just let the dentist do whatever he wants to them?

Then today, we went back to the dentist for my turn. G-man was talking to the hygienist and she asked him if he had any brothers or sisters. When he said that he didn't, she immediately asked if he was spoiled. And so it starts, I guess. Now I just have to keep up on my job and raise an only child who is not a spoiled brat.