Week 1

We officially started school this week including all of the elements listed here.  In addition to the basics, we spent a lot of time on science.  While science is not a priority in kindergarten, reading and making connections are.  The Classical Conversations science memory work for the first week was about biomes.  We memorized seven types, but explored three in our reading and other activities.  

First up was deserts and Roxaboxen.

This was a beautiful picture  book set in the Arizona desert.  Unfortunately, it did not charm my children as much as it charmed me, but they remained agreeable while we read it and discussed the plants and animals in the desert setting.

Next we read a "living" book called The Desert is Theirs.  This book was more on the educational end of the entertainment/educational spectrum.  It presented a lot of information on desert life in a wonderful, almost lyrical style.

To top it off, we watched a Bill Nye video on deserts.

Second biome:  Tropical Rain Forests

A favorite picture book from our home library set in the Costa Rican rain forest is Jan Brett's The Umbrella.

It was fun to reread this book focusing on the animals in the context of their tropical rain forest home.  We took advantage of Jan Brett's website and its free printables and made a rain forest mural. Here's the result:

The kids' favorite book of the week was The Great Kapok Tree.

The illustrations in this book were beautiful.  The talking animals definitely appealed to my five- and three-year-old children.

The grand finale was a study of grasslands.

We read a chapter book called One Day in the Prairie by Jean Craighead-George.  The book was also highly educational, but, to me, was a little on the dry side.  However, my son actually requested that I read it aloud a second and then a third time.  The tarantula and tornado in the book must have appealed to him.  This was perfect preparation for our own day in the prairie.  We took an hour-long road trip to a 37,000 acre tall-grass prairie.

I'll admit, I'm partial to shade.  But the grasslands set against a bright blue sky were beautiful.  Here's some of what we saw: