Week 4, European Cities and the Water Cycle

So many books, so little time.  Especially when mom is preparing for a certain boy's sixth birthday party and a visit from the grandparents.

For Classical Conversations geography, we memorized the location of five European countries.  I had a whole stack of books set in these cities to read.  However, because of time restraints, we read most but especially focused on Paris.  For us, Paris is synonymous with Madeline,

which we read for the two thousand one hundred and ninety-sixth time.  This time, we took a closer look at the illustrations and compared them to the illustrations in another fun book set in Paris, Babar Loses His Crown,

and another fun book, Adele and Simon.

This last one was the crowd favorite, and a book we had never read before.  It would be a good book for the home library.  The illustration are beautiful.  Finding Simon's lost items added an 'I Spy' dimension to the book and made it even more interesting.

We ended our tour of Paris with the classic, This is Paris.

For Classical Conversations science, the topic was the natural cycles.  We read one book on the water cycle.  As with last week, Ms. Frizzle was our guide as we read The Magic School Bus at the Waterworks.

We ended our study of the water cycle by watching a Magic School Bus video also about the water cycle called "The Magic School Bus Wet All Over" here.

Birthday party = no enrichment activities.  We stuck to the basics this week.

Week 3, Legends

It is fun when their interests converge with their education.  I want to pursue more delight driven subjects.  One such subject for him is knights.  Although they're not technically knights, his interest in knight-like behavior (bravery, sword-fighting, etc.) was fueled by reading about by Peter, Edmund and Prince Caspian in the Narnia series.  I know he is young, but we also let him watch the movies, which he loved.

To capitalize on these interests, for much of our extra reading this week, we focused on two legends featuring bravery and sword fighting:  Robin Hood and King Arthur.  I chose this week to focus on these legends because the Classical Conversations history sentence for the week dealt with Richard the Lion-Hearted and the Crusades.

We first watched Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood.  

This movie is a little silly with the sequins-adorned costumes and the constant throwing back of the head to laugh but fairly appropriate for his age.  I think he understood the historical context as he has been listening to the Robin Hood portion of The Story of the World:  Volume 2 for the past two weeks. 

I thought this also would be a good week to introduce him to the legend of King Arthur.  To get warmed up, we read a simple Hello Reader called The Sword in the Stone by Grace Maccarone.

We followed that up with a more difficult version of the same legend, Arthur and the Sword, a picture book by Robert Sabuda with interesting stained glass illustrations.  I thought it was good, but it was the children's least favorite book of the week.

We also read a chapter book I purchased at a recent Usborne party called The Adventures of King Arthur.  This expanded into other aspects of the legend besides the sword in the stone.  This one piqued my five-year-old's interest, but I thought the writing was poor.

Our favorite version of  the legend was the sound recording, King Arthur and His Knights as told by Jim Weiss. 

As the finale to our week of legends, we are going start a book today that is set in the days of King Arthur, Clyde Robert Bulla's The Sword in the Tree.

We also had a good week with science, which will be the topic of my next post.

Week 2

This week we began a tour of Europe by visiting Spain by way of the classic children's book The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf.  We even enjoyed this Walt Disney version which stayed very true to the book:

Mostly our extra readings corresponded with our Classical Conversations science memory work about consumers.  I searched our home library to find books that featured an animal eating, and we simply discussed what type of consumer that animal represented.  Science lite, I know, but very kindergarten and preschool appropriate.

Here's a list of books we read featuring some of our favorite herbivores, carnivores and omnivores:

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

Once a Mouse by Marcia Brown

Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey

The Big Snow* by Berta and Elmer Hader

We followed these with a trio of books by Beatrix Potter.   Considering her animals speak and wear clothes, it is amazing how realistically these books capture their natural characteristics.  I have purchased many of her books mostly because their petite white covers look good on my daughter's bookshelf.  I never dreamed that my children would love to hear these stories so much.  They frequently request them.  Here are the three we read (and reread) this week:

The Tale of Peter Rabbit

The Tale of Benjamin Bunny

The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher

Today, the weather coordinated with the calendar, and we got out to enjoy the cooler September temperatures with a trip to the zoo.  Every time we go to the zoo, my children focus exclusively on two things:  the playground and the train.  Today, I insisted that before we could enjoy either, we had to find two animals each of an herbivore, carnivore and omnivore.  From a mom's point of view, this approach was a success.  Here are a few highlights:

We got to see prairie dogs, which had eluded us on our trip to the actual prairie 

Okay, there was a little bit of playground time

* We will read this gem many times over the following weeks because it perfectly conveys a lot of the concepts we're covering in our Classical Conversations memory work.

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:

What Kindergarten Looks Like

This is what kindergarten will look like for us...

Once a week we will go to  Classical Conversations ("CC"), a homeschool community offering weekly memory work (includes history, science, geography, math, latin, language arts and history timeline), oral presentations, fine arts, and science experimentation in a classroom setting.  This is our second year, and we love it.  More about that in another post.

For the rest of the week, reading is the name of the game.  I plan to read a lot of things aloud with no immediate expectations beyond immediate enjoyment, but we are also going to work on narration skills as we read with a goal of making connections to our CC memory work.  We'll also spend a significant amount of time improving his reading.  Here's an outline of our days:

Memory work - Classical Conversations

Handwriting

 

Read-Alouds - Chapter books from this list plus various and sundry picture books that correspond (more or less) to the topics in the CC history, geography, science and math memory work

Reading - The Beginning Readers on this list

Language Arts - This program to reinforce phonics and introduce spelling

Math - This curriculum


Bible - Memorize Ephesians 6 along with a chronological review of the Bible

Enrichment - Once a week project or field trip

Music - Violin lessons

Physical Education - learn to ride a bike, learn to swim, play an organized team sport

DREAMS

Breakfast is still on the stove when we hear the hammer of the bus's diesel engine coming around the corner.  It has come quickly, this first day of kindergarten.

I have dreamed about this day.

A little bit of freedom for him...

A little bit of freedom for Mama...

The three of us stay-at-homers down to two...

I turn off the burner, and we rush outside to wave good-bye to the shadowy figures of neighborhood friends on board.

Somewhere along the line the dream changed.

Bus number 5 rumbles on, and we three go on in to eat our oatmeal.  And it is still hot.