December and January kindergarten fun!

I am still not doing as well as I would like with documenting Valerie's kindergarten year of school. However, we are having so much fun. Every day, I notice her wanting to do more and working harder and harder! I am so proud of her! December started with the funnest field trip. We went to the movie theater to see Frozen. We also got a behind the scenes look at the sound room and the projector. The kids loved learning about how the theater is run and how the movie gets up on the big screen!

December is also always a fun month for baking. The kids helped me with lots of measurement math lessons as we backed cookies. We also added in some fun art by decorating our cookies!

We have a special book called the Adventure of Christmas by Lisa Welchel. It has fun family activities to do while learning about Jesus. We always love making Christmas trees out of ice cream cones and frosting. 

A great science game is called "How to Melt an Ice Cube!" They kids each have their own ice cube. They roll the dice and it tells them what to do. They might throw it, sprinkle salt on it, hold it in their hands, etc. Through this they learn what things help melt snow and ice!

We are also very big fans of doing random acts of kindness days. It is a way for us to be intentional about helping others and showing our kids that as a way of living. We stopped by the Boys and Girls town for the first time. We were able to donate toys to the foster children and see how Boys and Girls town operates. 

Christmas crafts are always fun. Valerie learned how to make candy wreath ornament at a fun church event!

Valerie is getting to have such neat handwriting! She practiced by writing a letter to Santa!

Another fun cooking project was making mini pumpkin pies over at our friend Kelly's house. The kids got to measure ingredients and bake it. However, eating it is always the best part!

We love a fun art project! This year we made Grandma M. a fun creation. She loves a good garden so here are each child's hands or feet to make this! :)

Lastly, Valerie is at such a good age! She is a joy to learn with and teach! Her presentations at CC keep getting more involved. She is memorizing more and more each day!

October and November school

I love kindergarten. There is so much fun in this year! Valerie got to go to a stable and ride horses. She loved it! 

We also had fun at the pumpkin patch and did lots of Halloween activities at home!

We went to a Branson show. It was so great! We learned all about Marco Polo's journey to China while watching dance and acrobatics!

We love arts and crafts! They did this finger painting Fall picture with our wonderful babysitters.

There is always time for good friends! Madalyn and Valerie always play together during Lily's violin lesson. They also see each other at CC each week!

Valerie is doing so great at math this year! She is really into counting to 100 and writing her numbers. This is one of her favorite activities. 

We also just started on Saxon math. She is loving it. It is very fun and easy to teach. She loves getting to color and count objects. She loves doing the calendar and weather.

At CC, we have been learning about space. She learned about constellations. The toilet paper roll has holes punched in it so you can shine a light in and see the constellation. Then she made a constellation with marshmallows and tooth picks. It isn't set up right in this picture thought..she was playing with it and moving it around.

Valerie is so nurturing and always helping Daphne. She helped her learn to cut with scissors and glue to put this scarecrow together.

We also went to the post office and had a great field trip learning about the mail. She also sent a letter in the mail to her friend, Lily E. 

Proud of my girl!

Each child is so unique and different. I am thankful that God allowed me to have more than one child so that I could truly see this and learn from it. Valerie is my child who gets so frustrated when she doesn't grasp a new skill right away. Often times, I worry about why learning seems so hard for her. I worry about if she will need extra help or more than I can give her. Then she does it! Just like that, she masters skills overnight. We have done journal work for the last year. She would mainly copy what I wrote. Then yesterday, I said, "Valerie, please just try to write something on your own." Instead of complaining, she did it. She wrote three simple sentences. She didn't need to copy...except, I am sure she must have found Bristol's names somewhere. She has been reading cat in one of her books and I knew she could write Eli. She even remembered her finger spaces. I am so happy! She just started kindergarten five weeks ago and she is already mastering skills!

Here was her writing today. She wrote, "I go to Build A Bear." She stretched out those letter sounds! Yay for my girl! So proud of her!

Also she has started to read more and more of her sight word readers. She is starting to be able to sound out words. In Classical Conversations, she is memorizing all of her facts so well. Last year, it was a challenge. Now, she makes it look easy! She mastered counting by 2's and 10's. She almost has her 3's and 5's except for one or two mess ups. Such a proud Mommy right now!

Valerie is in kindergarten

This year, Valerie is in kindergarten. She is still a little resistant some days to having to do work....especially writing, but she is getting to be such a smart young lady. 

 Valerie loves her class at Classical Conversations. She is in a kindergarten class with Ms. Kristen Phillips as her tutor. She also has a bunch of her best friends in class: Elise, Canta, Bristol, Madelyn and a few other great girls!

We took the kids to a fun pottery place as part of their library flip cards. What a great art project!

Our babysitter brought a little bird that they were nursing to health and Valerie got a little science lesson on animals and carrying for their needs. 

Here is Valerie with her week 1 presentation at CC of her self and her family!

 We also had a great first field trip of the year! We went to a space shuttle and learned about the history of space travel. 

 Valerie enjoyed learning about the control buttons. She asked me, "Are we really going to space?" lol I said, "well we might be gone a lot longer than Daphne and Caleb's babysitter is expecting than!" 

We are ready for a great year of learning! 

October school

This month, I did not take nearly enough pictures of Valerie's school activities. October was very busy. Normally I think it is a long month, but it went so fast. We had a vacation to Minnesota for my cousins wedding reception. We also went to the Rainforest Cafe, Mall of America, Lego Land, American girl store, and Nickelodeon Universe. This trip gave us lots of fun stuff to journal about.

Valerie has really been working on her presentation skills at Classical Conversations. She is a little shy and worries that she will forget her words, but she is getting better and sometimes looks forward to this activity!  Below she did a picture of her favorite animal..the cat..and then she wrote facts about it.

 October also had lots of fun pumpkin activities. We counted seeds, we estimated candy corn, we painted pumpkins, we read fun poems. We went to a pumpkin patch. I love that learning is fun if we make it fun!

September

Valerie is loving kindergarten. She loves every activity that she gets to do! She often wants to do more than we have time for!

Not sure why this picture is side ways, but this was one of her presentations for Classical Conversations. She did it on cats. Valerie is still a little scared of presentations and she struggles with not wanting to mess up. We are working on building confidence right now!

We had friends over for a spider day. They made spider books and painted spider pictures! We also read books and did poetry on spiders! Super fun day!

 

We now have these hanging on the wall for the month of October!

 

We went to Wonders of Wildlife Learning Center at Bass Pro to learn about invertebrates. Here she is with Abi making a jelly fish.

Here is the Sebastian crab she made!

We joined a mops group and she made a face while learning about how she is special.

We did a small unit on leaves and did some leaf rubbings.

We also had a great first day of Fall by having friends over to make pumpkin spice playdough! Such a fun time! We love school and we love Fall!

Apple day

One of the very best parts of kindergarten is the thematic units. It is such a great aspect of learning that we decided to invite some friends over to share in the learning fun with us!

 We spent time reading about and learning about Johnny Appleseed! Then we colored and apple and labeled the parts!

 Next we had fun with poetry. The girls worked on memorizing this apple poem! So cute to hear them say, "Crunch, crunch, crunch!"

 Then we did some graphing. They each got to try a red apple, a yellow apple, and a green apple. Then they put their apple onto the graph.

 Yellow was the winner (my favorite)!

 Next the girls filled out their own graph with the data!

Learning is never complete without food! :) I used the book, Book Cooks by Chryl Apgar. It has steps to follow to make simple snacks. They followed the directions and made apple smiles out of apples, peanut butter, and marshmallows. 

 The final learning project was to learn about seasons by using an apple tree. We learned how the leaves fall off in the fall, then the tree is bare in the winter, it gets blooms in the spring, and finally apples in the late summer!