Getting Into Good Habits

I have been using the Starfall Kindergarten curriculum for 3 weeks now, and I love it. It has been so easy to adapt for homeschool use. Delaney loves Backpack Bear. He joins us for class daily, and sometimes brings his friends, the Turtle, Rex, and Baby. They have to sit quietly, though, or they get in trouble. :)

We begin at 8:30am daily, and our schedule looks like this:

Calendar - days of the week (recognizing the words and ASL), months of the year, counting 1-31, & if we feel like it, we check the weather. It is almost ALWAYS sunny, so we usually only check if there is something interesting going on outside, or Delaney feels like adding a sticker to the graph. I supplement the calendar with www.starfall.com's calendar activity on some of the days. 

Action songs if we need them. Our favorites are "Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes", "If You're Happy and You Know It", "Tooty-Ta" (Cullen is a pro at this one!), and "Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear".

Morning Letter (which is found in Backpack Bear's backpack...a much anticipated moment!) - reading a familiar format, finding sight words, counting words in sentences, punctuation.

10 minutes of more.starfall.com games or songs. I generally use this time to give her a little break from me, and I do some quick morning chores. I make sure to set a timer, though, so I don't get distracted and forget to come back to school!

Literacy activity(ies) - this is usually a focus on an alphabet letter/sound, rhyming, sight words (current sight words: at, an, the, love, I, you, we, me, a, is, see, for), writing letters, reading/sequencing a book, etc. The amount of activities that we do correlates with the attention span of the day.  Delaney had an AMAZING attention span this morning...she did not want to play any computer games, she wrote in her journal, played a sight word game, read and sequenced her sight word story, practiced writing alphabet letters and wrote a "letter" to her dad. Other days, we will play on Starfall for awhile, read her favorite story books and draw a picture. 

Journal - I am especially excited about this...It is the first time she has used actual letters to write a "note", then dictated it to me. I will have to write a whole post about the development of writing skills.:)

Sequencing her story

Portrait of Dad from earlier this week

Learning family names

We finish up with structured activities around 9:30am. I had planned to do this Monday-Thursday, but Delaney was so brokenhearted that Backpack Bear didn't have a note for her last Friday that I decided we will have school every weekday and continue to adjust our plans to fit her amount of interest. I have been so happy and impressed with her so far. She is learning quickly and enjoying everything we do...it is rarely a challenge to get her to participate. I have to act a little silly sometimes, but hey, I do that all the time anyway. :)

I teach math and science throughout the day with whatever we are doing, unless I see a skill that she needs to focus on a little bit, or an activity that is fun and fits in with what we are doing. Delaney can count to 20 now, and recognize most numbers through 30. Cullen has been doing some beginning addition with her, and we do subtraction all through lunch, right? I have a workbook for extra reinforcement, but I use it pretty sparingly. When she is in the mood, she will blast through 4 or 5 pages, so I save it for those moments. 

Now that we have successfully completed 3 full weeks and developed a schedule that makes everyone happy, I plan to add more art into our plans, as well as trips to the library and various places, so we don't just sit at home with each other all day. If there is any local activity that you know of and could share with us, please do! Also, any comments or ideas are ALWAYS appreciated!