School Work

Here are some examples of school work that we are doing at home. Right now the kids go to a private Kindergarten at a Montessori school in the mornings. In the afternoons, I do school work with them. These are specifically examples from what we are doing at home with Moving Beyond the Page and various science kits.

The writing assignment was to write a paragraph about visiting a fair.

Translated: I want to go round and round. I want to go up and down. I want to go to the ring the bottle. I want to hang on the web.

Translated: I want to go to Ferris wheel. I want to go to zoo. I want to go to pet animals. I want to go to see a cow.

They are watching this experiment closely.

We love our Magic School Bus science kits. Here are just some of the things they made and experimented with in the weather lab. I bought them on sale at Educents if you are interested.

Kids are Funny

Sweet Daughter is building with the marble run stuff while Sweet Son is building with Legos.

Sweet Daughter: Brother can you help me?
Sweet Son: (without turning around) No I'm building a crane.
Sweet Daughter: Please Brother? I need to stabilize the base.
Sweet Son: Oh! It's an engineering problem. I can help with that.




Today the kids and I were discussing rules versus laws and different types of consequences (natural versus authoritative). The kids had to come up with their own rule or law, the consequence, and label the type. Sweet Daugher came up with "don't pour water on the floor" with the consequence of "trouble" and it was an authoritative type. Sweet Son came up with "no soliciting" with a consequence of "lost business because it's annoying and lost money because we don't read it anyway and it's killing trees" and then he got stuck on the type of consequence that was. Right.




The kids did a sheet titled "My Wants and Needs" as part of their Kindergarten work. The directions were to list 5 things they need and 5 things they want and number them from most important (1) to least important (10).

Sweet Daughter:
1. wotr (water)
2. sheltr (shelter)
3. food
4. shooses (shoes)
5. coler (clothes)
6. brol (doll)
7. prs (purse)
8. trs (toys)
9. scootr (scooter)
10. bol (ball)

Sweet Sonlan:
1. foud (food)
2. watr (water)
3. luv (love)
4. clothing
5. and sheltr (shelter)
6. firtruc (firetruck)
7. sirin sistum (siren system)
8. robot
9. train
10 cende (candy)

3D City

In addition to the Montessori Kindergarten they are attending in the mornings, I'm working with them in the afternoons. I am using Moving Beyond the Page (MBTP) for our core and Life of Fred for Math. We did some of the MBTP level 5-7 during the Summer and it was easy, so we moved on to level 6-8 for Kindergarten. The first unit was communities. This is one of the projects from that unit.

Sweet Daughter working on labeling her buildings.

They each have 2 large poster boards taped together. They got to lay out their own roads (painters tape because we were being lazy), cut out and assemble the 3D buildings, plan where they were going to go and label them.

Sweet Son labeling his buildings.

Later they also added parks, lakes, and other physical features. Then they used cars and the people from the doll house to play with their new cities.

Animal Reports

While the kids both attend a Montessori school that we LOVE. I'm also doing some school work with them at home. This assignment was to write a report about an animal. The curriculum explained the format. i.e. first page is a cover page with the title, second page says where the animal lives, etc. They did such a great job that I thought I saved them... Only I write this blog a year in the past and I can't find the pictures. I did find an email I wrote bragging about them so I know what they said and what the kids drew. You just have to use your imagination, haha. I copied what they wrote and put in parenthesis what they drew.

Sweet Daughter's "The Camel Report"
The Camel (drawing of a large pink camel)
The camel is found in the desert. (colored in various places on a world map that camels live - 7 different areas over 5 continents)
The camel eats grass and drinks water every 17 days. (drawing of grass and very small lake)
The camel's habitat is a desert. (she colored 90% of the page brown sand and just the top part blue sky, nothing else)
Interesting facts about the camel are that it carries water, it has a long neck, and people ride camels. (no drawings)

Sweet Son's "The Great Blue Heron Report"
The Great Blue Heron (drawing of a tall yellow bird)
The great blue heron is found in rivers. (colored in all of North America)
The great blue heron eats fish and drinks water. (drawing of fish in water)
The great blue heron's habitat is a river. (he colored a river with grass around it)
Interesting facts about the great blue heron are that they are vertebrates, they fish with their beaks, and their wingspan is 6 feet like Mr. Bobby. (no drawing)