We had a day with…wait for it… no tantrums! Our journey through a K-to-1st Grade summer workbook continues to be a success.
9-10: ELA. The corresponding workbook page was similar to what his teacher terms “writers workshop”, a topic that normally prompts Travis’s anger. But seeing it in this novel format, he was an eager participant!
The assignment was to write abut what a desert woodpecker might do when it arrived in its cactus home. Travis used his imagination to say the woodpecker would remove the prickers! He proudly sounded out this sentence, then drew a picture. To make it a bit more scientific, I prompted him to think about how the bird’s nest might be in the cactus, too. Travis proudly added 3 stickers to his chart after these pages. We even found an old set of toy sticks and balls that helped us engineer a “nest”!
He finished with a proud stint on Lexia, working on sight words. (Baby sister was busy with colored cups).
10-10.30: Snack/free play.
10.30-11: STEAM. Today’s encyclopedia page was about the seasons. We watched the QR code video explaining the Earth’s tilt, then returned to an old art project: four seasons trees. The last time we did this, Travis wasn’t even 3 years old! This time, he drew his own tree trunks.
He didn’t want to get his fingers messy, so his job was to the find the right color tissue paper for each season’s tree leaves and crumple it, then I dipped it in glue and adhered to the tree. Snipped q-tip swabs made “snowflakes” on our winter branches. This craft nicely kept my toddler busy, too!
11-1: Lunch/free play. I’ve learned that giving him this chunk of time during little sister’s nap really helps his mood.
1-2: Outside time. We squeezed some math into our walk by making patterns from nature finds.
We also used the walk for a letter hunt!
2-3: Snack/Health: A homemade ranch dip with veggies was a great chance to talk about the colors and review the way a rainbow of veggies impacts our health. This led to good play with an old veggie farm set. That was the end of the school day, with some quiet solo puzzle play rounding things out.
Tonight’s storytime read was Don’t Throw It To Mo! with a nice, can-do message.