Day: May 21, 2020

Kindergarten Home School Week 10: Thursday

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Home School 49 b

I’m so happy to report we had a successful day. Travis was focused and motivated on his lessons in the morning, so much so that the afternoon was very light on schoolwork, everything already accomplished.

9-9.30: Math. He started with a workbook page counting up summer vegetables. I then gave him a few challenges. What would the number be if he added 10 to each (hint: a number in the teens). Then we made a number line and used it to answer simple equations. What was 1 more than 16? Three less than 16? Two more than 18? I could tell the visual number line really helped him think.

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9.30-10: ELA. He did a page in his Star Wars writing workbook, and laughed so hard when we made up silly answers to fill-in-the-blanks. A proud 20 minutes on Lexia followed (while little sister drew with cars).

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10-10.30: Snack/art/free play.

10.30-11: Music. Travis recorded himself singing high and low for the music teacher.

11-1: Lunch/free play.

1-2: Science. After reading an encyclopedia page about cameras, we headed outside (in gorgeous weather!), to take pictures.

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I let Travis play around with settings, especially the zoom function. His photos were actually quite artsy! This counted as great fresh-air time for the day, too.

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2-2.30: Spanish. There was a live Zoom today, a fun chance to go over familiar songs and watch a Spanish puppet show of the Three Little Pigs. I had hoped to engage him with an activity on fast and slow animals (rapido/lento) but it was late in the day and we called it quits.

Sponge Printing

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Sponge Printing (12)

I recently introduced Veronika to the idea of stamping, by making Duplo prints. Today, we made sponge prints instead!

This was a great activity for outside on the patio, since first we needed to get the sponges wet. I misted them with a spray bottle until saturated, then showed her how to chalk all over the surface of the sponge.

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Press down firmly on a piece of thick white paper and the mark of the sponge will be left behind. The sponges have a bubbled appearance, with more surface twists and turns than you might expect!

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Next I cut a few of our sponges into shapes like hearts and plus signs.

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She liked seeing the various shapes in our prints.

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Then we discovered that if we used the chalk on wet pavement and then dipped the sponge in the colored water, we ended up with a more saturated print.

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The wetter the sponge the better the print, so eventually we used a bucket of water to dip instead of the mister bottle.

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Of course then Veronika just loved dipping the sponges in the bucket and squeezing them out, and lost interest in stamping!

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But this just fine; it meant this craft was a great way to spend some time making art and simply playing outside.

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Drawing with Cars

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Drawing with Cars (6)

Kids love to paint with cars, but this time there was a twist on the activity! As opposed to letting the tires make the art, Veronika’s cars had passengers along. Crayon passengers that is!

To set up, I taped a long piece of craft paper to the floor so we had a good long “road”.

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Use masking tape to attach jumbo crayons to the side of toy cars. The bigger the car, the better this worked; the crayons were a little wobbly on some of Veronika’s smaller cars.

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I mostly tried to tape crayons to the same color car, but we had a few mismatches, like our yellow car with a black crayon.

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Now it was time for Veronika to drive! She took the cars for a few spins around the road, and the crayons left fun scribbles in their wake.

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To be honest, she was soon more interested in the pieces of tape than the crayons! But this was still a cute art project while it lasted.

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