Don’t let the big grin in the photo above fool you; it was one of those home school days that felt two steps forward, two steps back. But we got through it!
8.30-9: Letter Q/Quarters: After a workbook page focusing on letter Q, I seized the opportunity to play up q for quarters, since Travis still struggles with coin values. We reviewed the various denominations and then of course he wanted to play with all the coins in mommy’s wallet!
9-9.30 History. His second workbook page focused on past and future. First Travis drew an imaginary future car. Then he had to write about how people used fire in the past. I thought it might be fun to turn it into a mini lesson on the Oregon Trail, checking out his encyclopedia page on the American West and a video about cowboys, He wasn’t at all interested, leading to tantrums, meaning we switched gears and headed on to…
9.30-10: Math. After two Star Wars workbook pages about estimating, we estimated the number of dominoes in a pile. Travis provided remarkably adept at this for his first try. Since we had the dominoes out, we then played with them in two ways. First: could he make a math sentence about each one (i.e. 5+5=10, 6+2=8).
Then we played War but with dominoes instead of cards. This part he enjoyed, and he grew very fast at tallying up the pips.
10-10.30: Snack/recess. Much needed!
We rolled balls downhill outside on a relatively chilly day, then detoured back inside to design a ball course. Could he lead a ball from the couch down to a box, without touching it?
Success!
10.30-11: ELA. Travis wrote an ‘Over the Weekend’ sentence, the first time he’s done this class assignment in weeks. He also did 20 minutes on Lexia.
11-11.30: Specials. For Art, he drew his self-portrait, a monthly classroom activity. We can’t believe this is the last one for kindergarten! He also watched a video about Buenos Noches/Buenos Dias in Spanish.
11.30-1.30: Lunch/free play.
1.30-2: Class Zoom. He was reluctant to sit for this group session again today, and grew very angry by the end. I diverted his mood with…
2-2.30: Games. We played a board game (Zingo), and then played “what’s my rule?” If I sorted something from the craft bin, he had to guess the defining characteristic of each group. This was hard for him to grasp at first so I was proud he stuck with it.
2.30-3: Exercise. We needed to get moving to shake out his bad mood. A little Star Wars yoga was in order.
3-3.30: Cooking. We made mole sauce for dinner to round out a unit on Mexico.
At story time tonight (A Second is a Hiccup), we made sure to locate the title and author on the front cover before reading, and then searched for sight words as we went through the story.
I’ve forgotten to mention a few recent reads, including: The Very Hungry Caterpillar; Where the Wild Things Are; Beautiful Oops; Castle: How it Works; and Separate is Never Equal.
The day was overly busy, since I was trying to balance requests from his teacher with lessons I thought he’d enjoy. Perhaps tomorrow we will aim for less-is-more.