Here we are in September already! So, we have a new artist and composer to learn about this month. Our artist is Vincent Van Gogh and our composer is Beethovan.
In other exciting news, yesterday Gavin lost one of his bottom teeth and this morning the Tooth Fairy had left him a nice shiny silver dollar. He was a little disappointed that she took his tooth away but not so disappointed that he was willing to trade back his dollar.
Yesterday was Gavin's second first day of Kindergarten because his French preschool (that is no longer his preschool) started so he will be there in the afternoons. In the morning we did our normal routine and were done with plenty of time to eat and play before he had to go to his French Kindergarten. Ideally, we will be done with homeschool by 10:00 and his French class doesn't start until 1:00 so he will have three hours in between.
In math I gave Gavin a few handfuls of tiles and he had to figure out how to sort them so they'd be easy to count. He quickly figured out that putting them in groups of ten would be the fastest way to count them.
Then we worked on copying figures. I made a shape and he had to copy it making the same shape and using the same colors.
Then we switched it up a little bit and we made reflections (which obviously make the shape backwards). We have a nice little reflecting glass to look through for help because making reflections is a little trickier then making an identical shape.
In science we read this book about constellations and then made a planetarium.
For our planetarium, Gavin punched holes in the end of a cardboard shoe box using a thumb tack. Then we set a flashlight inside and went into the bathroom to look at the 'stars'.
It was a little hard to push the tack through the cardboard but Gavin did a good job!
This morning Gavin worked on his spelling puzzles while I read to Austin.
I can't remember if I explained this or not but for Austin we have a little shelf that is divided into nine 12"-squares. I put a different activity in each square for him to choose from while we are in school and I try to change them up each week so I am always looking for new ideas. After some searching this weekend I found lots of great ideas on this website:
You will be seeing more of them in the next few weeks! Anyway, for this week I made this cute little car parking/color matching game. I just glued a piece of black construction paper onto the back of a cereal box, cut out different color parking spaces and found cars of the same color for Austin to park. He played with this most of the morning!
Gavin is still working on identifying beginning sounds and blends in words.
In math today we learned about dimes (we did nickels and pennies last week). Then I put a combination of dimes, nickels and pennies out and Gavin had to make the same amount on his abacus. For example, two dimes, a nickel and three pennies would be 2-ten and 8, which he would put on his abacus and then we would identify the amount. Gavin enjoyed this activity.
Then we did a little bit of estimating with the tiles.
By this time Austin decided to try a new activity. He was supposed to use the tweezers to pick up the beads from the bowl and place them into the suction cups on the back of a bath non-slip thingy. I don't know the technical name for these but we have them in frog shapes.
It didn't take Austin long to give up on the tweezers and just use his fingers.
Then he worked on sorting erasers shaped like basketballs, baseballs, footballs and soccer balls.
Gavin and I read a book about Christopher Columbus. If you remember we started a chapter book about Columbus a couple weeks ago. We are probably about 3/4 through it but it's been set aside to finish Black Fox of Lorne (the Viking book we've been reading) because Gavin is enjoying the Viking book so much and always wants to read it instead. We will finish the Columbus chapter book this week.
Then Gavin made a Columbus themed ships-in-a-bottle. No magic tricks here, I cut the bottom off a 2-liter soda bottle and Gavin put in his ships and 'water' which was paper grass left over from Easter baskets. Then I taped up the bottle and he decorated the outside with ocean stickers.
Here it is! The ships are a little buried under the waves.
I got this craft idea from this website:
Austin and I read this book about a bear in the fall.
And this book about Van Gogh.
Gavin and I read more about Jacob and Esau.
And then this book about Columbus.
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