Thursday, November 3, 2011

First Week of a New Curriculum

Well, I thought I would be quicker at posting ideas from the previously mentioned home school library book, but I received a new kindergarten curriculum in the mail and I've been a busy bee this week making it happen.  Something about Halloween with a sick kid, 9 piano students a week (with a recital coming in 2 weeks!), helping my husband with math for several sessions this week, school with the kids, and a day and a half of severe pregnant emotional instability-not be mention the washer hose busting off again this week- have kept me from updating as soon as expected.  Sigh.


So rather than update right now on more ideas from said book, I will share a few things about this new curriculum we started.  It's called "My Father's World."  We started a 100 jar, a 100 chart, and a calendar, that will teach patterns and writing #'s.  The theme of the week was the Moon, so each day of week we discussed the moon.  We talked about and colored phases of the moon: new moon, crescent moon, half moon, and full moon.  It was so fun to have my 4 year old see the moon yesterday and know it was a half moon.  We showed the relative size and distance of the earth and the moon, made a mobile with the sun, moon, earth, and stars, and made our own version of the children's book, "Goodnight Moon."  Through out the week we discussed how, like the sun, Jesus is the light of the world, and like the moon, we reflect the light Jesus gives us.  These were all spelled out ideas from the new curriculum.

So far I intend to stick to our reading lessons from "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" rather than adopt the reading included in the new curriculum.

Next week I plan on gathering some different color leaves with the children and pressing them for the covers of thankful books that we can work on through out November, and hopefully share with whomever we end up sharing Thanksgiving with.

I also had an idea about making service stars for each day in December before Christmas.  Each star would have a small act of service the children could do for someone, with or without my help.  I had that idea in the temple and am not sure if I would want to make wooden, painted stars to decorate the tree, or make paper stars to put all over the house reminding us of the Christmas star....first thing of course is coming up with 25 easy service ideas!  I thought that would also be a cute gift idea, or item to sell.

Now I feel like brainstorming on service star ideas, so that's all for now. :)