First day of School!

Though we started school last week, and were able to begin "counting days" for the State, we did not have our official first day until today. Today is the day we ran full schedule for the first time, adding in all of the subjects of study. Brett chooses his own outfit to wear, so today he picked out his favorite shorts with sharks embroidered on them. Here he is on this first official morning! Can you believe we have a full fledged kindergartner on our hands? It just doesn't seem possible!

Our kitchen is the classroom and we set up a circle time area with a bright rug and beanbags just for a change of pace from the table. It's Brett's favorite spot, so we took his picture there :)


Even though we are at home, Brett wants to bring his lunch in a lunchbox to eat. So we picked out a Star Wars lunch box and he helps me pack a sandwich and veggies and fruit. We add in a snack for our snack time too. It helps him feel like he's really going to school, so I humor him in this area. That's the one thing he's struggling with...realizing that just because we are home doesn't mean its not real school. He'll get it though, its new to all of us!

Bubbles!

Bubbles are one of Brett's favorite things, so we decided to do a little investigating :) We learned that bubbles are pockets of air trapped inside a liquid and also that the surface tension in water causes its molecules to cling together so that on it's own, water doesn't produce many of these air pockets. It needs to have more space in between the molecules. So, when you add soap, it breaks the surface tension allowing the pockets to form-resulting in bubbles!


Next, we made bubble art by adding tempera paint to a mixture of water and Dawn soap...then we used "found items" (lids and sponges) to make a book on bubbles...(the last picture shows the pages in his book. )

Crayons Crayons Crayons!!!!

Everyone loves crayons! I especially, with my freakish love of all things school supplies, think there is nothing better than a brand new box of perfectly sharpened Crayolas :)

We decided to do a little investigating on crayon techniques, what crayons are made of, neat things you can do with a crayon and what color people prefer most. So....without further ado, here's the play by play...

Working on a Crayon Resist project....

Using his favorite color, Green, to make a book called, My Crayon!

Melting down old crayons to make new swirly ones...

The finished product...(I especially like the one at the bottom that looks like Earth!)

Charting the data collected...

It looks like Blue is the winner of the favorite color!

On a Roll!

We began "practice school" a couple of weeks ago, doing some little activities and science explorations just to practice getting into some type of routine. Then, last week we registered Brett in his Umbrella Program at a local Christian private school. At that point we were able to begin counting our "days." In our state we are required to go 180 days for 4 hours/day. We are following a more traditional day schedule right now, based on the recommendation of my mother (who is a school teacher) so we are actually doing about 5 to 5 1/2 hours of school, but I've found that to really cover everything and give practice time, we need to have more than the 4 hours...especially since we are doing a 4 day school week with a light day/enrichment day on the 5th day.

Here is what our days are looking like...

8:30- Pledge/Bible time
9:00-Phonics
9:20-Circle time
9:50-snack time/break
10:00-Math
10:25-Directed Play
10:40-Handwriting
11:00- Sonlight Read Aloud time
11:30-Lunch
12:30-Science/skill development/Thinking Skills/Art
12:50-break/play
1:00-Sonlight History
1:30-recess (outside time, or indoor games if weather is bad)
2:00 nap/quiet time