Last Day...

Tomorrow is the last day of kindergarten and I'm very excited!  We're going to spend the day doing a bunch of fun stuff.  I have hand print molds for them, memory books, paint-by-numbers, statues to paint, snoopy wreaths to make, new Scooby-Doo stories to read, etc.  We're going to have a fun day doing arts & crafts, then we'll go to the pool and swim for a couple of hours!

Then the next day first grade starts and I'll hopefully get around to polishing off my post about Dinosaur Week.

But for now, it's the final hours of kindergarten for Optimus Prime and Bumblebee - and we're going to have some fun!

1st Grade Spelling Units #1-13

My plan for spelling this month is to keep doing what we have been doing.  Spelling Units will be five words long, we will go over them with activities for the first four days of the week followed by a quiz on the fifth day.  When we started spelling they would only get about 1/2 the words correct, which is why with each new unit quiz we would also include old words.  Lately they've been doing better where they get most of the words correct on their quizzes and if they keep doing good enough this upcoming quarter and we don't have to repeat a bunch of words then next quarter I'll include more words in the Spelling Units.  Meanwhile, here are the units:

Unit #1 - Making Sentences Part 1
is
a
and
go
the
I

Unit #2 - Making Sentences Part 2
my
you
are
he
she
see

Unit #3 - "A-" Words
any
ask
also
after
again

Unit #4 - "W-" Words Part 1
want
way
went
where
when

Unit #5 - "Mac the Cat"
tug
on
sat
can
get

Unit #6 - "Y-" Words
year
yours
yolk
yak
yarn

Unit #7 - Food
cake
milk
rice
food
egg

Unit #8 - "O-" Words
old
only
or
other
owl

Unit #9 - Colors
red
blue
pink
gray
green

Unit #10 - "K-" Words
keep
kind
know
kite
king

Unit #11 - Animals
rat
fox
frog
seal
wolf

Unit #12 - "W-" Words Part 2
which
word
work
would
write

Unit #13 - Halloween
spider
house
candy
pumpkin
ghost

The first two units are both six words long each instead of five because we are using some Brain Quest worksheets that I have for those words.  Plus, with words like "I" and "is" I think they can handle an extra word for each spelling list.

The "Mac the Cat" unit I almost didn't include.  It's based on a poem of the same title by Nadine Bernard Westcott.  This spelling list includes most of the words in the poem that we have not covered yet in other spelling units.

The Halloween Unit was inspired by these sheets.  It'll be a harder unit then they are used to but I'm really looking forward to seeing how they do on it since I intend to step up the work load for the second quarter.

1st Grade Reading List Part 1 & Book Reports

I tried to stay away and I couldn't.  So, I'll talk about reading & book lists.

So what books am I going to use to (hopefully) teach Optimus Prime and Bumblebee to read?

I picked "Step Into Reading Step 1" books because of all the series out there their's looked the easiest.  We already had a few books, we ordered a few more, and I wrote up a schedule:

• Thomas & Friends: Thomas Goes Fishing
• Team Umizoomi: Dog Days
• Sesame Street: B is for Books
• The Berenstain Bears: Big Bear Small Bear
• Thomas & Friends: The Close Shave
• Tangled: A Kingdom of Color
• DC Super Friends: Flying High
• Thomas & Friends: Thomas and the Jet Engine
• Dragon Egg

The last two on the list are back up books in case we need them.

We also have some more books if we get through those (from all different series):

• Sesame Street: Up, Up, Up!
• Peculiar Pets
• Big Beasts
• Nature's Amazing Partners
• The Lion King: Roar!
• The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Treasure Hunt
• Cinderella: Run, Gus, Run!
• Winnie the Pooh: Pooh's Scavenger Hunt
• Finding Nemo: Best Dad in the Sea
• Beauty and the Beast: Chip's Favorite Season
• Pocahontas: Where's Flit?
• 102 Dalmatians: Where's Oddball?
• Dinosaur: Two of a Kind

My current plan is to spend six days working on a book, however I'm willing to change my plan.  My biggest concern is that they will just memorize the book so I only want to do a couple of pages a day.  I tried to line up the books with their spelling units.  For example, when we are doing "Tangled: A Kingdom of Color" we are also covering colors in our spelling unit.  This way the book will support the spelling unit and the spelling unit will support the book, however it didn't always wok out this way.

We also have our Reading Comprehension textbook (see our curriculum) to go along with this.  My current plan is to read three books, then do a Reading Comprehension unit.  The book has activities to go along with the story so I figure it'll give us a nice break for a few days until we dive back into trying to read.  

Next, we have our chapter book reading list which is not part of our schoolwork but just a goal we try to meet each month (although this list is for three months):

• Spiderwick: The Ironwood Tree
• Spiderwick: The Wrath of Mulgarath
• Spiderwick: The Lost Chapters
• Hamtaro: Calling all Ham-Hams!
• Scooby-Doo and You: The Case of the Lost Lumberjack
• Scooby-Doo and You: The Case of the Glowing Alien
• Scooby-Doo and You: The Case of the Wandering Witch
• Scooby-Doo and You: The Case of the Haunted Hound
• Scooby-Doo and You: The Case of the Theater Phantom
• Scooby-Doo and You: The Case of the Doughy Creature
• Scooby-Doo and You: The Case of the Bigfoot Beast
• Scooby-Doo and You: The Case of the Wrestler's Ghost
• Scooby-Doo and You: The Case of the Leaping Lion
• Scooby-Doo and You: The Case of the Terrifying Pterodactyl

As we read these they will pop up on our Reading List page and our Book Series page.

One thing we are doing this quarter that we have never done before is Book Reports.  I'm hoping that making them do one book report a week will help them with learning how to read, will help their handwriting, and will help their reading comprehension - which is already pretty good but I want them to start asking questions on their own without prompts from me.  Their Book Report will be pretty basic, I'm only looking for a couple of things: title, author, fiction or nonfiction, number of pages, favorite character, favorite part of book, what they would rate it, and drawing a scene from the book.  They don't have to do a book report from these books, but I figure it will give them a good start to work with this.

Update 8/3/2013:  I updated this post because we started some of our Reading List books early.  Initially "Scooby-Doo's High Flying Adventure" was listed instead of "Spiderwick: The Lost Chapters," however we had already finished the Scooby book by the time this quarter rolled around.

Revamping & A Much Needed Break

I have been busy!

Just the other day my blog was pretty straightforward.  A Home Page for posts, a Quarterly Curriculum Page for our current curriculum, a Concept Week Page to talk about our current concept weeks, and - lastly - a What We Are Reading Page to discuss what we are reading.

Now I have 5 new pages up!  I'm over here groaning.

Don't get me wrong - I'm glad that they are up and they needed to go up, however I feel like I've been living nothing but this blog for the past month.  Which is silly, I know, since I haven't been on it that much, but I have been writing up curriculum every day for the last couple of weeks, and every time I write up something new I think to myself "Oh!  I should put that up on the blog too!" so it does feel like I've been on this blog nonstop.

So, new changes.  I decided I didn't want to just delete our old curriculum once we were no longer using it.  How would that help you?  Or me when Scooby-Doo finally hits kindergarten?  So I re-posted the old curriculum as a blog post and then put the link on a new page - called "Previous Curriculum."

Change #2 was doing something similar for the previous Concept Weeks.  Those were already blog posts so I just made a new page - "Previous Concept Weeks" - and linked the original posts there.

I decided to take this a step further and have also made a "Spelling Units" page with links to our spelling units.

Then I also put up a "Book Series We Have Read" page (title might get shortened latter) for all the book series we have read as a family.

The last new page to go up is a introduction page called "What is the Well and the Ash Tree?" in which I pretty much just rehash what my first post said.

I have also updated the Concept Week page for this upcoming quarter, and I've started updating the Curriculum page as well.  That page is not done - I only have 5 of the 11 subjects up - and I will finish it soon but right this minute it is not a priority.  I need a break.  So I'm taking a couple of days off to recharge my brain.  I'm going to go and worry about cleaning my house, homeschooling my kids, and reading a good novel.  I'm tired of thinking of lesson plans and want to enjoy the last week and a half of kindergarten.  I'll be back in a couple of days to finish putting up the curriculum and to FINALLY post about Dinosaur Week - and maybe even our new spelling words too!  Until then I think there is a bubble bath with my name on it...

Quarterly Curriculum May-July 2013

Sunday/Monday/Wednesday/Thursday:
Numbers & Math - Reviewing numbers, practicing handwriting, basic addition problems, beginning the concept of subtraction, numerical order (first, second, third, etc)
Textbooks - Total Math Kindergarten (American Education Publishing), Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills Kindergarten (American Education Publishing), character and generic number workbooks from the dollar section of Target and/or the dollar store
Number of Pages* - We used to do 5 pages a day, then we were doing 10, but now we are up to 15

Letters & Words - Reviewing letters, practicing handwriting, working on words that all start with the same letter, words that rhyme
Textbooks - Total Reading Kindergarten (American Education Publishing), Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills Kindergarten (American Education Publishing), character and generic letters and/or words workbooks from the dollar section of Target and/or the dollar store
Number of Pages* - We used to do 5 pages a day, then we were doing 10, but now we are up to 15

Spelling - 5 word units of words that are all related.  For example, some of our units have been "Family Members," "Animals," "B Words," "-am Words," etc.  We used to spend two weeks on a unit but I've recently shortened it to one week to see how that works.
Textbooks - None, right now I'm just writing the words on blank paper and having them write them a few times everyday
Number of Pages* - 2, one page of practicing the words, another with an activity

Logic - Same/different, greater than/less than, patterns, practicing drawing shapes (they know their shapes, they just aren't very neat about it), opposites, mazes, numerical and alphabetical dot-to-dots, etc.
Textbooks - Total Math Kindergarten (American Education Publishing), Total Reading Kindergarten (American Education Publishing), Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills (American Education Publishing), character and generic logic, shapes and/or skills workbooks from the dollar section of Target and/or the dollar store
Number of Pages* - We used to do 5 pages, then we were doing 10, but now we are up to 15

Art - coloring and painting
Textbooks - Cheap coloring books from the dollar store of their favorite cartoon characters, as well as cheap paint with water books
Number of Pages* - 6 pages, any more and they get bored

Tuesday/Saturday:
Off

First and Third Friday:
Arts & Crafts Day - No set curriculum for this day.  We paint statues from craft stores, build paper pirate ship kits, do sand art pictures, etc.  For two months we even worked on growing seeds inside to plant in our vegetable garden.  Basically anything goes so long as it's fun.

Second and Forth Friday:
Magazine Day - We have subscriptions to magazines like Highlights, Scooby-Doo, Thomas, etc.  These are the days I pull out the magazines we received over the month.  We read the stories in them, do the activities in them (like hidden pictures), bake the recipes in them, do the letter and number worksheets in them, etc.

Every Friday:
Spelling - Every Friday we have a spelling test of 10 words plus one Bonus Word.  The first five words are words from previous units that they still do not have down.  The next 5 words are the words from our current unit.  Lastly there is a "Bonus Word" for extra credit.  The Bonus Word is a word that is harder than their normal words.

Subjects we no longer cover:

• Reading Comprehension - We used to do this.  I'd get a book, write up about 20 or so questions for it, then read them the book and ask the questions.  It was getting to the point where they would answer every question correctly in one sitting.
• Mythology - I really wanted to do this, they really wanted to do this, it just didn't work.  They were always asking me mythology questions so it just seemed logical to do this.  However all of it went completely over their heads.  It got to the point where none of us wanted to do this anymore.   

* One page refers to just the front, two refers to the front and back.

What We Are Reading & Quarterly Curriculum Update

I decided to make a new page about the books our family is reading.  No one (well, except for me and Coffee Hound) is reading anything on their own yet, so right now the page is just reflecting what we are reading together as a family.  I threw in the books that we read in June as well as the ones we have read so far in July.  It's a shorter list than normal for us, but with 2 family vacations this month and my mom visiting us next week it's going to stay short.  I'll post the books as we read them but probably completely delete the list at the beginning of each quarter.  Or maybe I'll make a second page of book series we've read together.  I'm not sure.  I think I like the second idea more...   On a side note I just got my copy of What Your First Grader Needs To Know by E. D. Hirsch Jr. and I'm excited to dig into it - when I can find the time!

Also, I updated the Quarterly Curriculum page to tell you how many pages of schoolwork we do for each subject.  That seemed like it would probably be helpful.  However, keep in mind that this is just a guideline.  Do what works for you and your family.  I found my kid's limit, so that is what we do.  When I push them to do more it just becomes an uphill battle where they learn nothing and no one has any fun.

Dinosaur Week also wrapped up today.  I'll post about that soon.  I have to say I'm glad.  Bumblebee especially loved it but I was getting tired of trying to speak Latin!  However, their desire to keep so many pages of their dinosaur schoolwork has led me to think of a new project for them that we'll spend all day Friday tackling...

Lastly, so far I've figured out our curriculum for the next quarter and I have all of our books except for one which I'm still waiting on to ship.  I have our English lesson plan completely mapped out for the next three months, our Spelling Units word lists written up (but no worksheets yet), and I'm currently working on our Math lesson plan.  I still have a ways to go and only a couple of weeks left to do it in so I'm not sure how much I am going to be online for the rest of the month.

Kindergarten Spelling Units #1-8

I decided to talk about Spelling, instead of Dinosaur Week - which is wrapping up tomorrow.  So in a couple of days I'll post about Dinosaur Week and our vacation.  Today, down to work!

Depending on your state Spelling assignments and tests may begin in kindergarten or 1st grade.  When I was in school we did not start until 1st grade.  Same with 2 of my nieces.  However, my other niece started in kindergarten.  These are all different school districts within the same state.

We started half way through kindergarten.  Truthfully, Optimus Prime and Bumblebee were not ready at the start of kindergarten.  Back then they were still struggling with their letters.  They had their numbers down beautifully and were starting to get the concept of addition, but letters and spelling were a whole other animal.

One day I was frustrated with how far behind they were with their letters - Optimus Prime especially - and was debating what to do.  They were finally starting to get memorization down but they had no concept of beginning sounds (like a-ah-apple, b-ba-book, etc.) no matter how often I reviewed it with them.  They would remember what the letters sounded like but they could never apply that to a word.  They couldn't figure out which one was correct: a-ah-apple or a-ah-book, likewise b-ba-apple or b-ba-book.  I was beginning to think that they would never learn how to read (okay, slight exaggeration - I was beginning to think that it wouldn't be until 2nd grade that they learned) so I decided we needed a drastic change, something that was above them that they would probably fail at horribly but that they would hopefully pick up along the way until it became second nature.  Maybe, just maybe, I thought, their problem was they were just bored doing letters day after day and nothing else.  I saw the success of making them do addition day after day, over and over when they clearly did not get the concept at all for the first couple of months, followed by them getting it only vaguely for the next few months.  It had taken time and perseverance but they had FINALLY gotten basic addition down and were maybe ready for subtraction.  So I figured, why not throw Spelling Units into the mix?

The first Unit, which was the easiest, was a total failure.  However it helped me to gauge what would and would not wok for them.  For starters, 10 words was way too many.  Future units were cut down to 5 words.  Secondly, it took us far longer than 1 week to get the 5 easiest words down - it actually took about a month. It was painful, it was long, it was repetitive, but it worked.  We still struggle with the spelling lists - some words they get down no problem, others we are still working on 2 months later - but now they can actually spell some words on their own and they can recognize most of their spelling words when they see them.

So, now on to what we did and tips for you.

Our First Try:
Spelling lists of 5 words (3-5 letters long) which they practiced writing every day we did schoolwork.  We would go over how the words were related and they would write the words three times each.  These units lasted at least 4 weeks each.

Our Second Try:
Spelling lists of 5 words (3-5 letters long) which they practiced writing 4 days a week.  We would go over how the words were related and they would write the words three times each.  This was followed by a weekly quiz on just those 5 words on the last day of schoolwork for the week.  These units lasted 2-3 weeks each.

Third Try (and the system that we currently use):
Spelling lists of 5 words (3-5 letters long) which they practice writing 4 days a week followed by an extra spelling activity.  We go over how the words are related and they write the words three times each, then we do the extra activity.  This is followed by a weekly quiz on the last day of schoolwork for the week.  The quiz is 10 words long - the five words they just learned plus any easy words from the previous units that they still do not have down or only have down so-so.  There is also a "Bonus Word" which is a harder word (6 letters long) pulled from previous lessons.  Once they have those down I'll change our Bonus Word plan, however we still have 2 words that we are using as Bonus Words so I'll worry about that later.  These units last 1 week each.

Now, onto our Spelling Units!

Unit #1* - Our Family Part 1
Optimus Prime**
Bumblebee**
Scooby-Doo**
mommy
daddy

Unit #2* - Our Family Part 2
boy
girl
baby
Last Name** (which became our first Bonus Word)
family (which is our second and current Bonus Word)

Unit #3 - "-am" Words
ham
jam
ram
yam
clam

Unit #4 - "-ad" Words
mad
sad
bad
pad
glad

Unit #5 - Animals Part 1
dog
cat
cow
bird
fish

Unit #6 - Animals Part 2
horse
goat
pig
duck
animal (which will become our 3rd Bonus Word when we get there)

Unit #7 - "B-" Words Part 1
box
bat
bear
boat
belly

Unit #8 - "-ad" Words
bead
read
toad
road
load

We should be done with Unit 8 by the end of the month.

I went with themes.  Either words that rhymed (Units 3 & 4) or words that went together (Units 5 & 6) or words that began the same (Unit 7).  Truthfully, they seem to do better with the words that go together instead of rhyming words.  As for words that begin the same, we haven't gotten that far yet.

Lastly, what are the extra spelling activities that we do?

Activity #1 is a block activity.  I'm not sure if I can describe it clearly.  There are boxes shaped for specific letters and there are words that fit into these boxes.  The best I can do for you is send you here.  They will make these activities for you.  All you have to do is type in your spelling list and they do the work for you.

Activity #2 is a fill-in-the-blank activity.  I write a sentence, and give them 2 options from our unit to put in the blank.  I try to use the words we have already learned in the sentences as well because they always get excited when they realize they can read a word on their own.

Sample:   _(Bears/Boxes)_ live in the woods.

Activity #3 is a crossword puzzle.  I just write these up on my own.  However, right now for the clues I'm just giving the answers.  They have never done crossword puzzles before last week and right now I'm just getting them used to the concept.

Activity #4 is a word search.  These I also type up on my own, however there is a program here that does it for you.  I don't use this program since they also started doing word searches last week and the easiest word search on the site is still a bit above them.  I use a 7x7 grid (they use 10x10 or 15x15) with words just going left to right or top to bottom (their words go in all directions).

This just about sums up how we do our Spelling Units.  Next Quarter I'm going to add extra sheets to our Units, so I'll be posting about that soon.  I'll also have up the Units for the next Quarter soon.  I'm almost done writing them up.  I hope you found the information helpful.

*  Units #1&2 were the initial unit that was 10 words long.  In the end I had to break the unit into two so I listed it as two separate units here.
** Real words not printed.

Facebook!

The Well and the Ash Tree is now on facebook!  Stop by to check us out at www.facebook.com/TheWellAndTheAshTree

Tomorrow I should have the time to start posting about Dinosaur Week which is going on now.