Kindergarten, Math, Week 38

Monday

• Fractions: Halves of a set
• We went into the kitchen and I pulled out sets of things: forks, recipe books, bowls, spices, etc.
• K. divided each set in half

Tuesday

• Calculator: Make numbers
• I said or wrote a number and K. punched it into the calculator
• Then she punched in numbers and read them to me

Wednesday

• Fractions: One-Half
• I had printed some manipulatives: a pizza, a pie, a chocolate candy bar (I put some figured contact paper that I had on the back side to make them durable)
• I showed these and we talked about one-half
• I had made a worksheet showing how to write 1/2. Explaining the denominator tells how many equal parts are in the whole and the numerator tells how many parts we are talking about. I had made four circles on the paper and divided them in half, coloring each side a different color. Then asked, "How many parts (of this circle) are yellow?" This gave K. the opportunity to write the fraction 1/2.

Thursday

• Game: Triangles, see Math, Week 31 for instructions

Friday

• Problem Solving
• Activity: Number Stories, see Math, Week 26 for instructions

Kindergarten, History, Week 38

• Read chapter 40 from Child's History
• Rome's turn to be conquered
• Germanic people
• The names of the days Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday come from Germanic gods' names.
• Angles and Saxons settled in Britain
• "Angle-land" eventually turned into "England"
• Vandals went in to Gaul and down into North Africa
• Franks settled in Gaul, name changed to France
• Goths crossed into Italy
• Started Temples and Shrines Gift Box Craft from Crafts From the Past: The Romans
• This is a more difficult craft and I'm assembling it and K. will get to paint it.
• Sun-Day, Moon-Day: How the Week was Made by Cherry Gilchrist and Amanda Hall
• Read "Wednesday" as it is the only day that has a Norse/Germanic story

United States Geography

We started a U.S. Geography class with the Support Group Co-op we have joined, so I'll add that information each week. This is a two year course, covering 1 state a week, ending with 15 weeks of California History. The goal of the class is for the children to be able to:

1. name the state by looking at the shape
2. be able to put the shape in the right place on a map
3. be able to tell two things about the state

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Maine

• Has more than 60 lighthouses
• Supplies half the lobster eaten in the United States
• Known as the Pine Tree State

Massachusetts

• The Pilgrims landed there
• Benjamin Franklin was born there

New Hampshire

• Granite / Old Man of the Mountain
• Shipyard
• the shipyard at Portsmouth built the Raleigh, one of the first 13 frigates the Continental Congress had built
• today it is a Naval shipyard and repairs submarines

Vermont

• Maple Syrup
• Green Mountains
• Morgan Horse

Connecticut

• Charter Oak
• Gave us Lollipops
• Woods and Forests cover more than 60% of the state

Rhode Island

• Only land given by Indians to a white man
• Smallest state
• Makers of fine jewelry
• No part of the state is more than 30 miles from the ocean

New York

• The Erie Canal
• The Statue of Liberty
• Niagara Falls

Kindergarten, Science, Week 38

Continuing with The How and Why Book of Weather

• Hot air rises
• Experiment: Remove the shade from a table lamp that has an incandescent light bulb. Turn the bulb on and let it sit for about ten minutes. Then stick your finger in corn starch (so that just a little is on your finger) and flick it at the light bulb. The light bulb heats up the air around it, causing the air to rise. The powder from the corn starch allows you to see the air rising.
• Why hot air rises
• When air heats up the molecules move faster, bumping into each other more, so they move farther apart.
• Because the molecules are farther apart, the air is lighter, so it rises.
• Experiment: Blow up a balloon and tie it. Measure around the largest part of the balloon. Set the balloon in the sun for about ten minutes. Measure the balloon again. The balloon should be bigger.
• We tried this first with white and pink balloons because they were the easiest at hand. When they did not get larger, I searched for a balloon that was a dark color. It worked! So this experiment can also show that light colors reflect heat and dark colors absorb heat.
• The earth does not heat evenly
• Experiment: Put a bowl of dirt and a bowl of water in the sun for about thirty minutes. Take the temperature of the surface of the dirt and the surface of the water. If you don't have a thermometer to use, your child should be able to tell the difference just by feeling them.
• Water does not heat as quickly as land
• Why breezes blow
• As the land heats up, the air above it heats up and rises. The cooler air over the water rushes in to take its place. This is called an onshore breeze.
• At night, when the sun goes down, the land cools off faster than the water. This is because only the surface of the land has been heated, but the sun's rays go deep into water and heat it to a depth of several feet.
• Now the water is warmer than the land. The air above it rises and the cooler air from over the land rushes in to take its place. This is called an offshore breeze.
• Water you can't see
• When a puddle dries up, the water molecules have jumped up into the air. We say the water has evaporated. Water carried by the air is called water vapor.
• Heat causes water to evaporate.
• Experiment: Take two saucers and put a teaspoon of water on each. Place one in the sun and one in shade. The water in the sun should evaporate faster.
• Wind helps speed evaporation.
• Experiment: Wet a paper towel. Tear it in half. Place one half where the air is still. Put the other half in a breeze (you can use a fan). Which dries faster?
• More water will evaporate from a large surface than a small one.
• Experiment: Put a spoonful of water on a saucer and then fill the spoon again and leave that water in the spoon. The water on the saucer should dry up faster.
• The water cycle
• Experiment: Take a glass and set it over some grass or small plants. They should be in the sun. A watery film begins to form on the inside of the glass. (I was surprised at how quickly it happened.) Molecules of water from the grass/plant and soil have evaporated and become water vapor. When some of them hit the cooler glass they form fine drops of water.
• The first step in the water cycle is evaporation. Water from the grass and soil evaporated inside the glass.
• The second step is condensation. We can see this as clouds or fog. The water vapor in the glass condensed on the inside of the glass.
• The third step is precipitation. When water returns to earth as rain or snow. If you leave your glass over the grass for a longer period of time, larger drops of water should form and fall back to the ground.
• What is a cloud?
• When air becomes cooler, water vapor condenses around particles of dust (etc.) floating in the air. Millions and millions of droplets are formed high in the sky and they cluster together in groups. These are the clouds we see.
• Sometimes clouds look bright and puffy because the sun is shining through them.
• Sometimes the sky looks like one big gray cloud because there are so many layers of clouds that they block out the sun's rays.
• Sometimes the clouds form very high in the sky where it is much colder, and the droplets freeze. These clouds look like wispy ribbons.
• When water droplets form at ground level, it is called fog.
• Dew and frost
• At night, when the land cools off, some of the water vapor in the warm air condenses on the cooler plants, rocks, soil, playground equipment. This is called dew.
• On very cold nights the water vapor condenses directly into ice crystals and form a white film over the ground and house roofs. This is called frost.

Even Safer than a Harvest Festival

We don't observe halloween or participate in our church's Harvest Festival. At our house October 31 is Book Report Day. At the beginning of October K. picks her favorite book (that we have read as a family this year) and we start preparing costumes, food ideas, decorations, etc. from the book.

This year K. chose Charlotte's Web. She dressed up like Fern and Papa was Mr. Zuckerman. Since I brought the bucket of slop to the table, I was Lurvy. I requested the movie Charlotte's Web (1973 movie) from the library for us to watch. Here are pictures:

 Here is Charlotte's Web. I made the web of white yarn, cut the letters out of white paper and glued glitter on it (to look like morning dew). The orange in the middle is the spider.

 Here is our sheep,

 and the goose,

 and Templeton.

 Here you can see the fence we made.

 Charlotte was made out of a gallon milk carton. We stuffed red tissue paper inside to give him a pink look. His ears, eyes, and nose were cut out of construction paper. His legs were cut from an egg carton.

 Here is our table, set for dinner.

A close-up of a pig trough.

The bucket of slop. Dinner was really quite good. It was mashed potatoes (I scrubbed the potatoes, then peeled them, so I could include the peeled skins in the food.) rice, taco flavored ground meat, peas and carrots, and cheese. We had more slop for dessert. Vanilla ice cream with chocolate bar, broken graham crackers, peanuts, chopped Oreo cookies, and raisins stirred in and re-frozen.

Columbus Day

I made K. a coloring book for Columbus Day. First, I found the complete poem In 1492 at a website called Teaching Heart. Then I found coloring pages that went with the poem, and ended up with a nice seven page coloring book.

Here are some books I like for Columbus Day:

• Christopher Columbus by Ann McGovern, copyright 1962
• Ship Boy with Columbus by Enid La Monte Meadowcroft, copyright 1942
• The Voyages of Christopher Columbus by Armstrong Sperry, Landmark book, copyright 1950
• Christopher Columbus by Bennie Rhodes, The Sowers Series, copyright 1976

Kindergarten, Bible, Week 37

This week we:

• Memorized Psalm 62:5
• Reviewed Catechism (3 days)
• Read stories 217 - 227 in Picture Story Bible
• Other books, videos, stories:
• The Princess and the Kiss
• Mrs. R.P. and the Treasure Hunt
• Muffy
• The Shotgun that Wouldn't Fire from Missionary Stories ... Millers
• Prayer
• Song: He Keeps Me Singing

Kindergarten, Writing, Week 37

Practice "Sentence": What a quaint world it is

• During this five weeks of school we are copying a poem, one line each week.

Small Muscle Development:

• Three Color Road Race, see Writing, Week 10 for instructions

Story Development:

• How Many Words?, see Writing, Week 27 for instructions

Writing Practice:

• Monster Cafe, see Writing, Week 26 for instructions

Kindergarten, Reading, Week 37

Genres from our textbook were:

• fiction
• historical fiction

Activity: Oops from Games for Reading -- this activity gives your child practice in phonics

• Cut squares (mine are 2" x 2") and write a letter on each square
• In the book are five lists going from easy to difficult
• Each list has 19 - 25 letters for groups of letters
• Put the squares in a pile.
• Your child picks up the top square and says the SOUND that letter makes -- NOT the name of the letter.
• If your child does it correctly, he goes on to the next letter.
• If he does not give the correct sound, you write "O" on a paper, and he goes on to the next letter.
• For each mistake you write the next letter of the word "OOPS". If the whole word gets written before he completes the stack of letters, he loses the game.
• Of course, you'll want to practice the ones he made mistakes on, but probably not during the game.

Kindergarten, Math, Week 37

Monday

• Fractions: Equal Parts
• Used stuffed animals and a set of 24 pieces of pasta
• I put out 2 animals and had K. divide the pasta equally, then count and see how many each animal had.
• Then I put out 3 animals and had K. divide the pasta equally, and count how many were in each set.
• Then I put out 4 animals, etc.
• Then I put out 6 animals, etc.
• We learned that the more you have to divide something in, the smaller each set is.
• A good book for this concept is The Doorbell Rang by Pat Hutchins

Tuesday

• Calculator: What digital numbers look like
• I made a paper calculator and a strip of paper with the markings of calculator numbers
• Then I wrote a number and K. used a marker to trace how that number would look on a calculator.
• She got frustrated about half way through, so we took a break and read for a bit.

Wednesday

• Fractions: Halves of a Set
• We went into K.'s room and I put out sets of blocks, animals, etc.
• K. separated them into equal halves
• We learned that when you make a half there are two parts and each is equal

Thursday

• Game: Races, see Math, Weeks 25, 26, and 27 for instructions (addition)

Friday

• Problem Solving: Graphs
• I printed a picture of candies from the internet.
• K. counted how many there were of each color and made a bar graph.