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We've really been sinking into our new home-learning rhythm.
Having work to accomplish each day has helped keep me accountable.
We've developed a pretty good rhythm for our morning, too:
breakfast
free play
morning Circle (now with a kindergarten story, Pebble from Donsy of Gnomes)
short free play
snack at the craft table
lesson immediately after snack
After this is accomplished, I feel pretty good about the rest of the day.
The house is no more or less messy than it ever is,
laundry is no more or less piled up to the ceiling.
And now, some pictures of our lesson work from the last few weeks!
We're currently in our 3rd week of our first block.
Our second story of our first week was Jumping Mouse.
The next day, Lela found the hidden letter.
Can you?
Our first story of week 2 was Vasily and the Dragon.
~ lela was really, really proud of her dragon! ~
I just adore how Lela adds decorations to her letters!
At first I was quite uptight, trying to get her to stop, and I have to say it bothered me.
But I could tell that it would quickly become a point of contention,
and as isn't this whole home-learning thing about process, not product?
The second story of week 2 was The Search for the Magic Lake.
I took a few picture so you can see what our lesson time usually looks like.
Oops, forgot to remove the water cups before the lesson started!
Today the table was a bit messier than it usually is,
but there are almost always two little girls watching intently.
Right now I'm letting them watch, but not participate,
though they do say the verses along with us.
It seemed really important for this to be "Lela's time".
I'm thinking that some sort of simple activity (sorting? beading?) is necessary to keep them a bit more engaged.
You can see how our drawing for this day was progressing.
Not visible are the light yellow halos around the girl and sparrow.
Lela begins to darken her lines, and add in more background colors.
We usually pause before adding a lot of detail to our main focus points,
but this time she was really excited about her drawing and wanted to continue.
It's never a problem getting her to finish her picture!
Our drawings are finished!
Can you see the "S" for the sparrow, and the "F" for the feather fan?
The third day of our rhythm was for finding those hidden letters,
and writing them in our lesson book.
Lela chose to write "sparrows" and "feathers" for her words.
I'm still curious about letter formation.
Is my main concern getting her to make the letter 'look' proper, or getting the flow of the way it is written?
I'm thinking for a letter like "d".
Is it a circle, then a stick on the side? Or is it a single movement, as I would write it?
I'm thinking the latter, but if you look at our letters for 'D',
you can see that I did it as a circle, then a stick.
For our letters today, I had her write them as I would.
I think that's what I'm going to continue with, but I'm curious to hear others' thoughts.
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Thanks for reading about our lesson time!
I'm really happy with how it's been going,
and looking forward to adding in more kindergarten things for the little ones,
as well as crafts, projects and activties.
~carrie~
p.s. I just added Intense Debate for the comments. Won't you let me know how that works? I normally reply to comments via email, but I think things would be easier if I did that here. Thanks!
