Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Preschool/Kindergarten

So for the last year or so every day/other day I'd try and do something school-like for the kids. Either long story times or counting or learning our letters or memorizing bible verses or whatever. We tried to do it every morning at 10am...and after going through a few bible books and exhausting www.starfall.com, I started running out of ideas. So I ordered My Father's World Kindergarten curriculum to go through with Noah. He was totally ready for it, and the last few weeks we've been starting to go through it together!

Here's my little preschooler/kindergartener. I don't really know what to call it cause he's technically in preschool but we are going through K curriculum :) All of the preschool type curriculums I looked at were just a bunch of storybooks, which I can get at my local library anyway, so I thought we'd jump into a more fun/tactile one since he's reading first words already.

And I included this pic cause this is usually the perspective I see of him, looking up at me asking a question. His mind is quite inquisitive.
The first week was Ss is for Sun, and we learned all about the Sun and how it gives light and heat, and how the earth revolves around it, and how when it's light in SA it's dark in America, and tons mroe. He learned how to draw an S....
And we did experiments on how the sun gives heat. We put ice in the sun and in the shade to see whose would melt the fastest. The experiment had to be done over though cause they were both touching the ice when I went to settle Jude, so they both melted evenly at first :)
We are also trying to make grapes into raisins, but there haven't been enough sunny days for that yet! I also want to do a sundial, but we ran out of sunny days this week, we will do it next.

The curriculum is quite "tactile" which I love, so we made Snakes in the shape of an S.

Autumn got into this one too, she'd say "look at my baby snakes, ssssssss"
It comes with this cool puzzle thing too where you put these rods in the shape of an S or a Sun or a Snake or whatever starts with S. We are also learning how to count to 100, and go over a calendar every day. "Yesterday was, today is, tomorrow will be" etc. They also included this classical cd, and have ideas for kids to do to the music. (Dance with a beanbag on your head, etc etc). So one day we spent the whole morning "painting to Mozart"...although my kids called it "painting to milktart" (a South African dessert!) So I kinda go with the flow, if we don't get through that days curriculum, it's ok so long as the kids are learning and having fun.
Every week has a bible verse, and this one was "Jesus said I am the light of the world." That verse is on one of Noah's Seed's cd's so we just sing the song every day to review the concept that Jesus is the light of the world. We are also doing the children's catechism found in "Big truths for little kids." It's a great question and answer type way of learning great doctrines of the Bible, and I get quite a few interesting questions from him about it. It's fun!

2 comments:

Atticus! said...

I am so impressed and also in awe of you that you are able to do a K-curriculum with Noah with the three kids and Jude still so little. Wow!!! and Hooray! I have been so glad for you that the transition to 3 kids has appeared (through blogging, anyway) so much smoother than we had experienced. I am so glad for you guys!

cynthia said...

yay, mfw! that's what we use, too! :)