Sissy's Kindergarten Corner #5

A little bit of what my 5 year old has been up to lately:

I can no longer label my titles as "week #5," etc. because I've missed a few weeks posting. However, this is my 5th kindergarten post this fall. Here are some more pictures of Sis from our recent Tennessee trip.

For our A is for Astronaut unit, we used this magnet page from Making Learning Fun and this book by Traci N. Todd.

Astronaut Sensory Tub

Moon Sand=9 cups flour, 1 1/2 cups baby oil

For our unit, we used lots of the great astronaut printables from Homeschool Creations, Spell Out Loud, and Totally Tots. Here are a couple of the things we did: "5 Little Astronauts" song and props plus tracing page from Spell Out Loud.

These astronaut pattern printable can be found here.

One of my new favorite printables sites is Sparkle Box.

numeral recognition/counting/object to number matching

For one of our numbers activities, we discussed that a star has 5 points. We made salt dough stars. I told the kids they could make wands by baking them with a wooden skewer or ornaments for our Christmas tree.

They made some of both.

I posted HERE about all of our other space related projects, including activities on moon phases, making craters, play-dough and edible layers of the Earth, and constellations.

apple tree finger painting and letter A wipe-off/tracing

circle the A's 

(from Confessions of a Homeschooler)

I cut out this A and told her to decorate it any way she wanted with these apple seeds I had been saving for her. This is what she came up with.

stickers on Confession's number magnet pages

For the letter A, we also did
these Raggedy Ann and Andy activities 
I posted.

She works on her Abeka phonics and math pages at our home school co-op, then I am working through Abeka's A Handbook for Reading with her at home. She really enjoys taking piano lessons now, plus ballet, tap, jazz, and gymnastics. This week we're on the letter B and B blends like ba, be, bi, etc. We're going to be doing a little on bugs, sight words, Johnny Appleseed, and Native Americans.

Raggedy Ann and Andy

Sissy and I were going to read her book, then craft together. But as usual, if the other kids see I'm doing an activity with one child, it makes no sense to them why they aren't taking part, as well. So, as usual, they join in.

I just threw out some supplies (paper plates, yarn, googly eyes, construction paper, etc.) and broad directions for Dash and Sissy to make Raggedy Ann and Andy faces. I helped cut out shapes. This is what they came up with.

Sissy also made these toilet paper roll crafts from DLTK.

DLTK also has online Raggedy Ann and Andy jigsaw puzzles, which the kids put together. They can be modified to include 6-247 pieces for degrees in difficulty. I change the number of pieces for each kid.

I found Raggedy Ann and Andy movies on youtube plus this videobook.

After watching one of the movies, the kids wrote journal entries using this paper.

Science Post #2: Space and Earth

Because it was covered briefly in our MFW's science curriculcum (Usborne First Encyclopedia of Science) and because I did an "A is for Astronaut" mini-unit with Sissy, we did a lot with Space Science and Earth Science the past two weeks. These are some of the books we read. I recommend any of them. 

As we were reading Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11, an award-winning book by Brian Floca, I told the kids we could probably find their real voices online. Here is a really short clip, but there are others we listened to that include more dialogue such as the "giant leap for mankind" quote. They loved this, and it especially helped my 5 year old who had wondered if this was "a true story." There is an illustration in the book of a family cheering in front of the television set, and that (along with the audio clips) gave me tears and goose bumps.

We made play-dough Earths. 

First, they formed these balls of dough, big to small.

They left the red ball solid, then flattened the orange ball to carefully wrap around the red ball. Then the yellow ball was flattened to wrap around the orange/red ball, etc.

After they repeated those steps through blue, they used green play-dough to form continent shapes. We got out the globe, and I asked the kids to each name all 7 continents. Sis can't name them all yet, but she came close with hints.

Next, they cut their dough balls in half. Care needs to be taken with this as the ball will want to squish under the pressure of the knife.

And you will find the 4 layers of the Earth plus the blue ocean on the outside: inner core, outer core, mantle, and crust. (This one looks like it has more layers because because he had to use two shades of yellow mixed together to make a big enough ball. But the yellow is all mantle.)

To review, each filled out this worksheet.

We sang this Layers of the Earth song (which I modified slightly because I couldn't fit that many words into  that tune).

The next day, we reviewed the 4 layers by making edible Earths. I added a little flour and powdered sugar to peanut butter to make it stand up better.

After forming balls (the mantle), we cut them in half, scooped out the center, added soy cream cheese (the outer core) and a strawberry (inner core), then rolled it in ground flax seed (the crust). This didn't turn out as well as I had hoped because the peanut butter consistency wasn't firm enough, but I think it got the point across. And it made for a nice bedtime snack.

I put together this Astronaut Sensory Tub using a Space Toob. I made homemade moon sand (9 cups of flour and about 1 1/2 cups of baby oil). At first, I thought it was just crumbly flour, but it really is moldable! (Sis also got some pink sprinkles in there when she was playing "bakery" with the moon sand.)

When we were reading Space by Bobbie Kalman, my 7 year old kept going over to the space tub to pull out items that matched pictures (like a satellite or certain astronaut gear) in the book.

Also, the first time they played with the moon sand, they were at the kitchen table. On subsequent play times, I had to send them outside because it was very messy.

They were ridiculously impatient waiting for this Oreo experiment. (We actually used this Newman's Organics version.)

I used the printable at the bottom of this page for our model. I edited the word-doc, deleting the pictures for a second sheet to include space for their own cookies.

There was a whole section of space activities at the WonderWorks Museum we visited this month.

#1: Dash, trying out the rocket.

#2: Tornado is pumping his fist "yes" as the monitor (which asks space-related trivia questions) declares his "correct" answer.

#3: This scale calculates your weight on the Moon and Mars. Sis apparently weighs 7 lbs. on the Moon and 16.4 on Mars (and that's 42 lbs. on Earth).

The kids each completed a mini book from this Lifesaver Lessons book.

Magic School Bus: Out of This World teaches about meteorites, so we did this experiment. I filled a baking pan with flour and let them drop rocks into it from different heights with different sized rocks. They repeated this experiment SO many times, for so long, that I finally went inside and just let them have at it. I also showed them pictures online of different meteorites and crater sites in the United States. (BTW, I'm using the flour to make salt dough tomorrow, so it won't go to waste.)

We used these constellation lacing cards. I punched holes on the dots.

The kids placed them on top of construction paper, filled in the dots, then covered them with star stickers. They connected the dots and labeled the constellations.

I asked the kids to design their own constellations.
Tornado named his "Monster," and Dash's was "Bareka." 

Sissy named her constellations "Key-etay" and "Remi."

We blew up this old constellation ball to examine.

styrofoam solar system from Science Post #1

Sissy's Kindergarten Corner: Week #4

I didn't take too many school pictures this week. It felt like we were pretty busy with our co-op, etc. plus it was a 3-day weekend. One thing she enjoyed about her classes this week is a presentation her teacher gave on making healthy food choices. Ms. Tara demonstrated making homemade peanut butter, which they enjoyed on homemade bread. The 2nd grade class got to take part, too, so my 2nd grader liked it, as well.

AWANA started back up this week. Sis is a big girl now in Sparks with her brother. When Ryan was picking them up, a lady commented that the kids sure do look out for each other. Apparently, Sissy had been nervous and a little unsure of herself during some of the games she didn't know how to play. Dash actually comforted Sissy and held her hand, going alongside her. How sweet is that!

We had a few Chicka activities to finish up. They recently helped me glue self-stick magnet pieces onto craft poms for these kind of pages. 

We added our next title to our Book Gardens. This time instead of using it as a tracing activity, I had them follow the directions on this Easel Painting activity, adding stickers.

 She was able to add another word to her Fancy Nancy Word Wall: CAT.

 an activity from her Number Art book

 more counting patterns activities like this one

pictures she made for Mom and Dad

 A activities like this one

lots of letter and number writing

And something silly she said: 

Apparently, I hastily prepared her half of a peanut butter and fruit spread sandwich because I placed the cut top down facing the wrong direction - so the cut end was right on top of the crust end. Since one would typically eat from the cut side toward the crust, she flipped it around and said, "I don't know which side to start on."