Welcome to my journey of homeschooling.
I am a grade 5/6 classroom teacher by profession but have recently joined the world of homeschooling a kindergartener. Teaching a group of 30 ten year olds if very different than teaching 1 five year old. For starters, the majority of ten year olds know how to read, write, add, and subtract. Having to learn how to teach how to read and understand numerical values has presented me with many new challenges. My brain and patience have been getting put to work. I’ll be posting my weekly homeschooling activities here to help other parents/guardians who are also interested in entering the realm of home-schooling. Check in with me weekly to see what we’re up to! I am working on a weekly vlog on youtube as well, stay tuned!
In language arts we are focusing on vowels and the Super E this week. What is this Super E you ask? It is one of the concepts that makes English so tough to understand, it changes the sound of the vowel which can be very confusing if you don’t know this rule and are new to the language or attempting to pronounce a new word you’ve never seen before. Essentially, when there a consonant followed by a vowel, followed by another consonant followed by an E on the end, that E changes the first vowel sound and makes it say it’s name. For example, we read the word CAN differently than the word CANE, because that E on the end tells us to pronounce the A in cane AYE and not AAH like in can. One of the struggles I’m finding for a five year old is the inability to pronounce sounds and words properly. Therefore, when sounding out words, she can’t always hear letters in a word because she doesn’t pronounce them properly or at all, ie: she doesn’t hear the R in world because she pronounces it woald.
In math we have started a unit on money. This has been very exciting and fun. I purchased a play money kit from amazon which you can check out here. I’ve been able to create a cross curricular unit that addresses a lot of math concepts, but also dips into reading, social studies, and life skills. She gets to read labels, figure out different types of bills and coins, understand budgets and savings, and needs/wants. We have been having fun playing ‘store’ and taking turns being cashiers and customers. She began penny pinching much sooner than I thought she would!
In social studies we are learning about needs/wants. What are basic necessities and how life has changed for us in comparison to her grandparents.
In science we are learning about habitats. I have also been able to turn this unit into cross curricular. We have been learning to do research, how to find information on the internet and in books. We are getting to create an art project, sing some songs, and discuss living necessities (which ties back into social studies).
I don’t worry about Physical Education too much due to extra curricular activities, constant dance parties, and visiting local playgrounds. The same goes for Art, I tie in art to activities, and we also love a good colouring/drawing/singing/dancing/painting session.
Come back next week to see what we’ve done!
Comments