week 1 review

(week 1: May 16-20, 2011)

One week of kindergarten and we are on our way. Kind of.

Sunny is extremely high-energy and constantly on the move (especially talking), unless she's sitting down with a book and completely ignoring everyone and everything. This week of starting school has been no different. It occurred to me yesterday that her dad and I told her that we're going to have kindergarten at our house instead of at a "real school." But we did not explain what exactly that means. So we had a conversation last night about what kindergarten is, why she's having it at home instead of public school (because Heavenly Father said so), and what we need to do each day. Not much of it seemed to connect with her, so I imagine we'll be having the conversation again. Multiple times, probably.

Handwriting: I started Monday with Sunny's dry erase book and a straight-line letter, F. No such luck. She flicked the marker instead of deliberately writing the lines. It took awhile to get her lines in and it was all sloppy. On Tuesday, she came across a preschool writing book I have for Posy and wanted to do some writing pages from that. So for the rest of the week, she did 1 or 2 worksheets every day of pre-writing exercises - straight lines going various directions, circles, etc. This went much better - she's controlling her writing utensil well and we're marking which thing was her best. Posy is also doing the pages. She's keeping up with Sunny pretty well.

Five in a Row: see the other post from today.

Literature: I recently finished reading the 1st-4th grade section of The Well-Trained Mind and figured I'd start with their reading lists now instead of waiting until we start 1st grade. We got a collection of stories of the Greek gods and goddesses and read one every day. If we stay at that pace, it will take us 2 more weeks to get through the book. We might pick it up to 2 per day next week. Posy isn't really paying attention when we read from this book, but Sunny stays with it.

Science: This was not on my list, but AC did do a couple of science experiments with Sunny for fun this week. He got her a "science kit" for her birthday and they've been having fun with it, messing around with stuff in the kitchen sink and the bathtub.

General focus and attention span: Wow. Non-existent. Definitely needs work. One day, it took the girls only about 5 minutes to do their writing pages and we were done with the entire school list in about 30 minutes. Another day, it took more than a half-hour just to do the writing pages. So far, it depends on if I've said that they can watch TV when they're done. I really do not want that to be the incentive to get through their work.