Kindergarten at Home - Day 13 - All About Me! + Sewing a Dog

Community: This morning was our first Meet and Greet with other students in our area who are also attending the Connections Academy online school... I failed to get a single photo - D'oh!  I was just too occupied to remember!  Conveniently for me, the meeting spot was at a park near our house. There were only four total Kindergarten students there (the rest were older), but my daughter is always quick to meet new friends when we go to playgrounds, regardless of their age.  I normally end up making small talk with other moms and dads when we're at a park (never to be seen again), but this time we were all there for the same reason: meeting other people like us!  I don't normally give out my number to a mom I talk to on the playground, but this time, I did!  Playdates ahoy!
Then, when we got home, she had a play date with one of her chickens!

Lesson 1: Art - Create a Dog.  Both my son (who is 3), and my daughter got to do this one.  I had my son cut and paste with paper, and my daughter sew and stuff a fabric dog; I cut out the pattern pieces and then let them have at it.  I let my daughter practice pinning pieces together to help them to stay put while you sew.  For the stuffing, I had some left over batting from making a baby blanket several years ago, so we ripped off pieces of that to fatten our Weenie Dog.  Then, she sewed on green felt ears.  My daughter wanted her new fuzzy friend to have pink button eyes and nose -- I helped a little with this to make sure they would actually stay on! [Yes, she is wearing the gold metal from yesterday!].  My son drew robot buttons on his dog - the type of button you press, not fasten.

Lesson 2: Language Arts - Rhyming and Reading.
La-La-La! Lovingly Listing Letter Ll's, Licking Lips Lightly.
We read a few classic nursery rhymes, then I had her try to listen for the rhyming words as I read the poems and prose aloud.  She discovered that in poems, the rhyming words usually come at the end of each pause, segment or sentence. Then, I brought out one of the Teacher Aid materials the Connections Academy provided, called a Slider.  Basically, you have the ending sound of a word (like "an") static on the page, and then you slide different beginning sounds in front: "c"-"an"... can! "p"-"an"... pan!  "v"-"an"... van!  They all rhyme because they share the same ending sounds... added bonus: it makes an easy introduction to reading!

Lesson 3: Math - Problem Solving: Sorting.  I didn't get a picture, but she did workbook exercises where she sorted items using different methods: Matching up same items with same attributes, then different items that share an attribute (color, size, location on page, thickness, etc.).

Lesson 4: "Me" Book.  ME, ME, ME, ME, MEEEEEE!  Today, she started her very own All About Me book.  On the cover, she drew a profile of herself singing and walking - she even drew music notes floating up into the air.  She decided that she wanted to number the pages too, because she noticed that books have numbers on their pages - the cover is page 1.  On the first few pages, she drew things that she likes to do for fun (I wrote at the top what she wanted me to write as a title for the page)

Lesson 5: Social Studies - Emergency Preparation: Natural Disasters.  Since we covered what we would do in the case of emergency the other day, I wanted to show her today what kind of natural disasters could cause an "emergency situation."  We watched a movie on Brain Pops Jr, that talked about different natural disasters (like earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis) in a way that kids could easily understand.  The kids recently experienced their very first small earthquake about a week and a half ago, and after she watched the earthquake segment of the video, she said, "ohhhhhhh, so thaaaaats what happened!" Then, both of the kids drew what they remembered about volcanoes.  We chose that because we are surrounded by volcanoes where we live.  Both kids drew the magma coming up from the earth, through the volcano and bursting out from the top.  My daughter drew one volcano, but my son wanted to draw lots of volcanoes, in order by size on his page (his idea).