Kindergarten at Home - Day 10 - Making a Kite

We got the desks together, we got the desks together!  I had a busy weekend full of birthday parties, going away parties and events with the kids, so actually, I must give my husband credit for making time to get the job finished for me while we were out and about.  I need to find some reasonably priced desk chairs and also need want to find some storage bins for the cubbies, but not urgent.  Now, I'm doing the "I have my dining room back" dance!!!

Lesson 1 - Social Studies: Household Poisons - Medicines.  Mr Yuk is greeeeeeeen.... Mr Yuk is Meeeeeeeeeean.  We continued our Household Poisons lesson by talking about medicines and vitamins, and how you should never play with medicine bottles and never open them yourself, and to always ask first if you want your vitamins.  YouTube is awesome! We don't have very many medicines in our house to help show what they are (I could only scrounge up some all-natural cough syrup, Ibuprofen, and our vitamins), so I did a search on YouTube for "Mr. Yuk", and for "Household Poisons", and found a few kid-friendly videos to help illustrate what medicine bottles look like and other items to avoid.  I found a few vintage videos, like the original Mr Yuk gem I watched when I was a kid - it was pretty creepy and borderline scary!

Lesson 2 - Math: Sorting by color.  We cut out shapes from some scrap colored paper, and then I left her to make pictures by color with the shapes (so I could go do the dishes and get brother some juice while she was occupied).  I came back to find this super cute setting she had made of birds in birth baths and a fountain squirting water into the air!

  
Lesson 3 - Art: Making a Kite.  Okay, I have to admit that I was super giddy when I read that the assignment for today was to make a kite!  The kids both really liked this art assignment.  My daughter drew some cute flowers on her kite, and she even drew their roots under the ground!  My son got to try his hand at cutting out a kite too.  Then, we took them outside to see how they would fly... unfortunately, our trip outside was pretty anticlimactic because we had ZERO wind (well, maybe a couple short-lived, wimpy gusts, but nothing substantial like the one that sent our carport flying the other day!).  We'll have to try it again another day.  The kids did run around with the kites and they laughed with joy as the kite trailed behind them!

Lesson 4 - Movement: Flying our kite!  The assignment for today was to choose the active-activity. The kids got lots of fun exercise time in, running around with their kites by their side! They weaved in and out and had a kite race.

Lesson 5 - Language Arts: Time to Intentionally Imprint Impressive Ii's, Investing In Improvements, If Inclined
Then, we read "The Enormous Turnip" story.  We decided to go out to the garden to see what was ripe right now - nothing enormous, but did find lots of nummy tomatoes!  I told her that "Enormous" is an adjective and that an adjective is a word that helps describe something.  So, I had her give me some adjectives for the tomatoes we picked.  She came up with: Round, Orange, Long (it was a Roma tomato), pointy (it had a pointy tip), yummy, oval, funny (it was a unique-shaped heirloom tomato that looked like it had a face), and sour (that was a green one).  Yes, she is wearing a blonde wig.

Kindergarten at Home - Day 9 - Dem Bones + Mr Yuk Poison Safety

Lesson 1 - Social Studies: Poison Safety.  Mr. Yuk, Mr. Yuk... We discussed poisons in the home and how you should never touch them (some might burn your skin), and should never eat them (it can burn your throat, and we'd have to go to the hospital where the doctor would pump your stomach, or it could kill you).  We drew our own Mr. Yuk faces and went to different cupboards to point out the "yucky" items.
Then, we talked about how there are poisonous plants and animals outside that you should not touch and especially never eat like Poison Ivy and Poison Oak, Poisonous Mushrooms, unknown berries, and some frogs that have poisonous skin.  We observed pictures of Poison Ivy and Poison Oak on the computer and then she drew them in her Vocabulary Book.

Lesson 2 - Math: Differences - Problem Solving Skills Review.  Went over the math vocabulary we've learned over the last couple weeks, then did exercises where you find the picture that is different among the lineup (one image is slightly different than the others), and then choosing the "largest", "farthest", "thinnest", etc. in other pictures.

Lesson 3 - Science: Moving Parts.  We learned that muscles, tendons and bones work together to help our body parts move like her puppet we made the other day.  Bones add support (without it, we'd be a slithering mush pile on the ground); muscles help us to bear weight and push; tendons work with the muscles so that we can move our limbs and sort of work like a rubber band stretches and relaxes.
Then, I cut out some representational images of the major bones and had her put them in the proper place on the full-size body tracing we made of her the other day - she loves doing puzzles, and this was like a life-size puzzle!

Lesson 4 - "Simon Says."  We did this game after the bones lesson so that the fact that our bones add structure could be demonstrated.  We also were able to practice some Kindergarten Math terms, like Left and Right... "Simon says: put your Left arm up", "Simon says: put your Right leg back", "Simon says: Do the Robot"

Lesson 5 - Language Arts: Happily Hatch Hh's Harboring Honorable Handwriting
We read "The Lion and the Mouse."  Even though the mouse was very small, he was able to help the BIG lion. Then, I asked her if she has ever had the opportunity to help someone or something that is bigger than she.  Her first thought was of her Miniature Horse, Rosabelle, and how she brings her to water.  This reminded her of when Mommy wasn't feeling well and she brought me water too.  Awwwwwwe, thank you.  : )