So we had fun this unit too. I am finally getting the hang of things and so is Caden. It is nice to be able to say go start doing your calendar board and he can start chaning the color and shape of the week and weather by himself. We talk about the shapes and count the sides. We are still working on not trying to change the month and year everyday, but Caden is doing well learning the days of the week song and the months of the year song. He is also doing well learning his letter sounds song. I am so glad I made the decision to homeschool! I stressed over it for a while thinking Caden might fight me enough to where I wished I would have just sent him to school. Of course he would rather play, but he is learning that it really doesn't take that long. I was also worried that he would have trouble since he didn't know his letters, but he is doing a great job and I am ready to start speeding things up a little bit. Even Dax is doing an awesome job! Here are some of the things we did this unit...
This is Caden changing the date on this 5th birthday...
Adding another candy corn to our number of the week jar...
His "m" handwriting sheet. He has come a long way and goes to the board and practices on his own some too. He is so excited he can write a big letter "m" on his own. I am sure he will catch on to the next letter really quick, which is "L".
We added another set of flashcards to our box this week. We take all the "m" pictures and "s" pictures and mix them up and then go through them and place them in the pile they go with. Caden can do this on his own too and check himself because the cards have the correct letter on the back of them.
On this sheet he had to circle the pictures that start with the mmmmm sound and x out the pictures that didn't.
We learned the earth is about 4 times the size of the moon. So we put one cracker to represent the moon and 4 crackers together to represent the size of the earth.
We also learned that the moon does not have its own light and that it gets light from the sun shining on it. We see the moon lit up because the light the sun shines on it reflects it off the moon. We took a ball and wrapped foil around it and we went in a dark room to see that the ball (moon) didn't have any light. Then we took a light which represented the sun and shined it towards the ball and saw how the ball (moon) reflected the light.
We learned last week that Jesus is the light of the world. This week we learned that we are like the moon, and Jesus is like the sun. If we know Jesus, his light shines on us and we become a light too. When we spend time with Jesus and he lives inside us, we are a light to help other people find Jesus. The more time we spend with Jesus, and the more we obey Jesus, the more light we have. Other people need to see our light shining brightly!
I decided to start doing each row of our 100 days of school chart (and each month on our calendar sheet) with a patteren because I realized Caden was having trouble with what comes next in a simple pattern. This row is green orange green... We have also had to use M&M's and lay them on each box to get the point across. He is starting to get a little better!
This sheet is using our number jar...He had to draw a picture of two objects in the first box and practice writing the number 2...then in the second box we practiced with the number 1...as the weeks go by he will practice with the number of the week and them pick one of the other numbers to illustrate.
Caden practicing cutting...on this sheet he cuts out the letters and then looks at the pictures and glues the correct letter that the pictures starts with...this week it is practicing "m" and "s" because those are the only two letters we have done. Each week it will build and have more letters.
Another moon activity...we drew on flashcards 4 moon phases (full, half, crescent, new)...we used the flashcards to practice the moon phases...then we got to eat the icing off the oreos for each moon phase...this, of course, was my favorite activity! Dax liked it too!!
Here we learned about the size of the sun, moon, and earth. We made each of them out of paper so they were in proportion to their actual sizes...the sun was 4 foot 4 inches, the earth was 1/2 inch, and the moon was 1/4 inch. I don't think I realized the sun was that much bigger than the earth...
We then hung the sun on the gate and had to walk 461 feet away from it with the Earth and the moon so they were in proportion to their actual distance from each other in space.
Half way there...
461 feet...if you look really close to the left of the boat you can see the sun there on the gate. This activity shows that the sun looks as small as it does because it is so far away from the earth. It looks small, but it really isn't.
This was our last sheet practicing out letters for the week. We had to draw a picture, or in most of the squares we used stickers, to represend a letter we have learned and then practiced writing it 3 times.
At the end of the unit we took our moon flashcards and glued them to a sheet that we can keep for our records of what we learned for each letter.
We also read a ton of books this unit. It is so nice because I can go online and reserve books from the library (really about 8 libraries in our system) and they call me when they come in and I run in and pick them up. I think we probably read 10-15 books, fiction and nonfiction, that had to do with the moon. The kids love reading before bed and I love that we can connect it with our school units! Now on to learning about the letter "L"... leaves/trees/plants!
