Apple Week... actually two apple weeks

Inspired by living in Washington and it being fall time just around the corner, I decided to have apple week be our first themed week to include themed reading, crafts, snacks and maybe a field trip. In retrospect, it ended up being two weeks and believe it or not, living in the Western side of Washington it's pretty hard to find an apple orchard to go to for picking apples. But believe me, with all the books I checked out about apples, I think Mac was done with apple picking. (Reminder to self, Kindergarten they lose focus pretty easily still.)

Snack was apples, apples and peanut butter

Our two apple songs (Mac keeps requesting more songs because in preschool they had a million songs!) were from 1+1+1=1.

Journal time I asked her to draw something related to the theme. She drew a picture for her cousin to guess which apple she liked best.

Books I picked up that we liked:
How do Apples Grow by Maestro
Apples by Gibbons (this book has extras for older kids)
Amelia Bedelias First Apple Pie
Autumn is for Apples
Johnny Appleseed by Kellogg (little old for this age)
The Apple Pie Tree
Up Up Up It's Apple Picking Time
Apple Picking Time by Slawson (she didn't like)
Apples and Pumpkins by Rockwell (too young for her but she liked it)

Here are the crafts we did inspired first by 1+1+1=1 blog. The first two are painting crafts (http://jennwa.blogspot.com/2008/10/apple-print-apple-tree.html and http://www.sillyeaglebooks.com/2011/09/fall-kids-craft-apple-tree-art.html), which thankfully on the foot craft it was a nice day. The third craft was the paper plate apple craft where you tear pieces of construction paper to make the apple and then cut out a little branch for the top with a leaf- . http://jennwa.blogspot.com/2008/09/paper-plate-apple-craft.html

Got a little carried away when I wasn't looking with the red apples on the tree.

This painting you use a foot for the trunk and an apple cut in half for the leaves and apples.

And of course we had to finish the week off with caramel apples!

Curriculum and Schedule

Now that I have a week under my belt I figured I would lay out my curriculum and schedule to see how it changes throughout the year. 

Right now it seems like we are going super fast through the material. 

Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays my schedule will look like this:

Bible time from We Choose Virtues. I love having a character quality to focus on each week. This week was patience and Mac loved the character and saying. We also do a devotional and later on we'll add in Awana homework.

Calendar time: this is mostly from 1plus1plus1equals1. It's actually taking a bit longer than I expected because she gets frustrated with herself when writing the words, even though I tell her we haven't really learned that letter correctly yet. But she's catching on and loves the weather song we sing with it. 

Then I usually have her do Reading, although she would prefer her favorite subject Math. Reading is from An Ordinary Parent's Guide to Reading and I love it! It focuses step by step on each sound and gives plenty of practice. 

Handwriting is next so I can take care of Ellie, who has usually gotten into a mess. She is doing great really trying to do the letters correctly.

Math is last of the core subjects for now and we usually do 2-3 lessons, which are super easy. The only thing holding her back I think is that she has to write the specific number about ten times every lesson and by this time is tired of writing. 

So far that takes about an hour. Then I add on journal time. This week we did a geography added page and one of her favorite things from the summer. Or art time from different websites or these two books from Mead- Snit It! and Shape Builders. I feel like she doesn't have an interest in drawing much because she doesn't take the time to practice so the shape builders might help a little plus the journaling on different subjects. This will probably lead into lapbooking of a sort later this year. 

Somewhere in here I'd like to fit more reading aloud books. 

Tuesdays I have bible study in the morning and Mac will go to her kindergarten-like class where they have Bible, calendar time, gym time, and an art project. Then we have a foster visit and gymnastics in the evening so not sure if I'm doing anything that day besides some reading time. I may try and fit in geography this day but we'll see once my class starts. The Geography I'm using is from Evan-Moor and it's called Beginning Geography. I liked this book to start with because it teaches all about maps, directions, landforms, water, continents, etc. The very basics then we can get into specific countries after that. If not I'll add it in on another day. Only plan to do one lesson per week. The first week was finding things on a map of a room and then in her journal I had her draw a picture of her own room looking from above and adding her furniture. 

And Fridays we have a foster visit in the morning so plan to do just a little bit of work.

Whew! 

Classroom and the official first day of school

So I put a lot of thought into making the our dining area (that we really don't utiize for eating) into a classroom because I wanted a fun school-like atmosphere. Here are some pictures of our classroom right now.

Right now she loves school, of course it's the second day. The only thing she's asked for more of is singing. Oh goodness. We already did Old MacDonald with the vowel sounds and we sing our weather song from 1plus1plus1equals1.net.

And of course I have to post our first day school pictures. She picked her outfit out herself, I thought it was so cute she wanted to dress up. That is our daughter- all heart.