Morning Basket Books March 7-11

Last week's morning book selection. The book of Nature Poetry was last week's Poetry Tea Time choice; Down Comes the Rain got us talking about the water cycle and led to us taking a trip to the beach to look at the clouds & talk about the water from the ocean going back into the sky & then coming back down; Swan & Degas led us to talk about dancing and painting; My Favorite Tree is a two page spread about different trees in North America, we read a few of them so far.

Our Morning Routine

Last weekend I took a teacher in-servie weekend. I did some reading and a lot of watching of Periscopes, especially from Julie Bogart at Bravewriter and some of the other homeschooling mom's.

The biggest take-away I had was from the Morning Routine Scope and I decided that that was something I needed to implement. It has changed our days!

For quite a few weeks we had been floundering with a start time for our days. We'd be up but be lazy at getting chores done, getting dressed, figuring out where to begin our school day. The morning routine has really helped focus our days (or at least our mornings!)

The girls get up, have breakfast and are allowed to watch one show, usually a PBS one. While they are doing that I get dressed if I'm not yet and do the morning dishes & get a load of laundry going. After the show the girls get dressed then we all meet back in the living room for what we've started called "Morning Basket Time".

All it is is that basket up there filled with books. I rotate the books, Julie suggested a "rich and varied" pile of books so that's what we're going for, although for the most part I used what we had on hand for the week. As I listened to other morning routine scopes my library hold grew so big & so fast that I reached the limit and had to wait for some to come in before putting anymore on hold!

We begin our time with a short prayer & I have read a few passages from the Bible I think twice this week. This is also the time when we do our weather tracking for the day: I printed out a current month calendar & we observe out the window, she draws the weather then opens the weather app on my phone to see the temperature and the forecast.

After the weather it's onto our current read a-loud, a picture book or two and I did read a non-fiction book (a biography of Dr. Seuss) on Tuesday.

While I am reading the girls are coloring at my feet on the floor. Except for the biography, Marie-Therese was enthralled by that, that it was a true story about a real person who wrote and drew for a living. Now I am on the hunt for more non-fiction & biographies for her! When Daddy got home she picked up the book and took him step by step through Dr. Seuss' life. It was neat to watch!

After morning basket time we head to the table for some table work or art or the girls play while I do a few chores. This time has really focused our mornings and our homeschool flow. It has jump started our motivation again as we come out of February.

A list of this week's Morning Basket books:

Greetings from Somewhere: The Mystery of the Gold Coin

Nature's Paintbox (we also used this for Poetry Tea time this week)

Owl Moon

Dr. Seuss

Fancy Nancy Aspiring Artist

Oh the Places you'll Go!

Charlotte's Web (just began it this morning)

Our learning to read journey

This is the face of an extremely proud beginner reader!

At the beginning of the school year I asked her what her goals for kindergarten were. Her biggest goal was to learn to read. The frustration quickly set in when she found out that she wasn't going to be able to pick up a book in an afternoon and be a proficient reader within a few minutes.

There have been tears, frustration, stomping of the feet, putting herself down and nerves as the months have passed. She kept beating herself up and crying that she'd never learn to read.

I finally stopped teaching her. Every so often we'd do a few worksheets but that was mainly cementing her knowledge of the alphabet and writing letters. 

As time has gone on and she's relaxed I have noticed that she is picking up more & more.

I really began to notice a few weeks ago when I got back in the car from pumping gas & she was talking to Veronica. I realized that she was reading the instructions on the gas pump. Not perfectly, but it was a start. 

Daddy noticed when she was sitting beside him at the computer and she said "are you looking up fairy princesses?" because she read what he had typed.

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That was a long winded way to say that our reading journey has been slow and full of bumps in the road. Once I let go of the idea that she "should" be reading now, I read a few articles about how we shouldn't push kindergarteners to read, we need to follow their lead, and remembered my own reading lessons, I relaxed. 

She is doing fine. I read to her many times a day. She is practicing. We both have relaxed now that I've taken all outside pressure and let it go in one ear and out the other.

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Yesterday was Dr. Seuss' birthday and I read a biography of him during morning basket time. She was enthralled that it was a true story about a real person & she loved hearing about the author who wrote The Cat in the Hat, that Dr. Seuss followed his own creative dream to become a cartoonist & that he really wanted to help kids just like her learn to read.

After morning basket time we moved to table work where I had a worksheet of sight words for her to cut out & then match with their rhyming partner. I originally had planned on doing it alongside her but the toddler was being particularly toddlerish and needed me more than usual.

I half occupied Veronica & half listened to Marie-Therese and was blown away that she took the time to sound the words out, many didn't take time at all, and that she only needed help on one or two. The rhyming part she had down pat (I'm attributing that to our weekly poetry readings).

When she was done she jumped up & down and was so excited that "I can read! I can read! I don't need your help all the time!"

I later asked her to read to me but she said she was too nervous & I make her make mistakes and she would rather not. That is totally fine. We will keep practicing here and there and I will step back, allowing her the freedom to learn the way she needs. Obviously something is going right, because she really is starting to pick it up!

Catch up post

The other night she spent some time designing and creating her own business cards: Marie-Therese's art class to be held here at our house. With her as the teacher!

This was taken a few Saturday mornings ago. Daddy works Saturday mornings so a lot of weeks we use the morning time to catch up on any school work that we didn't finish over the course of the week.

We've been learning about the states, one state every week & a half or so. The state bird, flower & capital. We are putting together a book that includes a coloring page for each flower & bird. We've also been looking up videos of each bird. Here she and Veronica are watching & pretending to be Ruffed Grouses from Pennsylvania. 

She finished her math workbook last week so we began working with Khan Academy on-line. She'd rather have the workbook so I'm researching those....she really enjoys her math time. And doing math with a superhero cape is even better!

Making up her own Halloween math problems on the white board!

Learning to read is still slow going and sometimes painful. We are going slow, practicing letters & sounding out words. Patience with herself is needed! She gets easily frustrated that it isn't coming easy. I keep assuring her that as long as we keep practicing she WILL get it.

Each Monday is ballet class with Miss. Rachel. This is another highlight of her week!

The other day we went outside for a science experiment that she came up with on her own: put water on a sunny spot of the driveway and a shady spot on the driveway and see which one evaporates quicker. She did the same experiment with the pink paper.

We began going to the new playground near the airport. Homeschool friends; slides & watching the planes land & take off right in front of us make for a very fun morning each week!!!

Monday & Tuesday

Monday was. Crisp and cool. Mugs of tea. Books. Lots of books. Stuffy noses. Writing thank you notes. Math. Grocery shopping. Baths before naps. Late afternoon ballet class. Dinner being made now so it's ready later. Looking through new books and planning some weather activities for us to do soon. Her list of things she wants to learn about and do keeps growing!

Tuesday is:

*beginning the day dressing up as a person from Hawaii and dancing the hula

**math....learning how to count by 5

**art time...we both made collages in our journals

**starting a new band called "Marie & the Sister". Designing costumes. Writing songs. Complete with musical notes & all. Then performing the songs.

**Lots of outside time. Observing. Sketching. Collecting. Digging. Finding. We are taking an online workshop called "Everyday Nature". A detailed post about that when we have finished in about two weeks
**Began learning about Pennsylvania with Daddy

Second Day

She was up at 7 again this morning all excited & ready to do schoolwork & learn. She went back to bed for a bit while I finished waking up!

Over breakfast I read in the Bible the parable about letting our light shine rather then hide it. We talked about how we all are unique with our own talents.

**she did copy work....she copied the prayer The Glory Be

**worked some more on her Book About Me

**worked through the first Bob book....Which ended up in much tears from her because she didn't get it right away & she is afraid she'll never read. My little eager learner who keeps trying to skip steps & go too fast

**I had her take a break and play with Veronica for awhile....I'm not pushing the reading, she is insistent that she wants to learn to read. I don't want her to get too frustrated that she won't try anymore. So we agreed to take slower little steps & when frustration sets in we set it aside and try again another time

**she did some more math worksheets...adding & graphing

**we had some free art time this afternoon. I sat & painted & colored. She colored a mermaid and did a Frozen painting

**We watched a kids cooking show on Food Network

**went to the library where she "wrote" a story then performed it with the puppet theater

**she then made a machine out of blocks that moved things from one side to the other...she had a whole elaborate system going & explained it to me in great detail. Something about levers and pulleys