I gave an overview of
Day 1, which ended up being an unschool sort of day, so I thought some of you might enjoy a glimpse into one of our more structured days.
Gerrick woke around 8:00 a.m. He dressed and ate breakfast. Then he played (I have no idea what--he was mostly in his playroom & I was cleaning & getting dinner in the crock pot) until 9:45 a.m. when I reminded him we would be starting workboxes at 10:00. He brushed his teeth and helped me make his bed. At 10 we started workboxes:
1--Read
Harold and the Purple CrayonWatched
Assembly Line: Crayola CrayonsProperly sequenced cut-out
photos of How People Make Crayons2--Played
Harold's Drawing Game (for beginning readers)
Here are the pictures Gerrick drew during our game:
3--Together we counted and sorted this week's allowance.
4--I introduced his Kindergarten calendar. It's a
blank calendar which will run July '09-June '10. Everyday we will write in the correct number for the date. We will put events on it that he is looking forward to so he can count how many days until, etc. At the end of each month we will go through the digital photos I've taken and he will pick his favorites, which I will print for him to glue on the "picture space" of the calendar; by the end of the year it will be a photo scrapbook of sorts. We will normally do calendar before we start workboxes, but today it was in a box because the introduction took a little longer than it will normally take.
5--Thank you note to someone who recently gave him some shells and a t-shirt. He traced shells onto the front. He wasn't happy with how they looked. He wanted lines on them but was convinced he couldn't make them look right. I drew the little dots on so that he could draw lines from dot-to-dot and he was pleased with how they turned out. He told me what he wanted to write, and I wrote the words on a magna-doodle, which he then copied.
He was done with all this by 11:20.
We ate lunch at 11:40 while we listened to the show
Music Composed for Children and
Golliwog's Cakewalk from Debussy's Children's Corner Suite. While we listened and ate, we also enjoyed watching through the window the birds at the feeder and two deer in the field.
At 12:00 we gathered on the sofa for read-alouds, which Gerrick calls "snuggle time". I read a chapter from our current chapter book, then 2 huge stacks of picture books that Gerrick chose from his personal collection and library books. We read until I refused to read more--2:15.
Then we went outside for about 2 hours. We cleaned the crawfish tank and fed it some raw fish. We took care of the bird feeders and tended to some plants. Then I started this post in my rocker while Gerrick played with some water, dirt, mud, etc. While we were on the patio we got to see a mockingbird take 2 baths in our bird bath about 10 feet away and several yellow butterflies visit our red petunias.
At 4:15 we came inside. I'm finishing up this post and Gerrick has gone off to play with his castle. Daddy should be home around 4:40.
Later at bedtime Rick will read a Bible story and several picture books, and that will be the end of Kindergarten day 10. :)
