Monthly Activity Plans: September

Since Beatrice started kindergarten in August, I've been a little unhappy.  In most respects, I like her kindergarten - I think it's about as good a public school as you'll find - but when she left preschool I was expecting that kindergarten would be a big leap forward for her academically, a leap I knew she wanted and was ready to take.  But the truth is, so far kindergarten has probably been less challenging than preschool, and with fewer hands-on activities like experiments and projects. 

Now Beatrice is very good at creating her own projects, but I still felt like something was missing.

The solution I came up with was to start doing more short one-on-one activities with her in the afternoons while Arthur and William are napping (though sometimes Arthur joins in, too).  So I made up with a calendar of lessons to do every day - or realistically, most days, since sometimes other things come up instead.  We started doing these things last year but now I'm trying to do them in a somewhat more structured way.

MONDAY we do math.
TUESDAY we do computer programming.
WEDNESDAY we do science.
THURSDAY we do history and literature.
FRIDAY we do art.

So far some have worked better than others, but here's what we did in September:

For math we did money.  Arthur and Beatrice's favorite activity was the snack store.  Basically I set up little bowls of snacks that cost different amounts of money, from 1 cent to 2 dollars, and gave them each two dollars in coins and bills, and let them buy different snacks to eat.

For computers we started working with Scratch, this amazing programming language for kids - more on that soon.



Beatrice's first computer program

For science we did states of matter and some basic chemistry.  We did a couple of fun things with this one, including a solid/liquid/gas scavenger hunt and atom dancing (where they had to dance like atoms in a gas, liquid, or solid).

Atoms in a solid



Atoms in a gas

For history and literature, we did understanding maps and U.S. geography.  This was probably the one Beatrice liked the best because it was the most imaginative.  I had her draw maps of her favorite places, give directions on how to get to local places, and tell a story in map form.  We also did a game about understanding relative distances, like how long it would take to get to Pasadena versus Texas versus Alaska, and then we planned out trips to see different people and sites in the U.S., like how to drive from here to visit her cousins in Austin.

There are so many great resources online for these kinds of things, most intended for homeschoolers but useful for anyone.  There are also a few subjects for which I found almost nothing online, especially for genetics and evolution, so I might put up the worksheets I made in case anyone ever stumbles upon this blog and wants to use them.

Anyway, it's a work in progress but so far, so good.