Catching up with K5!

One part of our school room. Not quiet sure what kind of grin that is!
Her cursive s, and her first word in cursive (sit).
Her cursive h!

So today marks the first day of school for all public, and most private schooled kids. Maddy and I have been going full force with K5 for 6 full weeks and just started our 7th week yesterday. We wanted to start early and get a head start on things, but I'm not sure if we'll do that again next year. We do love our summers, and summers in our area have so much to offer (free summer movies, swim time at the Y, etc). We'll be taking all of December and all of June off this time, but we'll probably not start 1st grade until fall time next year.


So, to catch up on what we've been doing so far...
We start each day with prayer and a Bible lesson. Maddy reads the Bible story from her Bible, and I ask her questions about the story when she's done. We're doing Math, Reading/handwriting, Unit studies, Social studies, and Readiness skills.
So far, she has learned to write a,b,e,h,i,l,m,n,o,s,t, and u, all in cursive! She's doing great with cursive writing. I was a bit skeptical to teach cursive to her this early, but Maddy is a very fast learner, and can be shown something once, and then she has it! She knocked my socks off last year when she learned how to read on a 2nd grade level! I was so scared to teach her to read, because I didn't know how to approach it! I bought a book that I will be forever grateful for...*Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons*. That was my lifesaver! If anyone has a child who is struggling to read, or if you want to go ahead and teach your child before they start school, I cannot give this book enough outstanding reviews! She's also learned the vowels as well.

In Math, we have been learning about the "Teen family", and how 10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18, and 19 are all members of the teen family, and 10 is the *father* of the teen family. We've also been doing some simple addition, and Maddy loves to play the game called War! It's where we both get a stack of cards and there is an addition problem on each card. Whoever has the greatest total, wins that round. We've done some work with telling time, and she can tell the "o'clocks" and the ":30" but we're waiting until we learn to count by 5's to teach the rest.

Last week we did an Olympic study, because it's Olympic time! Maddy's been able to stay up a bit later than usual and watch the Olympics with us. Our craft last week was a balance beam made from craft sticks, and the gymnast was made from a pipe cleaner! This week, we're learning about space shuttles!

In Social Studies, we've learned about different kinds of communities, and the workers of a community. Last week we did some government and she learned that the Mayor is the leader of our city, the governor is the leader of our state, and the President is the leader of our country. She also learned about North, East, South, and West. We've been talking about Christopher Columbus this week as well.

The Readiness Skills book is just simple hands-on stuff, such as mazes, cutting and pasting, drawing, and coloring. She enjoys doing things out of this book. Her favorite craze now is crossword puzzles and word searches. She still needs help with crossword puzzles, but she's getting really good at word searches!

We're leaving for Disney World next Thursday, so we'll do M-W, and then we'll be taking two weeks off! We don't take breaks for in-service days or anything else, like public schools do, so we've definitely earned our vacation time!