Homeschool in January

Homeschool this month started out so promising. I had a lot of enthusiasm for the new year as well as for a fantastic book that I read (Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov). But that enthusiasm fizzled out pretty rapidly in the face of winter blahs. I think we even totally canceled kindergarten 5 times this month!

In Kindergarten

The Three Wise Men - This is the unit I was really trying to incorporate new ideas in. I wanted to hold the kids to a higher standard and help them really learn about and from this story. So every day, I had a learning objective for our little class. For example: "Learn the meaning of the word jealous", "Tell the story of the three wise men in your own words" and "Identify the gifts of the Magi in the song We Three Kings". Stuff like that. I really enjoyed the way these objectives made our Kindergarten seem more purposeful and effective. It was also a lot of mental work. I accomplished these objectives within the normal framework of our Kindergarten hour. This means that even if our objective for the day was story-focused, we still sang songs and did art projects, etc. To accompany this unit, I shared nursery rhymes that incorporated the number three: "Three Blind Mice", "Uncle John is Sick Abed", and "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep".

But No Elephants - Just as my enthusiasm was flagging, my friend Megan took over. This was her first post-childbirth Kindergarten unit and my kids were very excited to go back to her house. (Soren, however, had some disciplinary problems.) She did a two week unit on the story But No Elephants by Jerry Smath. It's a cute story for winter. Among the things the kids did, I know that they made really yummy gingersnaps.

The Snowman - I made up a very simple winter story boy that encodes the steps of snowman creation for our last unit of the month. Unfortunately, I only got to tell it once before everyone in the neighborhood got sick (again!). So I will be coming back to this story next month.

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