Daily Report: Time Lines and Much Math

We always start the day off with reading . Our school day starts roughly about 7:45 at this time I only have two preschoolers until 9:00. It is a perfect time to do one on one reading and assist them with their reading activities if I need to. It also is something that starts their day off on the right foot, their brains have warmed up for their work period.

DJ started another Amelia Bedelia book today. His activities included learning new vocabulary words, a crossword puzzle, and a word search. He also answered comprehension questions writing complete sentences. Each day we will go over the vocabulary and after reading the five pages he will complete the activities and the comprehension questions. DJ can definetly read at a fifth grade level but his comprehension does not match. Does that make sense?

Ken chose to do an activity to go along with her independent reading book. The story is about a slave girl who journals her life while writing to family members. She put together a time line of ten important events in her life, and had to include some negative events as well. Ken made ten knots in the string and spaced them accordingly to how far apart the events occur. Ken used the string to make a kite design to illustrate her work.

Todays' work with dinosaurs consisted of coloring in the dinosaurs so that he can complete the map of where fossils are found. DJ got pretty creative while coloring because he said no one knows what colors dinosaurs really were, that allowed him to become creative with this work. In the picture he is reading Back In Time With The Dinosaurs a Magic School Bus book learning about the times when dinosaurs walked the earth. After that he completed the make the time line activity that came in the kit.

Ken can't get enough of the Africa continent box:) Today she discovered there was some hieroglyphic writing on the side of the mummy. From there it was going back and forth to her laptop trying to decode it. The key that I included in the box wasn't much help. DJ joined in to try to help crack the mysteries of other found writings.


Another thing that has been working out for all of us is doing math presentations during the preschoolers rest time.

DJ had no problem showing me how to do four digit static addition on the dry erase board. I decided to show him three digit dynamic addition(carrying) with the Golden Bead Material. When he was done working with the beads he asked me if I had any more multiplication slips. I gave him all that I had up to the tens table. He completed all of them in less than five minutes. Looks like somebody has been holding out:) After he did it all I showed him how he made a booklet and he stapled them together.

Ken worked with the Stamp Game doing division with remainders. Then she wanted to work with the peg board to solve some square roots. She needed another presentation on how to use it because she had forgotten( me too:( Just kidding. I had some cards that showed the control of error that I purchased from Alisons' Montessori, it is a download. After that Ken was having much fun with square roots.

We were done with school at 2:00. If they were interested they could have easily did a lesson in art, foreign language, music, etc. I guess I know it is doable when the time comes. Another thing is since they have been working on "projects" they only have had but a half hour for lunch as a break.