September Kindergarten 2

Here's an overview of what our Waldorf inspired September kindergarten homeschooling looked like during our second year of kindergarten (age 5-6).

We were pleasantly surprised to discover mushrooms on our morning walk on the very first day of school! See any little gnome homes or gnomes hiding in there?

September Kindergarten

The girl loves worksheets (ugh! Are you my child?), so my compromise is to do one rhyme a month from Nursery Rhyme Literature Pockets. Every Friday we make something to add to the pocket. It is often a worksheet with some coloring or gluing or assembling a little booklet. I like that they have a purpose and go into pockets of a nursery rhyme book. She likes having more work to do.

The rhyme for September is "Once I Saw a Little Bird Go Hop, Hop Hop".

We are also doing a monthly story from Cuentos para ver, oir y sentir. I first used these when she was 3 years old. She loves the songs. The story for September is about Johnny Appleseed.

Johnny Appleseed returns to his mother and sees that his tree grew.

The book is completely in Spanish and really wonderful if you are bilingual. It includes patterns for making the story props. For this one, I used a box to make a scrolling scene to change the setting behind Johnny Appleseed as he travels. The block crayon illustration is not showing up very well in the photo, but it works in person.

Week 1

There was lots of excitement leading up to the first day of school. She knew there would be new things to do, and she couldn't wait! So once we started school, she was speeding through her work every day! She was even wanting to do stuff on the weekend! Can you believe this?

She finally did some playsilk dress-up that was supposed to be swimsuits like Sam and friends made in our August stories. The story this week was very similar to the first story last year, but with more details. I also had her learn to retell it each day. Retelling will be very important as we move into the grade levels.

Super Sam and his friends form a bucket brigade to put out a mysterious fire

We picked up the pace in our reading lessons that we now cover two letters per week, and we are listening to poetry. For math, we did the mirror dance, which you can find in my free symmetry worksheets. We are also doing lessons on trees and redoing them in Spanish for Daddy and playing teacher. She is not as into role playing teacher as I was at that age. We got out the magnetic letters for free play. I give simple recorder lessons.

We are resuming our regular walks and playground visits since the weather is a little cooler. Circle time is longer this year, and she is participating more. She loves the games we play during school such as Scrabble Jr. and Chutes and Ladders. Who wouldn't be begging for school on weekends when it means playing games?

She also really loves my old Sesame Street Treasury books, which are a 15 volume series. They are so old that they do not even include Elmo, if you can imagine that. Mr. Hooper is alive and running his store, and Big Bird is the only one who can see Mr. Snuffle-upagus! They are definitely aimed at older children than the show now targets. (We do not watch the show or any TV.) I'm really glad that I waited to share them with her. She can appreciate the humor now.

Week 2

This week was a success: I got another weekend of, "I don't know what to do. Nothing is fun. School is the only thing that is fun." lol!

In our Waldorf Essentials story, Super Sam talked to the Michaelmas daisies and went to fly kites with Papa. We followed a recipe and made apple pancakes since Sam ate pancakes in our story. She helped choose some other apple recipes we want to make this month.

Sam and Papa fly kites

We played Qwirkle which involved adding and keeping score. We did "c" is for creamy shaving cream, and "d" is for doughy homemade playdough. 

We adopted a tree in our yard that we will observe closely through the seasons. We're going to make a scrapbook about it. She did a bark rubbing and measured the tree's circumference. We did tree puzzles and a matching game.

We read several books. The most notable one for fire safety (and dragons!) was No Dragons for Tea. Dragons are a big theme with Michaelmas coming up. Also of note, there was an apple book I had never read before titled Golden Delicious: A Cinderella Apple Story. It relates to history and connects to the Stark Brothers trees we planted in our yard.

For chapter books, which we read aloud in the evening if we get ready for bed on time, we finished more Junie B. Jones and return to continue reading in Betsy-Tacy.

We started recorder lessons in Preschool Prodigies to supplement the ones I give from "Music from the Heart" which was included with my Waldorf Essentials package. I'm not sure if it's available now since Melissa developed her own amazing music program with the gnome characters, but I had already printed this and prepared to use it.

Week 3

Our nature scene currently features the rainbow gnomes, with matching gemstones from the Tooth Fairy, and 10 silkworm eggs we are hatching for the Baltimore DIY fest.

In our story this week, Sam meets George with the king at the Crystal Palace.

The king introduces George, who will help with the dragon problem.

We learned more about trees and observed our houseplant trees. We had fun counting the trees in our yard and our neighbors' yards. We did a bubble wand STEM challenge and started a science journal.

We also did an apple taste test of 8 different kinds apples and used them to make applesauce. We also measured and mixed to try an apple crumble bar recipe. We played Rack-o to practice ordering numbers from lowest to highest.

For our nursery rhyme pocket, we made a little bird puppet and couldn't find the colored feathers so we made paper fringe feathers. It all tied in nicely for the letters e and f.

We attended an Emergency Preparedness Expo. The highlight was a demo of a living room on fire with and without a sprinkler system installed, so we actually witnessed a room burn up and the firefighters put it out with a hose! Fittingly, our Clip and Tell Bible story the following Sunday was Moses and the burning bush.

I bought a piano slide rule to help her learn to read black notes. The acronyms are no good since she can't spell yet, so this is quite helpful.

We  enjoyed the books Dragons Love Tacos and its Sequel.

Week 4

We played a Mr. Rob listening game from Preschool Prodigies and practiced writing notes on the staff to reinforce learning. We did some sticker activity books on emergency preparedness and germs that we picked up as free giveaways last week.

A small goose was added to the nature scene with the rainbow gnomes and Tooth Fairy gemstones. She thought of adding it since we did the letters g and h. We also added leaves that we found on our walks.

This week Sam was with George and the dragon.

They find the dragon and help cure his hiccups.

We celebrated Michaelmas by making a modeling beeswax dragon, popcorn in an air popper, and applesauce cupcakes. We talked about how many of the ingredients in the cupcakes came from trees (including cinnamon from a special tree bark!). All week, we sang special Michaelmas songs at Circle Time. We also enjoyed a special tree walk with park rangers at Handcock's Resolution.

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