K1 Term Two Week Eight

Phew... Now that exams are over, I feel rather drained but much lighter. Here's what we covered this week.

English Literacy

We jumped to Unit 10 and Unit 15 of the You Can Read series as most of his well-loved books have these words in them. That's one thing I like about this series - you do not have to do do them in order.

Math

Revision on number of sides in each shape.

I also found some free number Join The Dot pages for him to do.

Chinese Literacy

This is a Chinese reader from RM's kindy days. Mouse has been reading it with us since he was three so he has memorised most of the storyline. I brought it to the next level by preparing some sentence strips for the pocket chart.

New Daily pages! One of which is also an extension of the unit.

Click here for the printable

Other Stuff

I'm so glad this boy has taken to Legos, unlike his older brother. He actually started playing with loads more after we sorted all our Legos by colour. Currently, his favourite builds are guns (gasp) and spaceships.

And the holidays beckon! I intend to school him for a couple of weeks into the June hols to make up for the time that I wasted earlier this year. However, we shall have to wait and see because in the past, whenever his siblings were around due to illness or whatever, he was unwilling to do school.

K1 Term Two Week Seven

Not much time to blog. Intense revision for RM's exams! Stress stress stress!

English Literacy

We move on with Unit 9 of You Can Read from 1+1+1=1 as well as the -OP family unit. He actually knows how to pronounce "op" already, thanks to our copy of Dr Seuss' Hop On Pop (that taught our three children how to begin reading), but I figured it would be good to squeeze in some writing practice and reinforcement.

Writing practice

Word building with bottle caps - what a priceless face!

Math

Surprisingly, we covered lots of Math this week. Beginning with Ordinal Numbers reinforcement, he worked on some printables from Activity Village UK.

Ordinal numbers tracing and colouring

Ordinal number puzzle

Addition: Domino Math worksheet that he first did two weeks ago. I have to look for other printables or activities because he's getting rather tired of using the same few ones over and over again.

Skip counting: I'm really thankful that he's caught onto the idea of skip counting (we call it "counting by twos, fives, etc). He's even able to identify it on his own in random things we come across, such as block numbers and posters. This Hundred Board is from Primary Junction. The page also teaches you HOW to teach children skip counting and the free printable includes many types of activities.

Even / Odd Numbers: From here, we moved on to even and odd numbers. After counting by 2s (using transparent counters to mark the numbers), I gave him some glass beads and had him mark the other numbers. Then he learnt that numbers ending with 1,3,5,7 or 9 are odd numbers.

Chinese Literacy

I added a new sheet in his Daily Notebook under the Chinese section - his Chinese name writing practice.

I also made some pocket chart printables for things we see in the sky for him to learn. I intend to expand this into a mini Thematic Unit, but will have to find time for it later (after exams).

Other Stuff

Out of the blue one day, he asked me for his Sensory Bin to play with. That's been put aside for some time on a high shelf (out of sight and out of his mind, I was hoping), but since I was preoccupied with tutoring RM I thought that would help to keep him busy. And it did! For more than an hour, and that's saying a LOT. Although I had to do quite a bit of cleaning up after him.

Browse my Pinterest Boards for more Kindergarten, Preschool and Tot ideas!

K1 Term Two Week Six

It feels good to be back on track. I tried to cover more this week and to spend more time out of lesson hours playing and reading with him, as I am anticipating the next two weeks to be rather taken up with revision and tutoring RM for his mid year exams.

English Literacy

In step with our "two units a week" plan, we covered You Can Read Units 7 and 8. Mouse already knows what to do with each activity, so I only have to teach him to sound out the words as an introduction, before handing him one sheet at a time.

Using bottle cap letters to build sight words

Cut and paste (with assistance for the fiddly bits)

Building sight words with alphabet magnets

Math

Patterns: Mouse is pretty good at following simple patterns so I encouraged him to take the next step of creating his own with this free worksheet from This Reading Mama. He quickly grasped the concept of A, B and C each being it's own repeating entity and did the rest on his own.

Shapes: Learning to count the number of sides to a shape. I created a worksheet for him, based on a similar one which I found on Pinterest but which was a paid product. My skills aren't up to par at all, so it took me quite some time to complete the worksheet, but I'm glad I did!

Click here to download the worksheet

(available in B&W and colours)

Subtraction: After practising Addition for a couple of weeks, we are moving on to Subtraction. Actually I think it's easier to understand than Addition. We are using a cookie sheet addition and subtraction printable that I found years ago (when RM was 6yo) which says "childcareland.com" in the corner, but I can't find it on the site now. We used number magnets on a cookie sheet and I also provided pebbles for him to count.

Chinese Literacy

This week I'm sharing two of the pages in Mouse's Daily Notebook. Unlike his character writing practice sheets that I swop out every week or fortnight, these pages always remain in his notebook and he must do them every day. He started out doing the English ones that I got from COAH and 1+1+1=1 first, then somewhere along the way, I introduced the Chinese version, and since he's already rather masterful at reading the bilingual desktop calendar that's on his table, he usually has no problem completing these.

Click here to download these pages

With the help of a dry erase marker, he circles each day and the day before and after, much like this page from 1+1+1=1. The second page is a Month page, where he identifies the current month and the previous and subsequent ones. The pages are in sheet protectors and are erased by either himself or me after the book is completed.

Other Stuff

I was digging around in his bookshelf where I had dumped (and forgotten about) many reading materials as well as sticker/write and erase activity books (am I the only mum who buys them waaayyyy in advance and forgets all about them?). So here are two that seem rather suitable now.

Things That Go is preferred by the boy who loves wheels

I can't reiterate enough how much Pinterest has helped me in my homeschooling journey. There are just so many great ideas that I am thankful I can Pin them and go back anytime I want to read up or print stuff. Visit my Pinterest boards for more ideas!