I'm Kelley. My darling son is William, or Bug. He is 5. We're both starting school this fall - he'll be off to kindergarten and I'll start my first student teaching experience after a very long trek through my second undergraduate degree in special and general education K-6.
This is supposed to be the first of many, many summers home together (er, at least 12). I want Bug to knock 'em dead in kindergarten, and I want to start my teaching experiences at home.
I like to tackle things systemically, so I sat down with the Mississippi Frameworks for Education for kindergartners, listed the skills I thought he needed to work on, brainstormed activities for each and composed meaningful assessments for the skills. My units aren't always perfectly thematic (I'm working on a schedule, here) and we're also trying to get through the 100 books to read before Kindergarten list and a few other summer projects (including building a cob playhouse, which we'll also be documenting here). I'm sure our other endeavors will pop up occasionally, too.
SO! Our first day of "home school" is tomorrow, June 20, 2012, and here is our first theme.
Unit Theme: Responsibility
Unit Length: 3 days
Essential Question: What is responsibility?
Topics:
1. What is responsibility? What does it mean to be responsible? Why is it important?
2. What were some ways Little Critter was responsible? What were some ways that he wasn't?
3. How are you, Bug, responsible? What could you do to be more responsible?
Activities:
Social Studies/LA
1 . TSW listen to the text and identify unfamiliar words.
2. TSW retell the story in own language.
3. Draw responsible and irresponsible behaviors from the book (art integration)
4. Brainstorm a list of personal responsibilities in our home and make a chart to display them.
5. Opposite cards: forget/remember, mess/clean, put away/left out, hungry/full, shut/open, off/on, to do/done (TSW read the words on the cards and match opposites)
Math Frameworks
Little Critter die roll: addition and subtraction
Tallying behaviors: responsible and irresponsible: Create a bar chart and interpret data
Science Frameworks
1. Make molded soaps: Follow a procedure, identify mixtures, intensity of color related to amount of food coloring, etc.
Art/Extension:
1. Create a chore chart and a "To Do/Done" magnet board chart.
