Sunday, September 7, 2008

Tigger's CM Kindergarten

Tigger is 5 1/2 years old and this is his Kindergarten year. I'm keeping in mind the Year 0 as presented at Ambleside Online, but with a bit more structure. The reasons are these:
1. He wants to be doing schoolwork and has asked since he was three.
2. It fits in with what Pooh is doing during the day.
3. I need the structure to ensure I'm providing him what he needs.
4. Nothing he is doing is strenuous and we are following the CM method of short lessons.
5. He was trying to take over during Pooh's readings, so I figured I better ensure he has his own.

I set Tigger up with his own school bin and binder system with weekly planner. It's set up just like Pooh's schedule to mark things off as we finish them. In it he has his own little things he likes to do on his own. He has gone thru one of those animal sticker books where you put the stickers on and read a little about each one. He just finished his 1-25 Dot to Dot book (and is anxiously awaiting another one.) Each day he will do one page of Math-U-See Primer (if he's having trouble focusing, we just close it up and finish that page the next day.) As soon as I get it ordered, he will have the beginning HWT printing book and possibly the Get Set for the Code series.

For Phonics we've been doing a letter a day. I have some letter cards from LetterLand that we go over. They're really cute. They use mnemonics such as Red Robot the theif for R that are supposed to help. (They then go on to include stories about the letter characters like Arthur 'Ar' the apple stealer who works for Red Robot.) I didn't buy the whole kit though, just the cards. Then I have two ABC type books that you find pictures on the page starting with the letter. One is an ABC I Spy book that i used with Pooh. Then he has a coloring book that is a letter per page and you find anywhere from 11-28 items on the page starting with that letter. We just finished Letter Q, so that gives you idea of how far we've come.

We are using several books to rotate reading from each day. They are:

Winnie the Pooh
Shakespeare (a kids book i picked up at B&N.)
Mother Goose
The Adventures of Chatterer the Red Squirrel from Thorton Burgess

I borrowed Jump-the stories of Brer Rabbit from the library. I also have two of the Among the ________ People books that we'll go through.

Other than that, he joins in for bible time, composer, artist, nature study, etc. He kept asking me this week to have a painting session to do Van Gogh's Roses because we weren't able to get to it on Tuesday. LOL This Tuesday that's what we'll be doing for sure!!

So that's it! It's a pretty lite schedule for him but satisfies his need to be doing things. Hope this info helps some others looking for a CM Year K.

2 comments:

live4evermom said...

Sounds great. I have the 3 books of Get Ready for the Code if you want them. I have a dot to dot count to 20 book. Mine whent thru some of the things and some he passed right up so I have a list I can share with you. Let me know.

walking said...

Tigger is amazing--he WANTS to do school work! WOW!