Afterschool Blog Hop

Welcome back to the Afterschool Blog Hop. This week it's being hosted by What Do We Do All Day?. This was our first full week back to school after the holidays. Well, C had a half day on Friday so it wasn't really a full week. And he has the next two Mondays off, so I guess he won't really have a full week back to school until the end of the month!

Pre-K
M's theme for the past two weeks has been Winter. They've been doing all sorts of activities and arts and crafts related to winter. She also brought in a book we own, Here Comes Winter by Janet Craig, and read it to the class. She and her teacher read alternate pages, and her teacher said she did well. We read a few other winter books as well this week.

She also learned about the northern and southern hemispheres this week. So I've been talking a lot about them at home with both kids. We talked about the fact that we live in the northern hemisphere, and that it's summer in the southern hemisphere right now. They thought it was funny that for people in the southern hemisphere, Christmas is a summer holiday. I also explained to C that in the southern hemisphere, it's colder in the south and hotter in the north. He found this quite interesting.

At home, M has been on a worksheet kick this week. I think she's done about 20 or more worksheets in the preschool and kindergarten workbooks we have. I think we'll be pulling out the 1st grade workbook soon. As I mentioned in my review of K5 Learning this past week, she's really at a 1st grade level in many areas now. She is doing worksheets at school too, mostly on money (pennies and nickels) this past week.

2nd Grade
C's big thing at school right now is science. They are learning about weather and wind, and he comes home every day talking about it. One of the cool experiments they did at school was to take two medicine syringes connected together with a tube. They pulled the plungers out almost all the way, then pushed one of them in. The air pushed through the tube, into the second syringe, causing the plunger to fly across the room! They evidently had competitions to see whose plunger would go the furthest. I wish I hadn't thrown out all our old syringes. I would have done this one at home too!

The other big thing this week was his classroom spelling bee. He studied for a couple days and then had the bee on Thursday. He only made it about halfway through, getting stumped on "simmer," which he spelled with one "m." But that's okay. In addition to the spelling bee, he had another piano lesson this week and is now working on playing more smoothly from one note to the next.

Mom
I've been very busy lately with a new project at work. It's been interesting, as I'm learning a lot more about content strategy and business analytics. I'm excited about the new opportunity but it's hard getting used to being so busy all the time! I also met with C's teacher this past week to talk with her about his incessant talking. Luckily she said he's not really a discipline problem, just has to learn when to stop talking!

During the meeting, she asked me to start coming into the class once a week to work with the kids on Math Stars, which is an advanced math program. There are five kids in the group I'll be working with, including C, and we'll start with the second grade Math Stars worksheets. We may eventually move up to the third grade sheets. I'm starting on Tuesday so I'll let you know how it goes next week!

The Afterschool Blog Hop is hosted by:
Just Playin’ Around
Little Wonders’ Days
Mama Smiles
Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns
The Educators’ Spin On It
What Do We Do All Day?

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