November Kindergarten 2

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

Our Thanksgiving celebration this month included a homeschooling lesson on how to make a pumpkin pie. We talked about where all of the ingredients came from and measured them out carefully.

November Kindergarten

Our rhyme this month from Nursery Rhyme Literature Pockets is "My Black Hen". It related to our study of birds.

We did our monthly story from Cuentos para ver, oir y sentir. The story for November was about a lost sheep.

A little gnome with a lantern helps the boy find his lost sheep.

The boy searches for the sheep with the help of a gnome and his lantern, finds the sheep, and brings her home again. It tied in nicely with the Martinmas holiday.

We celebrated Martimas by walking around the neighborhood with a lantern we made and singing songs like "This Little Light of Mine."

Week 1

This week, we  finished reading My Father's Dragon and enjoyed it very much.

In our Waldorf Essentials story, Sam and his friends went for a lantern walk through the forest then shared soup around a fire.

Super Sam and his friends shared soup around the fire after the lantern walk.

We introduced bird watching by searching for silhouette cutouts hidden around inside our house. We then went on some bird watching walks and observed the bird feeder from our windows. We recorded our observations on eBird.

This week we did the lowercase letters s and t in our reading curriculum. Our STEM challenge was to make a magnetic maze road for a paperclip car. For Moebius Noodles Math, we played the Silly Robot game.

We attended a special STEM Day event at a library where we got to see robots, try a 3D pen, and make a paper balancing bird.

Week 2

We continued bird watching on our nature walks. We studied them outside then returned home to learn more about what we heard and saw.

Sam met Conrad the injured duck and helped heal his wing.

Sam and his friend help the injured duck.

Our letters this week were u and v. We continued doing some math exercises from the Lolipop Logic book. We also measured ingredients (only 3!) for banana carob brownies.

Our STEM challenge was to do texture art and make a scene you could understand by feeling it with your hands. I made a house with a stone walkway and bush in the yard. She made a rainbow with a cloud and sun, her idea. It was challenging for her to come up with the right colors and different textures, but she did it!

Week 3

The highlights from bird watching this week were a tufted titmouse and a red bellied woodpecker. We also identified a mystery bird as a white crowned sparrow.

Super Sam had a feast and baked bread for his friends this week, so we did, too!

Sam baked bread to share with his friends and let them know how grateful he is for their friendship.

We also baked a pumpkin pie for our extended family gathering for Thanksgiving.

We did the lowercase letters w and x and played games about listening for sounds at the end of words.

This week's STEM challenge was a scent investigation to see who ate a bite of pumpkin pie. I had cotton balls in 5 separate little plastic containers with lids. Each had a couple of drops of essential oil. One was cinnamon, so that was who ate the pie.

Week 4

This week we found a feather under the bird feeder, so we added it to our nature scene. The scene is very small now due to our fish tanks. We had more bird watching fun, including a mocking bird who visited our birdbath.

Sam is looking for Bessy the cow who is missing. He searched the forest and did not find her, even with a higher view from riding on his dragon friend. He will look at a nearby farm next week.

Sam searched everywhere between his house and Papa's looking for Bessy the cow because he needed more butter.

We finished up our second pass through the alphabet with the letters y and z.

We used some of the Froebel materials, specifically the grid and gift 10, with multiplication towers activity from Moebius Noodles. It was a fun game removing some and having to figure out what should be there to satisfy the calculation pattern.

She is continuing to play the piano, often using the songbooks with color coded notes and still into playing them repeatedly at different octaves. For STEM, she had to build two drums that make different sounds. We also ended up making a rubber band guitar on a box.

We prepared the Advent things and started that on Saturday, December 1st, so I'll explain that more on the December page.

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