Preschool Week 3

This week we continued our study of North America.

We continued reading Little House in the Big Woods. We had fun talking about Christmas traditions. We also talked about the things we do and don't do on Sundays and compared them to how the Ingalls family kept the Sabbath. (If I were Ma Ingalls, I would go out of my mind trying to keep kids happy with their standards. They couldn't even play with toys--just quietly look at them.) We continued reading about the way the moon changes in Thirteen Moons on a Turtle's Back. According to our curriculum, we're supposed to be keeping track of how the moon looks each night. But Rhonda usually goes to bed before the sky is totally dark, since it's summer. Plus, I just don't think of doing things like that at night, so, oh well. I don't think Rhonda's quite good enough at drawing to accurately draw the moon, anyway.

We talked about the Sonoran desert and found it on our map. We read Over in the Desert, a book about the animals of the Sonoran desert.

We talked about Hawaii this week. We colored a picture of Hawaiian shirts in Adventures Around the Globe (I thought it was sort of a weird way to represent Hawaii, but oh well). It gave us an opportunity to find Hawaii on the map and talk about what Hawaii is like. It was especially fun for me because I got to tell her about my own trip to Hawaii as a kid, and my grandfather's mission in Hawaii.

During our study of each continent, we'll do a cute little animal research project. For her North American animal, Rhonda chose the white-tailed deer. She drew a picture of a deer, and we learned what it eats, where it lives, and what its predators are. I was surprised by how excited Rhonda was about this project. She kept asking to work on it. She was excited to learn that humans are one of the deer's major predators, because she can draw humans!

Rhonda has been really into helping me cook lately. She helps make pancakes some mornings, and has learned how to stir well (without making a mess). She asked to make cookies this week, so I let her do a lot of the work. She's learning to measure ingredients accurately.

This has been a really good week for chores. We've been diligent about doing them every day, and Rhonda has gotten better about doing them. I've been trying to guide her through them more, which helps. She also enjoys it when I time her and she can see how fast she does a chore. I've learned that the best way to help her keep her room clean is to just not keep any toys in there. Of course, toys do migrate into her room, but I think if I go through it every week and move toys to the playroom it'll be a lot easier. She still has plenty of things to entertain her in there during quiet time (books, stuffed animals, her dollhouse, the "doll suitcase," and quiet books). If she really enjoyed having her room messy, I would probably be more lenient about her cleaning it, but she actually hates having a messy room and enjoys playing in her room much more if it's clean.

Here are the supplemental books we've read this week:

Over in the Desert
One Morning in Maine
Over the Hills and Far Away (a couple of nursery rhymes a day)
The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush by Tomie DePaola
The Legend of the Bluebonnet by Tomie De Paola
What Can You Do with a Paleta? 
Gathering the Sun: A Spanish Alphabet
Diego Rivera: His World and Ours
Jingle Dancer
Abuelita's Heart