Kindergarten Wrap Up

We are finishing up kindergarten this week and it's time for some reflections on what has worked well for us and what hasn't.

The Good:

1. Grammar: I finally decided to ignore the age recommendations and we used Grammar Island from Michael Clay Thompson. The Kid loved this! She learned quickly and has so much more fun with Mad Libs now that we don't have to review each part of speech for each and every blank! She liked it so much I went ahead and bought the rest of Island Level and we'll be using that as our main Language Arts program for first grade.
2. Spanish Immersion: We spent four weeks in Guatemala. Three of those weeks were in a host home while I attended Spanish language classes and The Kid attended a local Spanish-only preschool. I'm pretty sure we each learned more Spanish during that time than we had in all our previous studies put together. We're already planning our next immersion trip!
3. Unit studies for science: It was hard for me to wrap my head around the flowcharts in BFSU until I finally realized that I could break it all up into units. The Kid would especially list all the science kits and hands-on we've done as the "good part" of science.
4. Our prehistory year: The Kid has never been really into dinosaurs, which were covered extensively this year. After this, though, she chose a dino-themed week of summer camp to attend - she is that excited about the topic! I learned that The Kid can tell me all sorts of things she has learned from the books and documentaries, while barely even remembering that we did any activities. Go figure. I've started some book-and-documentary-focused Ancient history with her since.

The Bad:

1. All the rest of Spanish: This year alone, we've tried and discarded Risas y Sonrisas (a total disaster), DuoLingo (moved too fast), Song School Spanish (too basic - we finished it but she didn't learn much), and The Fun Spanish (no real practice and not very fun). Is a progressive foreign language course that starts at kindy and goes up through mastery really too much to ask?
2. Spelling: Too tedious for her age and/or level of patience. We'll revisit in the future if we need it.
3. Handwriting: sigh. I know The Kid is a young student. Her handwriting is probably now on par for her age, whereas her fine motor skills were delayed to start the year. But we're still nowhere near being able to do copywork and dictation to start first grade.

Access to Art

I just looked and found I have only one post regarding art on my blog. How can this be? Art is so constant around here it is like breathing! Oh, wait, that's why I don't have any posts on it - my posts tend to be about things I plan, not things that just happen. So this is the first post in what I plan to be two or three posts on integrating art into your child's experience.

I'll start with access to art and the setup of The Kid's art space. Any desk will do, though I certainly prefer child-height desks. Ours is from the Elfa line at Ikea. Because it is height-adjustable, it can grow with her.

The majority of her art materials are easily within reach. Below the desk is a paper organizer that holds construction paper, copy paper, writing paper, and some coloring books. On top of the paper organizer is play dough and play dough cutters/rollers, a small potholder weaving loom, stapler, tape dispenser, hole puncher, crayons, glitter glue, and pens. Over to the side are larger painting papers and a pitcher of chenille sticks. On top of the desk is a pencil sharpener, large crayon caddy, and the "parts cabinet". On top of the parts cabinet are stencils and a drawing book.

The parts cabinet is a wonderful idea that I snagged from somewhere. (I've seen it several places, no idea where first!) You can pick these up in any hardware store. In our small drawers are a wide variety of stickers, special crayons, pom poms, googly eyes, sequins, and other bits. The larger drawers contain glue, markers, big foam stickers, chalks, fabric scraps. The variety is what is so wonderful about these. There is no need to fill the drawers up to the brim, just put enough out to catch attention.

Which brings me to conservation of materials. The Kid has completely free access to this desk and the things on it. If I want to limit something, I simply don't put it all out. Yes, she asks for more when she runs out and I tell her I'll get around to it later and she has plenty of other options for now. I refill when I get around to it, rarely immediately, rarely even on the same day. I believe it encourages exploration of other materials to wait just a bit to refill a drawer.

As for what is NOT on the desk: paints, glitter, ink pads for stamps, and charcoals. I withhold these items to save my sanity. I will get out the stamps, paints, or charcoals by request; I simply want to know when they are being used so I can supervise/run interference regarding the cleanup. And a very special note on glitter - if she wants to add sparkle, she has glitter glue, glitter markers, and sequins. While I know parents who allow free use of glitter, loose glitter is for outdoor projects only in my household. I used it once inside in the last house I lived in and I was still finding it during our move-out cleaning!

Spanish Plan: Advancing Beginners to Intermediate

The Kid now has a pretty good Spanish vocabulary including many nouns, quite a few adjectives, and a solid handful of verbs. She understands that verbs are conjugated differently in Spanish and has started learning how to change the verb to match the noun. She has mastered the content of introductory curriculum and because there isn't an intermediate curriculum written for young children, we are leaving curriculum behind this year. We are essentially about to start the second year of a three-year plan to become conversational in Spanish.

Resources for this year:

Salsa Spanish. I had almost dismissed this as being "too easy", but upon rewatching I realized how much vocabulary and sentence structure is in the conversation. The focus words are certainly simple (basic numbers, colors, and nouns) but using the scripts I can come up with quite a bit of new material for us.

Spanish books. I bought a box of 50 Spanish books written at a kindy-1st grade level from Scholastic. We've started reading through these. The plan is to add one new book from the box to our bookshelves each week, carefully looking up the words we don't know. Then we take one of the older (and simpler) books each week to practice reading fluency. The reading fluency book is read a few times throughout the week - first to remember the story and vocabulary, then to listen carefully to the sounds, then for The Kid to read aloud to me once or twice.

Spanish music. This will include children's music like the stuff from Jose-Luis Orozco as well as just having a Pandora station full of Spanish-language pop music.

YouTube. There's quite a lot here. Plaza Sesamo is as good a place to start as any!

DuoLingo. I use this for myself. The Kid tried it last year and it moved too fast for her, but it is a little more manageable now. We'll still be going through at a snail's pace, but it includes a variety of exercises.

We've switched a number of iPad apps into Spanish language mode just to continue surrounding ourselves with the language. She also has the BrainPop Espanol app to have another source of hearing Spanish regularly.

And I'm still considering Spanish for Children. If I find we need more structure to our studies, I may add this. If we are making good progress with what we are doing, then I won't.

Immersion. Just as immersion is what moved us from "beginner" to "advanced beginner", I believe that it will take a period of immersion to move us from "advanced beginner" to "intermediate". We are starting to plan a trip to Honduras for February/March 2016.

BFSU: Matter and Magnets Unit

Prerequisites: Foundational Units

Resources: None other than BFSU needed. We already had the Learning Resources Primary Science Magnet Kit, which provided more than enough magnets. We also had the Usborne Science With Magnets book on hand, which provided further exploration.

Lesson 1: BFSU A-4: Matter I: Its Particulate Nature, part 1
Lesson 2: BFSU A-4: Matter I: Its Particulate Nature, part 2
Lesson 3: BFSU A-5: Distinguishing Materials, part 1
Lesson 4: BFSU A-5: Distinguishing Materials, part 2
Lesson 5: BFSU A-5A: Magnets and Magnetic Fields, part 1
Lesson 6: BFSU A-5A: Magnets and Magnetic Fields, part 2
Lesson 7: BFSU A-5A: Magnets and Magnetic Fields, part 3

This post is part of my series on using BFSU as a science unit study.

Spanish: Beginners to Advanced Beginners

Last week I wrote my complaint about the lack of good foreign language programs for younger children. We tried several resources not listed below which ranged from ineffective to miserable, but that's not for this post. This week, I'm going to write about what has worked for us.

Little Pim. This is great for preschool aged children. It is vocabulary only, but there is quite a lot of vocabulary in each episode.

Vocabulary-focused books. We started with the My First Bilingual Book series and then moved on to the English-Spanish Foundations Series. The My First Bilingual Book series is one work per page, translated with a clear picture. Great for just starting on vocabulary. The English-Spanish Foundations Series is a bit variable on how much vocabulary and sentence structure is in each book, but they have quite a bit more than the other series.

Salsa Spanish. This program is deceptively simple and merits many viewings. We used it initially for solidifying basic vocabulary - colors and numbers are often emphasized within the episodes. However, once you have those down, go back and rewatch paying more attention to the words that aren't emphasized. They speak in full conversational sentences, with common verbs and verb tenses, and a lot more vocabulary than what they emphasize. We are still using this as more advanced beginners.

While I was doing the above with The Kid, I was also working in DuoLingo for myself. DuoLingo is not appropriate for young children due to the fast pace and requirement for strong reading and spelling skills. But it gave me the skills to use the vocabulary we were learning in the children's programs and work on using Spanish in our speech.

Immersion. This would be what moved us from "beginner" to "advanced beginner". There is simply no substitute. For us, immersion was three weeks in a Guatemalan homestay while I took Spanish language classes and The Kid went to a local Spanish-language preschool.


Next week, I will write about our plan to move from "advanced beginner" to "intermediate" level.

Why is Foreign Language So Difficult?

I don't post often about teaching foreign language. Actually, have I ever posted about teaching foreign language? I might not have. That's odd considering how big a focus it has been for us.

The Kid seems to have her dad's aptitude for languages. She certainly didn't get it from me. She has requested to learn Spanish, French, and any language with a non-Western alphabet (a squiggly language, in her words). We've been focusing on Spanish with a bit of French thrown in here and there.

If you ask about beginning Spanish material for young kids, you can get several resources - Salsa Spanish, Little Pim, a variety of vocabulary board books, Song School Spanish, The Fun Spanish...  So once you get through those, where's the list of intermediate/advancing beginner resources? I've researched, asked, begged, and so far the crickets are chirping in response. Nothing.

It's even worse for French, when even the suggestions for beginner level materials are scarce. I'm glad we decided to wait on anything else, as I doubt Arabic or Mandarin would yield better results.

This is really just a little mini-rant. I'll come back in the next few weeks and post what we have done and are doing for Spanish, just in case it is helpful to anyone else. If anyone wants to write a good foreign language program that starts around kindy level and progresses through fluency, I'll buy it. I don't even care what language it teaches.

BFSU: Sound and Vibrations Unit

Resources: Magic School Bus episode (this one was very basic, may be good if this is the first time this topic has been introduced to your child, otherwise just for fun)
Science in a Nutshell kit: Sound Vibrations
Blood and Guts by Linda Allison

Lesson 1: BFSU C-2: Sound, Vibrations, and Energy (I covered this in one day due to my plan to use a kit for demonstrations. If not using the kit, cover in two lessons and do demonstrations.)
Lesson 2: Magic School Bus In the Haunted House
Lesson 3: Science in a Nutshell kit: Sound Vibrations, activity 2
Lesson 4: Science in a Nutshell kit: Sound Vibrations, activity 3
Lesson 5: Science in a Nutshell kit: Sound Vibrations, activity 4
Lesson 6: Science in a Nutshell kit: Sound Vibrations, activity 5
Lesson 7: Science in a Nutshell kit: Sound Vibrations, activity 6
Lesson 8: Science in a Nutshell kit: Sound Vibrations, activity 7
Lesson 9: Science in a Nutshell kit: Sound Vibrations, activity 8 and 9
Lesson 10: Science in a Nutshell kit: Sound Vibrations, activity 12
Lesson 11: Blood and Guts by Linda Allison, read pages 97-104 on Ears/Hearing
Lesson 12: Blood and Guts by Linda Allison, do any chosen demonstrations on pages 97-104

This post is part of my series on using BFSU as a science unit study.