November 2008 Review

The following is what we accomplished in November. Based on availability of library books, some changes were made to the Kindergarten Curriculum. The edits to that post are that books I added in are in green and books we didn't get to are in red.

Bible/Writing
· Memoria Press Copybook I - Stories from Genesis

Math
· Counting by 2’s to 20
· Addition – 4’s, 5’s (all combinations where the sum is 4 or 5)
· Counting change in groups of ten; learning to identify different coins; and being introduced to the concept that I don’t know the name for, but an example is that 5 pennies equals 1 nickel.

Music
· William Tell Overture by Rossini – defined what an overture is
· Listened to selections from Handel’s Messiah
· Read some of Mike Venezia’s book on Handel

Reading
· Grammar – “a” vs. “an”
· Fred and Ted Like to Fly by Peter Eastman
· Big Dog…Little Dog by P.D Eastman (read aloud to two preschool classes for former preschool teacher)
· Diving Dolphin by Karen Wallace (a DK reader)
· Fred and Ted Go Camping by Peter Eastman
· Honey Bunny Funnybunny by Marilyn Sadler
· Turtle and Snake at Work by Kate Spohn
· Monkey See, Monkey Do by Marc Grave

Literature
· Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling
· The Elves and the Shoemaker retold from the Brothers Grimm by Jim LaMarche
· The Pumpkin Runner by Marsha Diane Arnold
· The Market Square Dog by James Herriot (we had already read this once in the James Herriot Treasury, but this was a picture book we found in the library)
· The Cow-tail Switch and Other West Africa Stories by Harold Courlander and George Herzog

History/Geography
· Pocahontas: Peacemaker and Friend to the Colonist by Pamela Hill Nettleton
· Pocahontas by D’Aulaire
· If You Were at the First Thanksgiving by Anne Kamma
· Geography for A to Z by Jack Knowles
· In conjunction with the Cow-tail Switch book, we are also doing some map work of Africa

Nature/Science
· We took a nature walk to look at leaves, berries and pinecones. We collected some items and together with a partially eaten (by birds?) corn on the cob we found in a harvested field and some fresh water mussel shells from an October trip to a farm, Samuel made a “cornucopia”. It wasn’t fastened together by anything, so we took some pictures before it fell apart.
· Zoo trip to check out the armadillo (because we read the Just So story about how the armadillo came to be), which led to reading several books on and about armadillos from the library.
· I Love Whales and Dolphins by Steve Parker.
· I Love Crocodiles by Steve Parker
· I Love Dinosaurs by Steve Parker
· Pages in his zoo/animal notebook on manatees and meerkats.

Art
· Mary Cassatt – The Boating Party
· Read through Mike Venezia’s book; then paged through a second time to pick out his favorite – Girl in a Blue Armchair. He imagined she was reclining watching TV just out of sight until I told him TV hadn’t been invented yet!

Life Skills
· Cooking - Corn Pudding
· Learning empathy and funeral conduct (we miss you Nana)