End of Year Review

The purpose of this form is to help you create a record of the year’s learning experiences for each child in preparation for completing the Comar 05 laws. This form will also become part of your child’s confidential MPNL Record. Reviewing the year is a valuable activity that contributes to a family’s sense of pride in their accomplishments.

Child’s Name: Thing One Date: 4/30/10 Grade K

Use the spaces below and highlighting the educational resources, material, and curriculum your child has used throughout out the school year. Include valuable information such as filed trips, lesson plans, unit studies, travels and other experiences. Check your calendar; many dates and experiences it will be marked on you calendar and jog your memory. Feel free to attach your own pages and add to this review form.

'Demonstrated Skills' is just a list with headings on it for each subject they've covered, and as the children do something that comes under one of these heading, you write it down. You can write down knowledge they show about a topic of conversation, math skills they use while buying toys and shopping, 'PE' stuff they do while playing, etc.

'Resources Used' list has the same subject headings as the Demonstrated Skills list. Write down the educational resources used; reading/library books, books on tape, movies, radio programs, field trips, people they have discussions with, web sites, subscriptions, newspaper and computer, and whatever else you come across in life that gives them exposure to learning. You can even make note of the grade level of subject especially different then actual grade.

English: Demonstrated Skills: reads aloud and silently (both well above grade level), copies words, alphabetizes by first letter of a word; very good verbal descriptive skills and very good vocabulary; tells stories; word search puzzles
Resources Used: Moving Beyond the Page curriculum; reading websites, poems, library books, audio books, personal library
audio books

Mathematics: Demonstrated Skills: counting to 1000, adds and subtracts small numbers, skip counts by fives and tens, reads simple charts and graphs, recognizes shapes, draws shapes, finds the odd one out, matches, decodes simple codes from a key, recognizes hours and half hours on a clock, recognizes coins
Resources Used: Moving Beyond the Page, Calvert Math K and 1st, counting rods, Anno’s Math Games, jigsaw puzzles, mazes, Sudoku puzzles, code puzzles, geoboards, parquetry blocks, tangrams

Science: Demonstrated Skills: simple experiments, gardening, pronounces and memorizes complicated names (dinosaurs, etc), observation, compare and contrast, classification
Resources used: Moving Beyond the Page, nature study, videos, magnifying glass, rock collection, library books for unit studies: sharks and rays, early life, dinosaurs, panda bears, scorpions, ocean life, Chesapeake Bay, rocks, plants, airplanes, ships, Earth day, human body, fish, simple machines, spring, fungi, science songs music cd

Social Studies/History/Culture: Demonstrated skills: identifies some continents on map, identifies some states on US map, identifies hometown, identifies our street, simple map skills, identifies community helpers
Resources used: playdates, field trips, Moving Beyond the Page, Story of the World, Vols. 1-2 including activity books, Maps, globe, atlases, landmark flashcards, library books for Unit studies: Egypt, Knights, Samurai, China and Japan, Nomads, Early Humans, Africa, holidays

Art/Music: Demonstrated skills: drawing, painting, cutting, gluing, drawing from observation, sewing straight line on striped fabric with sewing machine with supervision
Resources used: lapbook templates, crayons, markers, chalks, paint, clay, play-doh, sewing machine, craft supplies

Music: Demonstrated skills: keeping rhythm, identifying songs or musicians or composers by listening, singing, memorizing song lyrics, play Mary Had a Little Lamb on the piano, find middle C on the piano
Resources used: piano, guitar, keyboard, Usborne First Book of Piano, music CDs as part of unit studies, Classical Kids story/music CDs, Wii Guitar Hero

Physical Education/Health: Demonstrated skills: running, standing on one foot, skipping, jumping, climbing, riding a scooter, riding a bicycle, roller skating, hyper-dash game, dancing, swimming, nature hikes, Wii sports, Wii Fit, yoga

Foreign Language: Demonstrated Skills: counts to ten in Spanish, recognizes a few colors in Spanish, recites a few Spanish vocabulary words
Resources Used: Dora and Diego books and videos, Spanish matching card game, Spanish Bingo, websites

Field trips educational outings: College Park Aviation Museum, Patuxent National Wildlife Refuge Visitor’s Center, National Gallery of Art, Belair Mansion Museum, Belair Stable Museum, Patuxent River Naval Air Museum, Goddard Space Flight Center, Smithsonian Natural History Museum, Smithsonian American History Museum, The Nutcracker ballet, Marching Through Time Living History, Baltimore Aquarium, circus, Chesapeake Childrens’ Museum, Watkins Park nature center, Clearwater Nature Center Anne Arundel County Fair, Prince George’s County Fair, Sheep and Wool Festival

Please use any of the next spaces for subject headings not listed or a separate sheet of paper if you feel the need to add additional related information about your homeschooling. (Special Needs, Technology Classes, Community Colleges, apprenticeship classes, awards, honors, merits, certificates, trophies, community service etc.)

2 First place ribbons at Prince George’s County Fair for a papier mache sculpture and a painting.

Summer Plans

If you are a homeschooling family, do you continue to do school year-round? Last year, we did school through the summer. Until about a week ago, I'd been assuming I would be doing it again this summer. But I'm starting to think we will take a break, starting with our week long trip to Louisiana, and starting up again sometime in August when we're all bored out of our minds.

I'm sure we'll still do lots of interesting things with educational value. It just won't be so structured. To be honest, our structure has been slipping toward the end of the school year, so it won't be much of a transition. Here are some things I want to pursue over the summer.

Nature Study with Journals
Geocaching
Local Travel
Cooking Lessons
Sewing Lessons
Video Animation
Scrapbooking (this past year of school)
Sports, especially bicycle riding
piano
Gardening

The usual things will be laying around the house for free use:
Art and Craft Supplies
Games
Books
Puzzles
Music
Toys

I still feel the need to limit screen time. It's my big roadblock to unschooling. I have this kneejerk reaction to letting my kids have unlimited screen (tv/video games/computer) time. I have definitely seen the advantages. Thing One learned to read on the Wii because he got tired of having to depend on us to read the instructions to him. He has learned a lot of his basic arithmetic from Leapster games. But his attitude gets very disrespectful, his behavior toward other kids gets more aggressive the more time he spends in front of a screen. So I'm thinking I'll give Thing One (age 6.5) 2 hours per day for total screen time. Thing Two (age 3.5) will get 1 hour. At least, that's the plan.

I love our neighborhood when the weather outside is nice. All the neighborhood kids come outside and play together. Thing One is relating to the older kids (ages 8+) in new ways and I have the feeling this summer will be alot about forming new relationships for him.

How to Make a Lightbox

Do you have a drop-leaf dining table? If so, you can easily make it into a temporary light table.

1. Remove the leaf.

2. Place a piece of glass or plexiglass where the leaf was. If you are going to be using it alot, consider getting a piece of plexiglass cut to the size of your leaf.

3. Place a lamp under the glass or plexi, with the bulb pointing up toward the ceiling.

4. Trace away!

5. For a smaller project, you can tape your items to a well-lit window for the same effect.


I heard this tip from another quilter. I used my lightbox to trace patterns onto black background fabric for an appliqued quilt.

Quilting Tattoos

I have seen these popping up alot lately. I'm not really a tattoo kind of gal, but even I'm starting to think a smallish one would be neat and fun.

I love Karen McTavish's feathers.

Here's a whole batch on flickr.

But here's my favorite, one I could actually see myself getting.

Today I...

Made two books for the boys to make "cookbooks"
Prepared breakfast, lunch and two snacks for three of us
Washed the rugs
Cleaned the upstairs bathroom
Did a half-hour workout video that involved JOGGING and it felt good
showered
got myself and two kids dressed and teeth brushed
went to the library
balanced the checkbook
paid the bills
remembered the vitamins
washed the dishes
swept the kitchen floor
closed a credit card account and cut up the card (that felt really good)
read at least 50 pages aloud
made a bed
dusted while talking to my mom on the phone
put away six dirty socks that weren't even mine
helped a six year old with some school worksheets and helped him make a smoothie(he's obsessed with a blender cookbook)
watched tv
played horsie
gave about a zillion hugs and kisses
played a bit of bejeweled
checked email
researched toilets
found some ham recipes for leftovers
read my book

...and I even blogged!

Classical Music Week

Thing One picked the theme "Tchaikovsky", and momma expanded it a bit to cover classical music in general. We are learning about orchestral instruments and a bit about the science of sound.

We found a neat book at the library. It's a great survey of classical music in general. It covers each era, then each instrument in the orchestra. The accompanying CD has nice, short, well-chosen samples for each era and each instrument. It's called The Story of the Orchestra by Robert Levine.

We listened to tons of music of course. Our favorite fun cds are Beethoven's Wig I and II. I found some great online lessons at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's website.

Here are some other neat online music links.

Sphinx Kids

Creating Music

Funschool's Boomthang

We practiced clapping rhythm along with simple songs. It's also fun to make up verses to songs like Old MacDonald had a Farm, and Down by the Bay. We also found the echo spot in our stairwell.

Africa Week

Thing One and I made a list of topics he wants to study more so I could put together some unit studies. One of the things he chose at random was "South Africa." I broadened this to include all of Africa and it ended up being a really fun weekly theme!

We studied African animals, focusing on elephants, lions, and giraffes. We talked a bit about primates, too. Movies we watched were The Lion King and Elephant Tales. We made some foam animals from a kit I had (elephant and lion). We learned "elephant breath" and a "lion stretch" during yoga time. Our yoga pretzels deck was helpful with this. My kids aren't too interested in the kids' yoga videos we have, but they adore these cards!

We listened to a ton of African music cds from the library. We also listened to Uncle Remus (Brer Rabbit) stories. We discussed what makes a folk tale special, and we read a bunch of African folk tales. The Anansi tales were the favorites.

We discussed basic African geography, and talked about the seven continents. We considered how different parts of Africa are from each other. We revisisted the savannah, desert and forest habitats. We read a book about students in different parts of Africa, and how they are similar to us in some ways and different in others.

We looked at some African art and some masks. We practiced drawing faces and masks. We made a mancala game with an egg carton and some beads.

We ate chicken peanut stew, and couscous with almonds and currants (both big hits).