Kindergarten

This year has once again been different when it has come to schooling with Austin. We have continued with the homeschooling, though sometimes he tells us he wishes he were in school with his friends from church. Ultimately though, I think he would be bored in regular school at this point; he is pretty far ahead of where most Kindergartners are.

We did join a homeschool co-op group that meets once a week. This has been good for Austin and he has made some friends there. He has enjoyed a lot of the group activities that they do there as well as various art projects. For example, one week the kids learned some about Chinese porcelain, and then they designed their own vases by creating a scratch board of sorts with oil pastels and white acrylic paint on top. Then they scratched the paint away to make their designs.

Unfortunately, I haven't remembered to bring my camera to the co-op group until this last week. The combined junior and youth groups went on a field trip together to the Ogden Nature Center where they learned about how animals survive through winter and how to identify signs of different animals outside.

The kids broke up into small groups to place a small container of "sludge" outside. They were told to use the methods discussed that animals use to survive the cold to keep their "sludge" from freezing. Austin and his partner wrapped theirs in a scarf or something and buried it in the snow. Unfortunately, they did such a good job hiding it that they couldn't find it again...so we never found out if their "sludge" froze or not.

Then the younger kids stamped animal tracks on papers they could use as guides as we went outside.

After that, everyone put snowshoes on and headed out to find signs of animal activity.

Here the guide is trying to help identify some animal scat

Here the group is studying a log that was chewed on
by a beaver and has scratches on it from
other animals as well.

It was a fun field trip. We even had some doughnuts and hot chocolate afterward.

We have also tried to do a lot of fun experiments and activities at home as part of our lessons. During one lesson we learned about illuminated manuscripts, which was perfect since Austin had been watching me work on a calligraphy project for my family. Austin was pretty excited to decorate his own illuminated letter.

Austin's illuminated letter

We also have been learning about space. Austin has really enjoyed the activities we have done for those lessons. He really got a kick out of watching astronauts at the international space station do various everyday activities in space on YouTube. A couple weeks ago to end our space unit, we went on a field trip as a family to the Clark Planetarium.