One Month Down

The first full month of school is done! I can't believe how fast this past month has gone by. October is one of my favorite months and I am already in high preparation mode. I have a tutu to make this weekend and I will pull all of the Halloween decorations out of storage. Pinterest has become my best friend for the next few weeks :)

Not much afterschooling has happened around here. I was pretty sure we wouldn't get to too much work this early in the school year. We are adjusting to the new schedule and amount of homework being sent home. I must say that I am very impressed with the little amount of homework that is sent home with Monkey. Last year we were so overwhelmed with daily homework that any extra work was pretty much impossible. I am confident we can now alternate school homework days with afterschool work without feeling overwhelmed throughout the week. Tank is dying for more work at home as she blazes through her homework. I am still adamant that Kindergarten homework is ridiculous. She brings home a few pages of coloring or cut and paste work. However, she does it all joyfully so I will not cause any ruckus over it.

Monkey has already done reading level testing in his classroom and is at a solid 2nd grade reading level. According to him there are two other children in his reading group and I am really satisfied with the level of reading material he comes home with. Tank will most likely start bringing home simple readers next month, but is already demanding her own reading material. I despise most early readers so this is slightly a challenge for me. Monkey shares my distaste of easy readers and pushed through to quality books quickly. However, Tank struggles with phonics and needs some confidence building books. I may try out some Dick and Jane books as they are very repetitive, but filled with simplistic vocabulary.

Even though we haven't done any math work at home, Monkey and Tank have been having some very interesting conversations about math! They have figured out that place value understanding makes it very easy to add larger numbers. 20 plus 20 is easy if you understand that 2 tens plus 2 tens is 4 tens. Monkey has mastered this concept up to the thousands! I am so proud of my little mathematicians and love seeing the hard work I put in constantly reinforcing place value.

Other than that we have been doing a lot of this: