Josiah's First Day of Kindergarten & CC

On Friday Josiah had his first day of kindergarten with our Classical Conversations (CC) homeschool group.  His class has 7 boys and one girl.  (The girl has 3 brothers, though, so she does just fine.)  He has a great tutor, Mrs. Walker, who introduces the material that we parents are supposed to teach them during the rest of the week.  She does grammar, science, history, geography, Latin, a little math, and the first 6 week she covers fine arts.  She did a science experiment – can drawings appear to move?  She introduced the scientific method (hypothesis, procedure, results, etc.)   The kids had two pieces of paper – one taped on top of the other and by sliding the first paper up and down quickly, the drawing appeared to be winking at them (like drawing a cartoon).  They do some sort of experiment each week and as they get older they obviously get more sophisticated (like dissecting things).  In fine arts, Josiah learned the 5 elements of drawing (circles, dots, lines, angles, and curved lines).  After they went through each element, they turned their papers over and she had the kids each spin the wheel and then they had to draw whatever element was picked.  All the kids drew what they were supposed to.  Josiah drew what he was supposed to, but instead of just having a row of lines/dots/shapes, he made his into a dinosaur.  So the dots were eyes, the curved lines were the body, the angles were the spikes on its back, etc.  Our artist.  He really enjoyed it. 

All the children have to give a presentation each week as well.  For his age it is usually a show-and-tell type presentation.  However, they do stand in front of the class and at the end they say, “Thank you for listening to my presentation. Any questions?”  The listeners have to listen quietly and ask real questions.  We had practiced what he would say at home all week.  He would say his name, age, and some things that he likes (pizza, drawing, etc.).  His name gets called and he jumps up, reaches into Henry’s backpack, and pulls out a plane from Planes.  He gets up there and talks all about Lead Bottom the Plane.  Not a bit of what we practiced.  He talked super soft at first and didn’t make much eye contact, but then he got better as it went on and by the time the kids asked him some questions at the end, he answered with a normal voice and normal eye contact.  They start doing the presentations now and do this all the way through high school so they get comfortable standing in front of people, talking, making eye contact, answering questions, etc.  The listeners learn to sit quietly, listen, and ask good questions.  At this age, they ask a lot of “Where did you get that?” so they can go get the toy themselves.  After school (9am-12pm) we all eat lunch together and then they have an outdoor playground that they enjoyed.  We meet at a Methodist church in Missouri City, TX (a neighboring city).  Henry and Caroline did well in the nursery.  So it was a success. 

At school a couple of the moms commented on how cute Josiah was with his presentation.  I think sometimes he gets away with “cute” because he is so little.  On Saturday alone, we had two people (completely separately) ask us if he was 3 years old.  So, to look like he’s 3, he acts super smart to others. 
As you can see, he got less enthusiastic to take pictures as they go on.  He kept telling me he was tired of holding the "silly sign."