First Quarter at Hogwarts

For her first quarter (13 weeks), she wanted to enroll in Magical Creatures, and I wanted her to take KinderCharms and Arithimancy. She got letters from each teacher weekly with her assignments for that week .

Magical Creatures was taught by Hagrid who had horrible spelling and often spilled on the letters. He included a page each week "torn" from somewhere, (I frayed the edge), about each mythical animal, a coloring page, a word find, crossword, maze or other activity in the theme.

KinderCharms is a cross between spelling and wand practice. It was taught by Professor Flitwick. I used a more formal flowery stile of writing and font for his letters. She had a list of words each week, (from a recommended list posted on a homeschooling kindergarten yahoo group of "standard" first grade words) She was assigned four activities to do with them, (word shapes, word find, criss cross, telephone words, magnetic spelling, cutting letters from magazines, writing the words in sand, salt, whipped cream, or other mediums), and always writing her words in the air with her wand daily. I let her choose when she was ready for a spelling quiz, (Saturday at the latest). If she got them all right, she didn't have to do any more activities for the week. If she missed any she had to do the rest of the activities with those words, (but not necessarily the ones she got right).

Arithimancy is math and numbers. It was taught by Professor Digot. I tried to use a more interlectual, dry voice. I tried to make it sound like someone that was truly enamored with mathmatics. I had found a 1st grade math and manipulatives set at costco that looked like fun. But once I got it home and looked it over, it was way too easy. I liked some of the manipulatives so I kept it but I went back and got the 2nd grade set as well. Both sets had parent's handbooks, activity books, (with 40-50 manipulative activities), and a workbook, (60-70 pages). She was assigned 2-3 activities and 4-5 workbook pages per week.
Later in the year she discovered my schoolhouse rock dvds and so I started assigning Multiplication rock songs for her to listen to, doubling recipes, and downloading math sheets from off the internet.