Week 14 of MY Father's World

We use a Christian curriculum called My Father's World. The first grade curriculum is called "Learning God's Story". I absolutely adore the way MFW is set up. I'd recommend that anyone wanting to look into MFW google some YouTube videos of David Hazel who's the co creator of MFW. Often mothers hate MFW because they don't feel it provides their kids with "enough". I love MFW because I feel like it gives more then enough & when we are particularly interested in something we have the freedom to look further into it as opposed to feeling like there's no time because we have to finish X amount of workbook pages or worksheets & such. My kids never do more then maybe 2-3 workbook pages a day & that's stretching it. But I digress...

Today we started week 14 & the science portion is on volcanoes. Next year when my oldest daughter is doing this curriculum(she's doing K now) I'd like to have this amazing recreation of the eruption in Pompeii available. Since I know I forget things I added it to this blog. We throughly enjoyed this video & wanted to make sure we could find it next year. And if you're looking for a great video on Pompeii, here you go, please enjoy. I'd also recommend the book "You Wouldn't Want to Live in Pompeii a Volcanic Eruption You'd Rather Avoid" by John Malan.

http://www.history.com/topics/pompeii/videos#deconstructing-history-pompeii

Mathias dressed as Spider-Man & working on his workbook , he only needed to do one page today.

Spider-Man and I read a few books on volcanoes and one on Pompeii. We also saw a few videos of actual volcanoes exploding. 

We plan to make a volcanoes on Friday. Mat is super excited about that. 

Very cool video on YouTube about volcanoes 

More cool videos 

Greatest Pompeii recreation ever! 

Tale spun but in the right direction...

This week my husband ended a job three days early & was home when I hadn't expected him to be. That's absolutely wonderful news to me but usually not great news for homeschooling or our schedule. We all want to spend every second with daddy & so we end up doing very little to no school at all. 

While that did send me into a tale spin this week it actually was a tale spin into the right direction. My brain is usually loaded with lists of things I want to make, ideas I want to improve upon or things I've seen else where like "Pinterest" or other blogs & that I want to mold to fit my own family. However I very rarely put those ideas to motion & go through with these thoughts that are flying at me all day long, esp when I really want to sleep. Daddy being home this week helped me buckle down & get a few of those ideas out of my mind & onto the kitchen table...as in, I finally completed some. 

Here are some things I made these last few days.

1.WHISPER PHONES  

A whisper phone is a wonderful thing for many reasons but mainly because they help the user hear themselves. For example my kids would sound out words perfectly then instead of saying that word they just sounded out & read they'd say a word that was close or sometimes not close at all. Today the word was "got", my five year old sounded it out perfectly but then said "goat" at which point I remembered that I had made 6 whisper phones yesterday (& one more today when I bought two more elbows). She then sounded out the words again & was in shock when she heard them clearly in her ear. Why didn't I do this last yr? But at least I finally got to it & we're already really enjoying them. Thanks to my hubby who helped tremendously. 

I posted this top picture onto Instagram yesterday. Today I spent another $.99 when I went back to Home Depot & bought two more elbows. Total we spent $8.22 & the nice man at Home Depot even cut the two foot long PVC pipe for me. One of these whisper phones cost about $6-$8 & some you have to add shipping too. 

This was my 5yr old using her whisper phone today. We finished up the goat unit (MY FATHER's WORLD KINDERGARTEN, is our curriculum) while daddy was teaching at church tonight. She did great, she usually completes a day's work of school work in 30 minutes or so but she got through three-four days worth in about an hr & a half. 

2. Tactical Letters 

These are used to help a child learn how to write a letter (or number) There are many sorts of tactical letters or tactical activities. I made some the other night with very fine sandpaper & some pieces of wood from the dollar store. The child traces the letter with his/her finger & it helps remind them how the letter is formed

Here they are. The consents are on "flower" shaped pieces of wood & the vowels are on "butterflies". 

These are puffy paint tactical letters I made for the lower case letters & numbers from 0-9.

I let these dry over night, about 6hrs total to fully dry. I made this mixture, added food coloring & put it into a squirt bottle like the ketchup or mustard kinds with tips that they sell at the dollar store. I put them on black card stock that I had on hand. 

This is my three year old using the puffy paint tactical letters. He first traced them with his finger then wrote them in sand with his pencil or finger. 

I'm going to miss my hubby when he gets back to work this Monday, although I'm sure our schedule is actually happy...having hubby around is always a blessing because we all enjoy his presence & love to slather him in attention & cuddles. But all in all for a lazy week, I feel like we did get plenty accomplished & so the tale spin we were thrown into was a huge blessing. However, I've found that if we hold on long enough all those tale spins turn Into huge blessings, we just have to remember to hold on & not lose sight of the goal. 

To bring God glory in all we do... 

Catching up with this school year 2013-2014

Wow, I'm really behind but to my defense it was one of those circumstances & well, the blogging fell to the way side. 

So here's a wrap up to this school year. We started in June knowing Paz would be born soon after. We took all of August off & Paz was born August 21st, she passed away 77hrs later on August 24th. We resumed school in September & have taken a few weeks off here & there we should be ending this school year in late April for Lily & the first week of June for Mathias. In NJ school goes from September to late June so I don't feel really bad. Not to mention our homeschool convention is in mid May & we wouldn't get our curriculum until at least the last week of May if not the first week in June. I'm so excited about next year's school year but for now I'll try to catch you up on this year's fun, or at least those I've remembered to photograph. 

Here goes...

 Paz Lael (translates to "peace belongs to God") was born August 21st at 1am & she passed August 24th at 3am. We had a blessed 77hrs to enjoy her & were very happy when she finally went on to Glory, as she suffered greatly. For those who don't know she had severe trisomy 13. Her life was a true miracle & her nickname became "our little evangelist" because of all the ppl she brought to Christ. We're blessed to be her parents & know we'll see her again. We do miss her, each of us in our own ways. 

I knew I had to get back into things, I'm at my best when I'm serving others so September 7th started the NJ Public Schools & I decided I'd start school too. Here's a picture of our first day of school.

 At the start of this school year 2013 Mathias is 7, Lily is 5, Jojo is 3 & Luna is 1. The kids are in PreK3, Kindergarten & 1st grade. 

They spent this first day decorating their pencil cases & having a special first day of school meal & desert. We eased back into things with lots of fun & some brownies...

The first two weeks of school Mathias wrote out the alphabet & then made a scroll with the alphabet he had written. This among other things made up our first two or three weeks of school for Mathias. It was really intended as review.

Lily did a unit on the sun & she learned that if you lined up 109 earths from end to end they'd fit into the sun. Daddy helped us to illustrate this by cutting out a huge "sun" & I put 100 pony beads on some pipe cleaners she then used these to measure out the sun. She loved this activity. 

 

Lily then did a unit on the moon ....everyone enjoyed this one, since we did the faces of the moon with Oreos. Many Oreos were harmed in the learning of this unit. :-D 

How many earths fit inside the moon? Three times as many as in the sun. That's 109x3= 327 earths fit inside the moon.  

Then came a unit on apples & one on leaves...this too was fun. We learned why leaves change colors and how plants & trees make food. At this point Lily was doing a unit on A=apples & L=leaves & Mathias did two units on plants. They sort of went together so when it was time for science they did their experiments together. They also planted plants & watched a bean sprout. Luna & Jojo joined in. 

Grampa jointed us one morning as we checked on our plants & seedlings. 

I also found some cool dices at the dollar store, they have "sight/dolce" words on them. The kids had a blast throwing these dice & reading the words on them. 

Daddy spent some time teaching the kids how to read some more sight words. 

The kids worked on their penmanship when they wrote birthday cards to another homeschooler. They learned how to address a letter & worked on other homeschool things, like the parts of plants. 

Mathias worked on a time line & wrote a sentence in Hebrew. 

On "service person appreciation day" we made cookies & yellow rice with chicken. Daddy along with Mathias & Lily took it to our local police station & firehouse. Our neighbors also got a plate of cookies. 

Lily started to sounds words out...

Jojo is never too far behind. He always demands we "do school"...

I have way too many pictures of Jojo to share them all. Sadly I don't always remember to snap pictures of his siblings...booo mom, boo.lol We use the My Father's World PreK curriculum with JoJo. 

Here's a modge podge of things I did remember to take pictures of though...

Mathias doing his "Animal Tales" student sheets, he loves these. 

Lily on her octopus unit O is for octopus...lol 

Mathias doing some penmanship work, copying his weekly Proverb verse.

Kids enjoyed their hotdog octopi & veggies for lunch. 

We then moved on to the water unit & did a science experiment that showed how clouds get heavy with water droplets & then rain down on us. They also saw water, ice & snow turn into a gas (steam).

In honor of Lily's insect unit we played "ants in the pants" & made "cooties". An insect has three body parts; a head, a thorax & an abdomen. It also has six legs that come out of its thorax. We also made insects out of pipe cleaners, play dough & googly eyes but I didn't take a picture of those...

Finally back to work after Christmas & New Years, we got to the grit of it & finished up a week's worth of school in a day. They begged me not to stop the school day & I begged them to stop...haha. I hope it's always just like this & that they never get to a point that they hate school & that I have to force them to do their school work. 

Mathias read us his first 62 page book. It was "Green Eggs & Ham". He read it all on his own. 

We were over joyed. 

That's pretty much it so far, well at least the stuff I took pictures of. Today is Tuesday, January 7th,2014. We are on day two of unit 12 for both Mathias & Lily. Mathias uses My Father's World for first grade which is also known as "Learning God's Story" & Lily is using My Father's World Kindergarten Which is also known as "God's Creation from A to Z". 

Why is Mathias doing 1st grade is a question I'm often asked. When he was 5 knew all the sounds of the letters of the alphabet, he knew most of his numbers to 100, etc...but he could barely sit still for 10-15 minutes at a time & he just couldn't concentrate, he was extremely smart but way too active.  In order to avoid him feeling agitated & aggravated & to avoid frustrations for everyone we waited a year. We didn't want him to associate school with  frustration, aggravation, negative feelings of himself, etc...When he was 6 we started K & he breezed through it. We actually only ended up doing 8 units of K & he skipped right to 1st. He's now breezing through 1st & really loving it. He begs for school & even when we've finished his school day he begs for more work, "more school". That's really the motto of My Father's World & that's why I adore this curriculum. It's Charlotte Masson inspired & Jesus centered all the way through. Every aspect turns back to God. That's it, 12weeks (give or take) of school, thus far. I hope to stay current from hence forward. Thank you for reading.