MFW 1st Grade - Up to day 50

We've been cruising along with MFW 1st Grade. I think Pooh may be dyslexic (just like big sister Rabbit). He loves science. He loves being read to. He loves looking at the Come Look with Me books. He mostly enjoys doing math (but not always). But when it comes to reading, well lets just say it is very hard for him.

We've basically continued on as scheduled in the TM. Having the days in between learning new sounds where we read the Bible reader has been good. I use those extra days to review and reinforce sounds and play games.

Tigger just plows on in the reading. He doesn't get upset if he misses a word or anything. Sometimes he shows signs of dyslexia, but not like Pooh. It's also great to see him trying to write. It is very phonetic, often using the wrong spelling for the sound of /er/ (mostly ir), but he keeps begging me to teach him how to spell. So, I may be getting out All-About-Spelling level 1 before I intended to.

For Math the last month or so we've been working on adding to 18 using only single digit numbers. I vary which manipulatives we use to do this project. As we got to above 10, though, we've pretty much stuck to the Math-U-See blocks. I just felt it was easier for them to see how it worked.

The boys join in with RTR Bible, History, and Science. They love the science.

The hardest thing for me has been to get the library books for the science. I always forget to look ahead and get them reserved from the library. That is something I really need to work on.

I set up their timeline boards. What I did, since we already have a timeline up on the wall for Rabbit for CTG and RTR, I got those 3-fold science project boards to use. I drew 6 lines across (spaced approximately 6 inches apart). Then I put each beginning marker on a new line. Here's a picture to show you.

RTR Weeks 6 - 9

Man, have I been bad about keeping this up. We've been pretty busy. There was some sickness, so for two weeks, I was a helper at Awana while my husband recovered, so I didn't get a chance to keep this updated.

My last post was about our Roman Arch - which was done in week 6. You can see the picture from that post. I would encourage anyone to not give up on that project. We didn't sand the pudding boxes or anything. We built it several different times (like for Dad, when he got home), and it worked every time.

Another great thing you do in week 6 is study the Old Testament Prophesies of Jesus, and how he fullfilled them. I think that was a great thing to study.

Rabbit was excited in Week 7 that we're beginning to focus more on Jesus. She really doesn't like August Caesar's World all that much (to many false gods, murders and too much intrigue). This week we worked on the ear in science. The art lessons were good - drawing cubes books - getting your depth right. Rabbit thoroughly enjoys The Bronze Bow, but the boys aren't so keen on it. I'm sure they'll enjoy it when they're older, though.

We're breezing through Jesus's life pretty quickly through weeks 8 and 9. That's to keep up with our history studies. We covered the skin and the eye in science. We reading about the political changes and such going on in the Roman empire. We finished The Bronze Bow - loved the ending. The idea that you can't repay love with vengance is such a good theme in the book. It even got me to thinking about things.

Rabbit finished up her Singapore 3B book sometime during this stretch and we've begun Singapore 4A. It is a review of place value and rounding right now. She tells me it doesn't always make sense to her, but I don't know how else to explain some of those things.

Spelling has been Rabbit's hardest subject. We've really slowed down now at Level 5. Here's an example of her spelling thinking. The word is "actress." I very carefully pronounced "/ac/-/tress/." She spells it "acteress." And when it happens is when she is sounding out letter by letter, she say, "/a/, /c/, /t/, /er/, /e/, /s/, /s/." I posted on the Chatter Bee board for some help and got some ideas. One idea was to have her count syllables before she writes it to give her an idea of how many vowels or vowel teams there should be in the word. I want to try to get her to more spelling syllable by syllable than sound by sound. Sigh.

Our days run pretty long most days. That can be discouraging. But, we keep making progress.

Here's a beautiful creation she made just this last week with the Pattern Blocks. The kids just love playing free-style with them.

From School 4 Us

Our Roman Arch Worked!

Okay, this is from week 6 in RTR. I was skeptical, but... Whoo-hooo! Now, I didn't have cereal boxes, so we used those corrugated cardboard bricks for our "base." And, by the time we were finished, the bricks were only 5 3/4 inches apart, rather than 6 1/2, but it is staying all by itself!

I have more to post about our last couple of weeks, but I was just too excited about this!

RTR Week 3

The first day had a little bit of stuff from How the Bible Came to Us, so we did that the evening before, but the rest of it has been basically memorizing the books of the New Testament and just looking up a few verses from those books, so we've been doing those in the morning. It's great getting a brief summary of each book and who (possibly) wrote it.

We're continuing in August Caesar's World for history, along with tidbits from The Roman Empire. I've had to reword a few things from the former to soften them for Rabbit. Yesterday we did the mosaic project. We used construction paper and foam squares (I had some from many moons ago), and it ended up looking like this:

Cutting up construction paper into little squares just didn't appeal to me, so I felt like this was a good substitute. I need to print out the picture for Rabbit to add to her history notebook.

We've continued learning more about the Brain this week. It is so neat how God designed our bodies.

For our Latin Roots test, I made up addition and subtraction problems in Latin and had her write her answers in Latin. I figured that was better than a matching test. We're still on numbers at this point.

Over all, a pretty good week, except Rabbit hates Math again. But, I think we're just going to keep at it.

MFW 1st - up to about day 20

Okay, so my boys are always surprising me.

We're finally up to learning long vowel sounds - long a (spelled a-consonant-e) and long e (spelled e-consonant-e and ee). When we did long a, Tigger did great. Pooh did okay, but he caught on. I played reading games that afternoon with both of them, and then that evening I worked with Pooh one-on-one. Then the next day we did long e. Pooh really struggled with it. He was on the verge of tears a couple of times. Tigger did fine. Then, that afternoon we played a couple of reading games. Pooh really worked hard to read the words correctly. It might take him several seconds to think about it, but he read most of them correctly. Tigger, on the other hand, kept missing them. I was a bit suspicious, though, that he was missing them so I would play a reading game with him one-on-one.

So, needing "Exploration Day" to land on Wednesday, we took a few days off following the MFW 1st grade manual and just spent time each day reading books, playing reading games, doing fun little math things, etc. Yesterday, we were playing reading games and Tigger kept missing words I knew he read the day before. Then he finally said, "You're going to have to play games with me tonight, because I keep missing words." A-ha! I knew it!

Today we picked it back up (as it was finally Wednesday), and did our Exploration Day. We started with verses, and then looking at a picture in the red Come Look with Me book, reviewed our science book, read some of our library books, played with Pattern Blocks, and played a reading game. For the reading game, I had the boys spread the cards around the room and then I would call out a word for them to find. Pooh did better than Tigger at this, which really surprised me. They LOVED this game. In fact, it was really hard to calm them down to get them ready for P.E. class.

We'll be ready to start back at day 21 tomorrow.

RTR Week 2

Whew, I need to get caught up.

We've been doing most of the Bible the night before so Dad can join in. It's been interesting learning how books got started, and even writing. You do have to wonder how much if it is "right," though. I mean, no one we know personally was there.

This week we started August Caesar's World. Not sure what to make of the book. I enjoy it, and the writing is good. Rabbit is having a hard time with it because of all the mentioning of other "gods." I'm really having to filter for her. One day we had the opportunity to play "Odd or Even" and even the boys enjoyed that.

In science we've been learning about nerves and how the brain works. There have been some good experiments or demonstrations to try to show how it works. It's pretty cool.

The drawing lessons in God and the History of Art have been good - we've been learning about perspective. I think this will help Rabbit's drawing.

So far, in English from the Roots Up we're just covering numbers in Latin. It's pretty easy, because it lines up with Spanish pretty well, and we've been studying Spanish since 1st grade.

Otherwise, not a bad week. I'm learning bunches.

RTR Day 5, MFW 1st, Day 14

Let's just say "light and independent" Friday for Rabbit was a big help in the grand scheme of things.

We still didn't get started until 9:00 today. Sigh. Can my children eat breakfast any slo-w-e--r? (If I could stretch out that word and then make it bend down like a drooping flower, I would!)

We started with the boys new verse (since this would be a "Monday" in MFW 1st). They said it a couple of times and we discussed it as directed in the T.M. Then we read another Miller's story. I'm always surprised how much they like these. Today's chapter was called, "Play the Man" and was about common courtesies men can show women - like opening doors and where to stand on the sidewalk and such. (As you'll see, this will come into play later in the day.)

I gave Rabbit her seatwork - it was simply a test for her Latin roots and a math review page. I used EasyTestMaker to make Rabbit's test. I had her define each root, and then I also had her use two derivative words correctly in a sentence. It was all "short answer" style, as there are only two roots at this point. When we get more, I'll change it over to multiple choice. She didn't miss any, and only missed one math problem. Way to go Rabbit! I told her she could practice sewing or work on her latch hook when she was done.

The boys did okay with reading today. Tigger had one word he stumbled over. Pooh, on the other hand, had more trouble. He's also a little too hard on himself about this. He has no problem marking the vowel and saying the vowel sound. It's the saying the rest of the sounds in the correct order that seems to get him. He'll do fine for a few words and then get all flustered. Then he'll do fine again and get flustered. But, he did fine with the cutting out the sentences and gluing them under the correct picture. I never know what to think about this kind of problem.

Next we took a snack break, and then did Math. I've stopped having them bring me the number of the day items. It just takes too much time for them to hunt them down. One thing I have been doing differently is not only drawing a line the number-of-the-day inches long, but also drawing it in centimeters. One thing I've struggled with is how large something is. I think drawing the lines in centimeters allows them to compare inches to centimeters. Plus, you can go up to 30 centimeters instead of just 12 inches. The next two weeks in Math is suppose to cover counting. That's fine, but they're pretty good at it. I forgot to reserve books from the library on it, though. But, we did do the first page in the workbook - it was easy and quick. Oh, I had Rabbit play some math games with one boy while I was working with the other. It was kind of good, except they got a little noisy and silly sometimes.

We read the Science pages next. They were pretty excited with the idea of watering some beans and watching them grow, so we'll probably do that. I do have a few books reserved for that topic at least.

The last thing we did before lunch was go on a Nature Walk. We did our usual path. We saw a very large grasshopper sitting on a weed, lots of bees, and other signs of summer. We could see just a very few yellow leaves on a few trees, telling us that fall is just around the corner. We talked about the different things we saw. Now the funny part was Rabbit kept insisting that the boys walk on the outside when we walked along the sidewalk so they could "Play the Men" as talked about in the story this morning. Yet, when they did, this made me nervous because of the occasional car going by and them being smaller than we are.

After lunch, we finished up the boys by listening to our Spanish program. It was basically learning common phrases (hello, good day, etc.).

Then I worked with Toni. We went over her math and had her fix her one mistake. She surprised me by wanting to do Writing Strands first. She made up a story about a hamster's first day in a new home (she wants us to get one for her to have as a pet). I captured her main points for her and then helped her come up with her long sentence. It always works best if we use her ideas. Not sure if I should make her come up with a real thing to tell about (which is kind of what seems to be suggested in the book), or just go with what we have done.

We've been reading from the Abeka 5th grade level "novel" Message of the Mountain - just a chapter a day, which doesn't take that long, but I know she is also reading from her Bible every day and other books she gets from the library (or her Nature Friend magazine - which came in the mail today).

The last thing on Rabbit's list for the day was the dreaded Spelling. Poor kid. She finally spelled all the words we were reviewing right (the green cards), but is really struggling with the two-letter sounds (ai, oa, ph, etc.) when we do the phonics and sound review time (the yellow and red cards). I'm not wanting to continue on with the rest of Step 1 until I feel she has at least got them each right once. She got frustrated with it today.

RTR Day 4, MFW 1st Day 13

Our day started off with Rabbit having a bloody nose. It took me an hour to get it to stop. So, we didn't start our school time until 9:10. That was a bit of a set back. Then, because we had a Keepers of the Faith meeting the night before, we didn't do today's Bible last night. So, we had to start with that. It was good, though, to read about the lives of many of the New Testament authors.

Then we did History. We read about the Conquest of Greece and the Fall of the Roman Republic. We also started Augustus Caesar's World. That should be an interesting book. I'm going to have to be careful, though, with Rabbit and the mention of other gods. She tends to take that to heart too much.

Next up was Science. We read the lesson, and then did the demonstration on how and why things can get through a cell membrane. I almost didn't do it, but it really made the concepts sink in for Rabbit.

I got Rabbit going on her seatwork, and did the boys reading time. This was the first day of reading words. Both of them did great. They each had one word they tripped over, but overall they did fine with it. Even reading the little sentences and cutting them out and pasting them under the correct picture went well. And, they were really excited to be able to use their special red pencils. The amazing thing was, each of them finished in less than 20 minutes!

By the time we finished with Reading time, it was 11:00. I finally remember that I wanted to do a fun sorting activity with the kids. On Monday I had bought their favorite candies. Today it was time to sort them. So, I printed out a blank chart for each of them. Then I gave each of them about 1/4 cup of their candy. Pooh said, "Mom, I think the only way to sort these is by color." So, that's what they did. Then I showed them how to fill in their chart. We used a crayon the color of each candy, and marked the graph with that. They loved this activity, especially since they got to eat the candies afterward. Even Rabbit did this.

After that, Rabbit went back to seatwork, and it was time for the Daily Math Activities. That was more of a challenge, because today's number of the day was 10 and we needed to glue the beans onto the craft stick. I said, "You know, there is a rule that we can't have more than 9 things in a cup. But, if we glue the 10 beans onto the stick, the stick will be one thing and then that can move into the tens cup." They really liked that little story. I didn't really want to wait forever for white glue to dry, so I got out my hot glue gun (my favorite crafting tool), and we used that to glue the beans to the stick.

It was 12:30 before we took our lunch break, and didn't get going again until 2:00. First we worked on the boys scrolls. Each day they've practiced writing their letters on a sheet. Today we glued them together side-by-side and then used masking tape to tape them to the wooden dowels. Here is Pooh with his scroll:

He thought it was cool that he was about as tall as his scroll. Here is Tigger with his:

One thing I did was to take a sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper and cut it in half, and then add it to the left of the sheet that has Aa-Ff on it. That way there would be more room to see the letters and they wouldn't get covered up by the dowel. here is the final product:

So, the boys were done, and it was time to finish up with Rabbit. We did Math, Reading, Spelling, English, and Writing Strands to finish up her day. Then it was time to make the Wax Writing Tablets. For Rabbits, I followed the instructions in the book. Except, I used my hot glue gun and I think you need to put the little 1/2 inch side walls on the TOP of the edge of the bottom 5x7 piece, not the side like I did hers:

Then, of course, the boys each wanted one. I decided to do theirs a little smaller - about 4x6. For theirs, I made sure the side pieces sat on top of the base piece. I think theirs worked better. Here's Pooh's tablet:

And finally, Tiggers:

They loved these and played with them all evening. Rabbit practiced her Roman numerals. Pooh practiced writing addition problems. And Tigger drew pictures. So, in spite of it being 4:30 before we finally finished for the day, I'm glad we did this activity.

RTR Day 4, MFW 1st Day 13

Our day started off with Rabbit having a bloody nose. It took me an hour to get it to stop. So, we didn't start our school time until 9:10. That was a bit of a set back. Then, because we had a Keepers of the Faith meeting the night before, we didn't do today's Bible last night. So, we had to start with that. It was good, though, to read about the lives of many of the New Testament authors.

Then we did History. We read about the Conquest of Greece and the Fall of the Roman Republic. We also started Augustus Caesar's World. That should be an interesting book. I'm going to have to be careful, though, with Rabbit and the mention of other gods. She tends to take that to heart too much.

Next up was Science. We read the lesson, and then did the demonstration on how and why things can get through a cell membrane. I almost didn't do it, but it really made the concepts sink in for Rabbit.

I got Rabbit going on her seatwork, and did the boys reading time. This was the first day of reading words. Both of them did great. They each had one word they tripped over, but overall they did fine with it. Even reading the little sentences and cutting them out and pasting them under the correct picture went well. And, they were really excited to be able to use their special red pencils. The amazing thing was, each of them finished in less than 20 minutes!

By the time we finished with Reading time, it was 11:00. I finally remember that I wanted to do a fun sorting activity with the kids. On Monday I had bought their favorite candies. Today it was time to sort them. So, I printed out a blank chart for each of them. Then I gave each of them about 1/4 cup of their candy. Pooh said, "Mom, I think the only way to sort these is by color." So, that's what they did. Then I showed them how to fill in their chart. We used a crayon the color of each candy, and marked the graph with that. They loved this activity, especially since they got to eat the candies afterward. Even Rabbit did this.

After that, Rabbit went back to seatwork, and it was time for the Daily Math Activities. That was more of a challenge, because today's number of the day was 10 and we needed to glue the beans onto the craft stick. I said, "You know, there is a rule that we can't have more than 9 things in a cup. But, if we glue the 10 beans onto the stick, the stick will be one thing and then that can move into the tens cup." They really liked that little story. I didn't really want to wait forever for white glue to dry, so I got out my hot glue gun (my favorite crafting tool), and we used that to glue the beans to the stick.

It was 12:30 before we took our lunch break, and didn't get going again until 2:00. First we worked on the boys scrolls. Each day they've practiced writing their letters on a sheet. Today we glued them together side-by-side and then used masking tape to tape them to the wooden dowels. Here is Pooh with his scroll:

He thought it was cool that he was about as tall as his scroll. Here is Tigger with his:

One thing I did was to take a sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper and cut it in half, and then add it to the left of the sheet that has Aa-Ff on it. That way there would be more room to see the letters and they wouldn't get covered up by the dowel. here is the final product:

So, the boys were done, and it was time to finish up with Rabbit. We did Math, Reading, Spelling, English, and Writing Strands to finish up her day. Then it was time to make the Wax Writing tablets. For Rabbits, I followed the instructions in the book. Except, I think you need to put the little 1/2 inch side walls on the TOP of the edge of the bottom 5x7 piece, not the side like I did hers:

Then, of course, the boys each wanted one. I decided to do theirs a little smaller - about 4x6. For theirs, I made sure the side pieces sat on top of the base piece. I think theirs worked better. Here's Poohs:

MFW 1st - Day 11

Oohhh. Our last day of reviewing letter sounds. This was a really good review for Pooh. Tigger, too. They did well with it.

For Math, today, I had them play with the old Shape Sorter toy, and we did one workbook page together.

They've been sitting in on our Rome to the Reformation Bible, History and Science times, and I try to remember to add in a little Spanish.

RTR Week 1, Day 3

We did the Bible the night before. It was about the writers of the Old Testament and the variety of writers, and yet we can still trust the Scripturess.

In History we read about The Punic Wars. Imagine taking elephants across the Alps!

In Science we learned more about cells and made a Jello model:

My only recommendation would be to not fill the bag ALL the way up to the top. It makes it easier to squeeze it and play with it later.

Not to bad of a day. I moved Writing Strands to Thursdays and Fridays to make it easier on us. So far, not to bad. I did have to tell Rabbit that Keepers was optional if she didn't get her work done quickly.

RTR Day 2, MFW 1st Day 10

Okay, getting started earlier has got to be a priority. My husband let Rabbit sleep in because she had been sick, but we didn't get started until 9:00. Still, we didn't do too bad in getting everything done.

Again, we started with the 1st grade Bible lesson, which was just going over the verse, and then we added a Miller's story. I'm thinking about moving this to breakfast, but Rabbit has to be there for that to work.

Next, we read the History lesson. It was about how Rome became a Republic. That was interesting and didn't take too long. After that, we did the Science lesson, which was just reading about cells. The boys loved looking at the book because it had great pictures of different kinds of cells you can find in the human body.

Rabbit had some seatwork: sentences for her vocabulary word, handwriting, math drill, math (it was a "review" page), and a map. It was Exploration Day for 1st grade, so we read a couple of books for science, did some pattern block pages, did a page in the red Come Look with Me book, did a Spanish lesson, and of course, I read to them at bedtime.

Rabbit and I managed to get in an English lesson, and then I helped her with her math page before lunch.

After lunch we did Spelling and put up our timeline piece. We also went over her work and corrected any mistakes.

Overall, not too bad of a day.

I've printed out assignment sheets from Homeschool Tracker Plus for this next week, and marked the things she can do on her own. I put any papers she needs (map outlines, handwriting sheets, etc.) in manila folders for each day of the week, so she'll know where to find them and where to put them when she's done. I'm hoping this will give her a little more ownership of her work and help her get it done.

RTR Day 1, MFW 1st Day 9

Our first day where we actually combined both curricula. Whew!

Rabbit said she was feeling up to school this morning, so I decided to go ahead and start. Of course, since Rabbit was back, the boys wanted a story from Prudence and the Millers, so we did that, and then went over the boys' verse from Proverbs. I emphasized that working hard was a wise choice.

After that, we did the Rome to the Reformation (RTR) history portion for the day. It was the discussion of the legend of the founding of Rome. It was interesting that each book we read had a slightly different version of the story. One just said there were twin infant boys who were left in the woods and a wolf raised them until a shepherd rescued them. Another said the twin boys were the sons of the god Mars. And the other said that an evil uncle threw them in the river, and a wolf rescued them. One of the sources didn't even mention how they fought and how Romulus killed Remus, but the other two did. But even between the remaining sources, only one of them mentioned they were fighting over what to name Rome.

Rabbit had to do a notebook page on the "Founding of Rome" so I put the picture of the statue of the boys nursing from the wolf in a document and put some lines underneath for her to write on. I got the picture from the internet links recommended in the Usborne book. Her summary was funny. It said, "The Romans think that this happened..." and she kept emphasizing the think part, because she was trying to point out that it was just a legend.

While Rabbit was off doing her notebook pages, I worked with the boys. It went pretty smoothly with each of them. Pooh is working so hard on his blending. He's really starting to get it, but every now and then it's like his brain says, "I'm going to say this backwards." I showed him that we are almost done with reviewing the letters and were going to start reading words soon. I printed out a dot-to-dot and a maze from abcteach.com for the boys to do during reading time. During math, I gave the one I wasn't working with some muffin tins and the Lauri Fit-a-Shape toy and told him to sort them in as many different ways as possible. The Daily Math Activities have started going a little smoother, so that's been good. I had one more math literature book called A Collection for Kate that I read to the boys after that.

After lunch Rabbit and I went back to work. She worked on her Latin root "unus." I am doing the same thing as last year. I'm writing the definition and words on the back of the 4x6 cards, and then using a sheet I made in Word she writes the definition, draws a picture, and writes at least one other derived word and it's definition. Tomorrow she'll use something I bought from currclick.com to write her sentences on.

Next we did the Roman Numerals for math. I still have my Math-U-See Delta stuff from last year, so we watched the DVD and did one of the workbook pages on Roman Numerals. I'm not sure that she really got it yet, so I'm going to make a small sheet that tells the values of the symbols and the 3 rules for using the symbols and put that up in the school room for her to refer to. Then, once a week for the next few weeks, have her do a page from the old Delta workbook. I just want to make sure she gets how they work, and I'm not sure if we'll cover them again in math.

When we were done with that, I remembered that the boys had a Drawing with Children lesson (which Rabbit joins in on). Tigger was kind of frustrated with just scribbling and experimenting with the markers. He wanted to draw something, so I said he could. Pooh thought learning the different elements of shape was cool, and he enjoyed trying to find them around the room.

This evening we did tomorrow's Bible lesson. My husband has offered to help by doing the Bible from RTR the evening before. However, tonight he was doing the dishes since he got home late, so I read the lesson during snack time so he was able to hear what we were studying. The boys joined in asking questions and making comments about what we learned. I'm sure they'll want to do the project tomorrow.

One other thing we didn't get to in 1st grade was Spanish. I'm not sure how I'm going to work that in yet. We'll have to see how long things take tomorrow with adding science in, too.

Best laid plans...

Ahhh, well. Kiddos are all sick. Tigger and Rabbit the worst. Pooh's about a day behind on the sickness. When they feel better, we'll try starting up again. Does give me more time to get organized, except today I'm the one starting to feel sick... Sore throat, mostly. A little sneezy. Hot tea and Cold EeZe are my comforts today.

First day for Rabbit

I'm trying to ease into school for Rabbit, so we didn't really do any "RTR" today. We had a bit of a crazy morning. Tigger didn't sleep well, and then his throat was still sore and still sniffing, so I knew the boys weren't going to do school today. Then, Tigger accidentally dropped his cereal bowl and it broke all over the tile floor. So, there was 20 minutes sweeping and vacuuming added to the morning. The boys watched PBS this morning while Rabbit and I started.

Rabbit and I went over the boys verse for the week. I thought it was a good verse and she will probably join in the boy's Bible time.

Then we did her math. It was really the second half of a lesson she started before she went to visit the grandparents. I basically had to remind her how to do all the problems. Once we got going, she finally started to click again.

After that we had a short snack, and then I helped her write a letter to her pen pal. She had received a letter while she was gone. That took Rabbit quite a while. She dictated to me, I wrote on the white board, and then she copied it.

By the time she was finished, it was time for me to make lunch. So, I did that. After lunch I had her spend some time on the iTouch doing math division drills. Then we listened to the Spanish lessons from The Easy Spanish that we never finished last year. I thought it would be good to at least finish those off. Finally, we started Book 5, Step 1 in All-About-Spelling. The first lesson is a lot of review, so I set the timer for 5 minutes for each section. We did 5 minutes of the yellow cards, then 5 minutes of the red cards, then 5 minutes of the blue cards, and finally 5 minutes of green cards. I figure we'll just do that every day until we've finished most of the review. The yellow cards are the hardest for her. The blue cards she did great - only missing 4 in the review.

One new thing I'm going to do this year is print out a list of assignments from Homeschool Tracker Plus for her. I've entered almost all the things from the RTR T.M. So, I'll print it out and highlight the ones she can do by herself while I work with the boys. This way she can see what is expected overall for each day, and by herself each day. I'm hoping it will start giving her some responsibility and independence.

MFW 1st - Days 6 - 8

Let's get caught up on how first is going.

Day 6 had us making "Jewish Calendars." I went ahead and cut out the calendar and glued the arrows together the night before. Then, I let the boys color them and glue them on their background. (I highly recommend the tiny brads you can get for scrapbooking - much smaller, so your holes can be smaller.) Here's ours:

I read a book about patterns for math time. They liked that. Of course Pooh started recognizing a lot of those patterns when we were out and about after reading the book.

Day 7 finishes out week 2. We just did the things recommended in the teacher's manual, and I had the boys do one sheet out of the Complete Book of Math on patterns. Tigger followed the directions and glued the patterns on the page. Pooh decided he would cut out the shapes, but not glue them, so he could play with the page again.

Day 8 started with Proverbs 10:5. We followed the T.M. again for the Bible lesson. This is a good verse for Pooh to learn, and we will have ample opportunities to discuss this one. We also read The Ant and the Grasshopper after reading this verse, to discuss the consequences of "not gathering our crops in summer."

Poor Tigger either has a mild cold or allergies - sniffy nose and sore throat, so we didn't do 1st grade today, unless you count watching PBS.

MFW 1st - Day 5

Our first Exploration Day! What fun we had.

We started with reviewing the science book pages from a couple of days ago. Then I had the boys search the book basket for books about moles and ants and other animals we might find close to the ground. We read one book about moles, one about ants and one about snails.

Then I said, "It's time to do our experiments." Pooh said, "Really?! We get to do experiments?!" (Can you tell that's his favorite part of school?) The first was to see if we could attract some ants to a piece of bread soaked in honey. It had rained last night, so there weren't many ants out at first. We found some place with signs of ant holes and left a piece of bread (about the size of a nickel or quarter). Later in the day, we found ants on the bread and could see many ants carrying away tiny pieces of bread in their mouths.

The next experiment was to make a worm habitat. First, we made are jar with the layers, and then went on a worm hunt. Well, that was a failure. We tried digging in 3 different places, no worms. But, in the process found a young grasshopper or cricket, so that was cool. I was hoping with the rain the worms could be found, but no such luck.

We came back in, and I had the boys do some pattern block pages. Pooh loved these. They were harder for Tigger, so I helped him out, but he was starting to get the hang of it pretty quickly. These are Pooh's first couple of attempts:

And here are Tigger's:

We looked at the first painting in the blue Come Look With Me book. That was a really interesting discussion. When I asked Tigger where he would want to be if he could be in the picture, he pointed at one of the houses. He said it would be warm in the house (the picture was a winter scene). Pooh said he would be one of the ice skaters.

Then I was hit with the inspiration to go over to Cherry Creek Reservoir for a nature walk. Turns out that a tree on the swim beach was struck with lightning in last night's storms, so that was cool to see the bark and part of the tree stripped off. It looked like the bark just exploded all over the place. And we saw real ant hills along the beach, too. We didn't stay long, but the boys had a good time running around and looking at stuff.

The boys really wanted worms for the worm habitat, so we went to Walmart and bought a tub of night crawlers from the sporting goods department. Pooh kept asking if they were "slimy" on the way home. When we got home we added about 4 worms to our jar and then ripped some leaves into tiny piece to top it off. Tigger didn't mind touching the worms, but Pooh refused to help with that part. (I didn't mind either.) Almost as soon as we added the worms, they started digging into the soil we put in the jar. I had some black cloth from some sewing experiment in the past, so I cut that up to put over the top and secured it with a rubber band. I suspect we'll be checking the condition of the worms daily. Here's a couple of views of our worms:

We're still working on A Bear Named Paddington at bedtime, and the boys are enjoying it.

MFW 1st - Day 4

Well, skipping the bike ride lets us get started by 9:00a.m. I'd still like it to be earlier than that, but we'll take it.

We did read a Prudence and the Millers story and then went over their Bible verse. That didn't take too long.

Started with Tigger in Reading. Pooh worked on some mazes (okay, he finished those really quickly and decided to sharpen all the pencils in his new pencil box). It took us exactly 20 minutes, and that included doing the scroll page, but not coloring the pictures on the scroll page. So, I had Tigger finish coloring the scroll page and do mazes. It took Pooh 20 minutes to do just the Reading portion, without doing the scroll page. While I was making their morning snack, Pooh worked on his scroll page. It didn't take him that long, though.

After snack, we did Math. What I did to streamlline this was make pages for their Math notebook (a 1-inch 3 ring binder) that has everything I want to cover. So, the first page is just a list of the months of the year and the days of the week. We go through the lists, and ask the before and after questions. Then, the next page is a calendar of the month page. So, we count up to the day, cross out the day, read the date, and the day before and after. The page after that has their name, address, phone number and birthday. So, we just work top to bottom through those things. The next page is a weather dial I made in Photoshop Elements - it has arrows on a brad just like the big one on the wall that they can turn to match the day's weather. The page after that is the weather chart to mark off what the weather. The next page is the 100 Chart, and that's my cue to do the Daily Math Activities. So, we work through those, filling in the 100 Chart when we come to it. After the 100 Chart are the "Number of the Day" pages for them to fill in. So, basically, we can just sit at the little table and do the whole routine together. This takes us about 10-15 minutes right now, depending on which kid. I expect it to speed up a little bit once they can say things themselves instead of repeating after me. Then the next 5 or 10 minutes we spent doing our pattern activity. Today I would write a pattern of numbers on the paper, and then they would continue it. Then they wrote a pattern, and I would continue it. We did that a few times, and then time was up.

We had a little scroll activity today - to make scrolls that fit into our clay jars (or in our case, pots) that we made the other day. I had packing paper from a package that arrived recently that was all scrunched up, so I used some strips from that, cut the ends off of toothpicks and glued them to the ends.

Once they dried, the kids rolled them up like scrolls and put them in their pots.

You know, I had a bunch of Model Magic - that would have been easier to get more of a jar shape with than the homemade clay. Oh well. The kids had fun with it.

Next we did Spanish. We only went for about 10 minutes. The lesson was going to be longer, but I stopped it short as it was time to make lunch.

After lunch we did the first art lesson. The kids actually did pretty well with it. Pooh's left hand isn't very stable, but he was pretty much able to do most of the pictures. Even Rabbit joined us for the art lesson, and she was excited to do it.

MFW 1st - Day 3

Well, I've got the routine down, it's still taking us quite a while...

We didn't get started until 10:00a.m. again due to the bike ride. Pooh suggested we do that in the afternoon. I just don't like to because of the heat. And, we've had a monsoonal air mass over the state, so that often means afternoon rain showers. We did a story from Prudence and the Millers and then the Bible time. That was fun, discussing what "the fear of the Lord" means and what "wisdom" means. Since I had them there, we did Science next. They listened, and talked about seeing slugs and ants in the yard. But, when we got to narration, they basically forgot everything. Sigh. They'll get it. I have had them narrate before, but it's been the Miller stories, not science facts.

Today, Pooh went first for reading. When we got to the phonics blending part, he got really distracted by the cut corner - you know, where you cut out the vowels for the blending. He kept staring at the corner looking at how the first page only had one square cut out, the second two squares, and the third three squares. He wouldn't stop looking at it for some reason. So, I got out the Lauri lowercase letters and we used those instead, and he did pretty well with it. I think I'm going to have to go cut all those corners the same so he'll stop looking at them and analyzing them! Then Tigger did his reading time (I had pre-writing papers for them to do from Donna Young's site while I was working individually with them). He wanted to move the vowels around himself for the blending practice. I let him do it a little, but then I did it some, too.

After lunch we did Math. Tigger went first for math, and he did okay with it. I got out the Math-U-See blocks for solving the "what number plus one equals three" equation because it's easier to see the answer with those. This week we are covering patterns, so I got out the Lauri Fit-a-Shape toy and we used those. We did things like: big circle, medium circle, small circle, repeat. I would start a pattern, then Tigger would repeat it; then Tigger would do a pattern and I would repeat it. We only did that a few times, but since we did patterns last year and the year before with the Lauri toys, they're pretty familiar with it. Then it was Pooh's turn for math. He went through it fine, and didn't need the Math-U-See blocks. He loved making the patterns. After we did a few shape patterns, I still used the Fit-a-Shape toys, but we based the pattern on color instead of shape. That was a little trickier, but he got it.

I read two books to them for read aloud time: Goggles and A Letter to Amy, both by Ezra Keats. They liked those. (Then tonight, I read the first chapter of A Bear Named Paddington to them.) I think I'm going to save the read aloud time for bedtime story, because it just seems to add too much to the middle of our day. Again, I barely remembered the next scroll page to start. But, they worked and finished those rather reasonably. I need to work on remembering to do those. I decided to skip Spanish today, but plan on doing it tomorrow.

I've done some streamlining this evening for doing school tomorrow. If it helps, I tell you about it tomorrow. I also really want to try to remember to use a timer for each session tomorrow. Looking ahead, Bible is only working on memorizing the first half of the verse, so that ought not to take more than 5 minutes. Reading time (which includes handwriting) will probably be 15 to 20 minutes each. Math (the subject I've tried to streamline) will probably be 15 to 20 minutes each. I need to have them do their scroll pages - which takes them about 10 to 15 minutes, when you count the coloring and everything. Then we have a (hopefully) short activity, art lesson, and Spanish. Not sure how long the art lesson will take. Spanish is usually about 10 minutes. And I still need to figure out what to occupy them with when I work with them individually.

MFW 1st - Day 2

Well, since we had plans this afternoon and needed to be done early, we skipped our morning bike ride and got started by 9:00am.

We still began with Prudence and the Millers. The story was kind of sad, so that put a sadness over the kids. Then we talked about Proverbs and the purpose of it - Proverbs 1:2-4. Those were some big words for the boys. They really didn't get the idea very well, so I guided them through it. We looked up several of the words in that passage in the dictionary and I tried to explain to them that God wants us to learn these Proverbs so we can live the right way.

For reading, I started with Tigger again. He did the lesson quite easily, but he writes slower than Pooh, because he's trying to write so neatly. He did the blending exercise just fine and finally said, "Mom, can we just be done now." I had a dry-erase book that had mazes in it that Pooh did while I was working with Tigger, which Pooh really loved. Then we switched. I reviewed /a/, /b/, and /c/ from yesterday with Pooh before starting with /d/, /e/, and /f/. Everything went well. Pooh writes faster (not necessarily neater, just faster), so that part of the lesson didn't take as long as it did with Tigger. When we got to the blending, he mixed up /b/ and /d/ a few times, but then he started trying really hard not to mix them up. We practiced the blends a lot and he really tried hard for the lesson.

By the time we finished all that, it was about 10:15 and well past time for a snack. So, we stopped for about 15 minutes while they ate their snack. I got Rabbit going on her computer drills, and then I did math with the boys. Pooh decided to go first for Math, so Tigger played with the Pattern Blocks. I think it's a good thing to do it separately until I'm sure they understand the Calendar and number of the day stuff really well. When I asked Pooh what month was after December, he said, "Nothing." So, I had to explain how that worked. After Tigger finished Math, I had him finish the first scroll page. That went much better having him do it separately from Pooh. When he finished writing his letters, I sent him to his desk to color the pictures and had Pooh finish writing his letters and then color the pictures.

While they were coloring the pictures on their scroll papers, I made the clay from the recipe in the T.M. I doubled it, figuring Rabbit would want to do a jar, too. I added food coloring to the water, following the recipe on the box to make it brown, and then added a few more drops of red to try to get it to be more of a terracotta color. Here are our jars drying on wax paper:

They look more like pots than jars, and they're more pink than terracotta, but the kids loved doing this activity - even Rabbit. I even have some left over.

After lunch, I went over the idea of art class and needing quiet so we can focus and learn how to draw. Then I read Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. That was very much enjoyed. Finally, we did the next Spanish lesson.

So, I figure this all took 3.5 hours again today - but remember, I'm teaching 2 separately for Reading and Math. That's not going to work very well when we start Rome to the Reformation with Rabbit. For sure I'm going to have to drop Prudence and the Millers, even though it doesn't take that long. Spanish may have to be combined with Rabbit's Spanish, somehow. Mostly at this point I just want exposure to the language, so it may not be a big deal, anyway. When we have read alouds in Rome to the Reformation, the boys will listen in on those, and that will count towards reading aloud.

Go!

We did it! We completed our first day of first grade. Whew!

We didn't really get started until 10:00 this morning. The kids got up at 7:30, and then breakfast, brushing teeth, morning chore, bike ride and snack took until 10. I'm probably going to have to figure out a way to speed that up. I hate to drop the bike ride, because the exercise is good for the kids. Getting the kids up earlier isn't an option because they often need a little supervision while getting dressed, and I'm usually not ready until 7:30 myself. But, we'll figure that out eventually.

Now, over the summer we've been reading some of the "Millers" books. Right now we're on Prudence and the Millers. The kids are loving these, and always asking for more. So, we started our school time with reading the next chapter out of that. Then we started the Bible time from My Father's World 1st Grade. Today was a discussion on the importance of the Bible, and how in the olden days they wrote on scrolls. My husband had got dowels this weekend and cut and sanded them down. I took a long sheet of paper (made by cutting packing paper in half) and made a sample for them to see what one would look like. We had a fun little discussion about that.

Next was reading time. I worked with Tigger first, while Pooh did some dot-to-dot pages and colored them. Everything went fine with Tigger, and the blend practice was a good review. I decided to save the Student Page for later since he just did so much writing. Pooh and Tigger switched (and Tigger was very excited to use his new markers and crayons on the dot-to-dot pages). Pooh did fine with everything up to the blending. But, we just kept going at it until it became easier for him. He kept saying /d/ for the "b", even though we didn't do "d" today.

After that, I decided to do Calendar time and the Weather Chart all together. I had found an old job chart from the Dollar Store that I never used, turned it sideways and now I have a chart to go with our weather dial. We reviewed the months of the year and days of the week. Then, one at a time I asked for a month before and a month after, chosing a different month for each one. Did the same for the days of the week. Then we went over how to read a calendar, and what the day before and after today is. Finally we practiced saying our phone number and address, and it was 11:30 - time for me to go make lunch and the kids to go out into the backyard to play.

Thinking about how doing Calendar time and the Weather Chart together went, I decided to do the rest of the Daily Math Activities separately. This was good, because it took a while for Tigger to understand filling in the number of the day page. We never covered subtraction in K (never got to that lesson in the Math-U-See Primer book), so I had to cover that. And, he had trouble with the "what number plus 1 equals 1" equation. But, I kept showing him with beans until he finally got it. While Tigger and I had been doing this, Pooh was playing with the Pattern Blocks. So, then we switched. Pooh breezed through the rest of the Daily Math Activities, but I can see he's going to have trouble with the Calendar stuff. So, I think I'm going to have to keep working with them separately on this until I'm sure they both have it without relying on the other one. After I finished the math activities with Pooh, I got the Student Workbook out and worked on the blending again. He still had trouble with saying "ab" as /ad/, but as we persisted he got better at saying the right one.

Next I read Little Toot to them for the read aloud time. They enjoyed the book, and it was a good story about changing your character, working hard and not giving up.

Then I remembered I was going to do Spanish with them, so we listened to the first lesson together. I'm going to have to move our boom box out of the kitchen and into the living room so we can sit on the couch together and have them look over my shoulder at the book.

Finally, we did the first half of the scroll page - I had forgotten about it until this point. This is when the protests started. Pooh fussed because he was having trouble doing it super neat. Tigger complained because there was "one more thing to do." I did manage to keep my cool and walk them through it. We did it together, but I'm thinking that's not a good idea. They keep looking at each other's papers and comparing.

Overall, not a bad day. It took longer than I had hoped (we didn't finish until about 2:30). But, I had worked Rabbit in there too, getting her going on her Math and writing a letter to her pen pal and getting her going on her computer time. I've got 2 weeks to sort it out before we throw Rome to the Reformation into the mix.