Up to Week 23 in MFW 1st

Well, we're in the middle of Week 23 in MFW 1st (that's day 110). Tigger is doing really well with his reading and math. The math part surprised me, but he really seems to get the concepts. Pooh is a bit weaker in the reading (but does fine with the math, although he does it slowly). I have added All About Spelling for both of them, and it seems to be helping Pooh some, and he likes it, so I'm going to stick with it. But, if his dyslexia turns out to be more severe, I might have to turn to Barton's Reading.

What the boys enjoy most is science. They've been doing Astronomy in RTR with Rabbit. I've been using Jeannie Fulbright's free Astronomy notebook for the boys. They love drawing the pictures, and then they tell me a little narration and I write it on the pages for them.

We've been doing all the experiments we can from the 1st grade program too. Today's subject was "Making Water Work." The demonstration (or experiment) was to build a water wheel. One of the items called for was a styrofoam egg carton (or two). Well, we don't have any. I was trying to think of what to use, and then I remembered the left-over plastic Easter eggs from last year. So, we took the "larger" half of those eggs, and used a hot glue gun and glued them on like this:

Then I glued the other side on (again, with a hot glue gun). We didn't have any spools, but we do have lots of K'nex, so we used a K'nex rod and two wheels from that in place of the spool and pencil like this:

We taped the wheels to craft sticks rather than the rulers, and then rested the craft sticks on rulers so, it looked like this:

Then we tried it to see if it would really work, and it did! (Make sure you do this near a sink, as water does splash off the wheel.)

So, anyway, definitely try to be creative with building the models and doing the science experiments, even if your days end up long.

Up to Week 23 in RTR

Sigh. Five weeks since my last update. Let's see if I can get caught up.

In RTR, Rabbit and I have been cruising along just fine. We got up to about 1400 or so in Europe, and the curriculum backtracks a bit to cover the same time period in China, Japan and Australia (I think we hit Russia next week). It has been interesting to note how a feudal system developed in both China and Japan, without having any contact with the West.

One of our fun projects was to build the model of a medieval castle (it comes with the curriculum). It's a lot of work, and I did most of it, but once I got into a rhythm, it wasn't bad. I bought a 1/4 inch thick poster board and we built it on that. We tried some different craft glues and Elmer's. Different glues worked better in different situations. Rabbit did a presentation at our homeschool group on castles after we made it (she cut out and glued on all the figures):

In science we finished up the Human Body and began Astronomy 2 weeks ago. The last unit in the Human Body was the reproductive system. Don't miss The Wonderful Way Babies are Made. I didn't read it to my 6 year olds, but it was perfect for Rabbit. Now that we've switched to Astronomy, we had another great "line-up." We're studying Mercury this week, and Mercury is visible in the sky just after sunset, along with Jupiter. We hope to get out tonight to be able to see it. (This website has details.) I've been trying to do all the experiments and projects. It's tough, because our days go longer, but the kids really enjoy them. Here is our model of the solar system:

We used a bead for Mars because it was so small. We should have used a bead for Mercury too. But it looks great and the kids really got a feel for how things compared in size.

We finished up memorizing 1 Corinthians 13 and are now on to Philippians 2. These are great verses for a family to "rememberize" to remind us how to love and how to treat each other. In Luke we're up to Passion Week, which I think is perfect as we approach Easter.

We haven't been doing as many of the Art lessons from God and the History of Art these days, but we are reading the History. And, if there is a lesson that she finds interesting, we do that. We have been listening to the music and really enjoying Mozart. We recognize lots of the movements.

We are now in Singapore 4B in math. I really like the way they've been teaching fraction to decimal (and back) conversions, and wish I would have learned it that way when I was in school. I will say that the reviews, in both the workbook and textbook seem WAY longer than in 4A.

English and Writing Strands continue to step up, but Rabbit is usually up to the challenge. Our latest Writing Strands assignment was to write a description of our home. I don't think we did as great a job as he implied we should do in the lesson. But, we have a rather large house, and it would have taken us many more days to complete the lesson. I told Rabbit I'd like for us to try again with it this summer, now that we have more of a feel for the lesson.

We're still in Level 5 in All About Spelling. I'm not sure if she is going to finish it this year. More of the tricky words ("If the sound is /long-e/ then it's i before e except after c") are in this level, and they are giving her trouble. She is recognizing more and more when she misspells, but still can't always figure out the correct spelling.

School has been going pretty well. We added in piano last week, so that is also adding to our days. Rabbit has taken right to it, and practiced every day.

RTR Week 17 - Lefse

Well, we tried making "Lefse" today, since we were studying the Vikings. We followed the recipe in the TM, except we only had 6 potatoes to use. This still made 10 "Lefse." I'm not sure I made them thick enough, but if I made them any thinner, they would stick to the counter, even after flouring the counter and my rolling pin.

We topped ours with cinnamon, sugar, and honey. Warning: they are VERY filling. These would be better for breakfast or lunch, not for desert!

School has been going well. Rabbit doesn't like the stuff about wars, so she had a really hard time with drawing the Bayeux Tapestry this week. (Follow that link, and you can see the whole tapestry with a description. Someone posted it on the MFW boards.)

Rabbit is about to finish Singapore 4A. These Review pages are taking a long time. We spent an hour on the first review, and still didn't finish.

Tigger and Pooh are progressing through 1st. I was really proud of Pooh this last week. He had dictated me a summary, I wrote it and he said, "I can copy it by myself, Mom." So I let him, and he did a pretty good job! He did misspell 3 words even though he was copying. But, he remember to put a space between each word and worked very hard at writing neatly for him. And, when we went to the grocery store he actually read "Jet-Puffed" off the marshmallow bag by himself.

Tigger plows along. We got fortune cookies from the grocery store, and he even tries to read his fortune to himself.

They LOVE exploration day and insist I start with the science reading and do the experiments. We're on the water book, and those are fun experiments. If you can, make sure you go to the hardware store and get some clear, flexible rubber tubing for some of the water experiments. We haven't been able to do a couple of experiments because we haven't any.

Back to School

Well, it has obviously been too long since I updated my blog. We started week 15 today (so I'm going to skip filling in the weeks we've done since my last posting).

I think it was fortuitous (or perhaps Providence) that there was a recent discussion on the MFW message boards about Story of the World and how it introduced Islam. Thanks to that discussion, I was able to preface that reading with, "Now, this is what Muslims believe happened, and what they pass down to their children." The kids totally got it and compared some of what we believe as Christians as compared to the little bit discussed in the passage we read today. The Muslim Fact Cards were also helpful. Be sure to read the verses that compare Muslim beliefs to Christianity.

The rest of the day went quite well. Since we had done the lung experiment last year, we didn't repeat it today. But, I did read through the description again. Everything else went smoothly, even math (fractions!). Again, Providence played out in English. A few weeks ago in Writing Strands we had worked on point of view - telling a story from 1st person and then retelling the story in 3rd person. Today's English assignment from Intermediate Language Lessons was similar - write a story in 3rd person, and then rewrite it in "autobiographical" form, meaning 1st person. Since we had done the Writing Strands lesson before, it was pretty straight forward. We outlined what we were suppose to talk about, and did most of the assignment orally. Rabbit even asked if, "Later, can I rewrite the story differently."

The boys surprised me in that they didn't forget much over our long (for us) Christmas break. I didn't do MFW 1st today, but instead did All About Spelling, had them read to me, and had them do worksheets with math fact problems. Tigger even did a couple of math pages from a Lightning McQueen math workbook I picked up sometime in the past. I told the boys if they could read the last story in the second 1st grade reader from Abeka, we could go onto the third book. They both did well, so I'm going to go on to the third book in the series. They sat in on the Bible, History and Science of RTR, so I figured that it was good.

I love it when we have a good day of school, and God's hand showed up in the details with the discussion on the MFW message board and the fact that we had already done a similar lesson in Writing Strands before coming to it in English.

Winter 2010 Worship Dance Recital

Rabbit's Winter 2010 Worship Dance Performance: An Audience of One

Rabbit's Winter 2010 Worship Dance Recital

Danced to "An Audience of One."

Hope this blesses your day.

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.