MFW 1st Grade - Week 13 and 14 In Review

Here I am once again having to play catch up on my reviews.  But if you are a normal follower of my blog then you know that we have been busy focusing on Thanksgiving!  :-)

So I am catching up with what we did last week and this week.  Despite all the fun Thanksgiving stuff we have been doing we have also managed to have two full weeks of school :-) Go Us!!  To reward ourselves we are taking next week, the week of Thanksgiving, off!!  YAY!!  On Monday and Tuesday I am planning on having us come out to the school house because I want to do some planning for school for the month of December (which will be all review of what we have already learned - no "new school" happening that month) but the kids will be able to just play puzzles or watch videos while I work on planning!

But I will post more about all that later - on to our review!

Reading
The past two weeks we have gone through days 49-58 of the teacher's manual of MFW (skipping days 50 and 55 due to the fact that there is no reading on those days - we really are not doing exploration days at all). We have finished the first story of the reader on creation and read the second story this week!  Seth is doing very well in reading.  He is doing better than I would have expected retaining the phonics rules.  I am excited about the month of December - when we will have a chance to cement the retention without worrying about adding another rule almost every day!

I do want to make a note about day 57 when the focus was long vowel e spelled ea - I did things a bit different than the TM stated.  I introduced the rule to Seth of "When two vowels go walking the first one does the talking."  I even made this illustration (picture below) on the board, which Seth really liked (he loves for me to do things like that).  To me I think he will retain this rule better this way than the way that they were having you explain it in the TM.  :-)  He is ready to see other vowels "go walking". LOL!

In Pathways we are really moving right along!  We read 4 new stories in the past two weeks and he is doing REALLY REALLY WELL!!  I can't say enough how much I LOVE THIS PROGRAM!  I have been so impressed with it so far!  He doesn't moan and groan about having to do the worksheets and he reads the stories very well!  YAY!!

He is also still enjoying Explode the Code.  He does his pages as his napwork (that's what we call homework).

Math
We continued our work on addition and subtraction the past two weeks.  He has gotten really good with the addition and does it now using his fingers only to help him.  With subtraction he is still using his counting bears or cubes but is doing well with it.  He has also grasped the + and - sign and know what each one means!

We didn't read as many books on math the past two weeks but here are the books that we did read:
The Smushy Bus by Leslie Helakoski
The Action of Subtraction by Brian Cleary
Subtraction Fun by Betsy Franco
Panda Math: learning about subtraction from Hua Mei and Mei Sheng by Ann Whitehead Nagda

Science
Our focus in science the past two weeks was 'Under the Sea' and 'Sun & Moon'.  As I have stated before all that we are really doing for science is just reading lots of books on the subject we are focusing on.  We will talk about the subject as we read and we also watch some videos as well.  But this is really been the extent of our science focus right now.  Seth is just getting familiar with the subjects, learning the basics through fun stories.

Books we read over the past two weeks on these subjects:
Across the Wide Ocean by Karen Romano Young
Gentle Giant Octopus by Karen Wallace (note on this book - we LOVE this book!  We read this as part of the kindergarten curriculum and were excited to read it again this year.  Octopuses are FASCINATING!)
Peg and the Whale by Kenneth Oppel
Yummy, Yummy! Food for my Tummy! by Sam Lloyd (very cute silly book that the boys loved)
Big Blue by Shelley Gill
Bright Stanley by Matt Bukingham
Waiting for the Whales by Sheryl McFarlane
Follow Me! by Bethany Roberts
Baby Beluga by Raffi
Little Honey Bear and the Smiley Moon by Gillian Lobel
I'll See You When The Moon is Full by Susi Gregg Fowler
Grandpa Takes Me To the Moon by Timothy R Gaffney
I Took the Moon for a Walk by Carolyn Curtis
Catching the Moon by Myla Goldberg
Long Night Moon by Cynthia Rylant
Little Wolf and the Moon by Marjorie Dennis Murray
When the Moon Forgot by Jimmy Liao (Seth LOVED this book)
Full Moon Barnyard Dance by Carole Lexa Schaefer
Little Rabbit Couldn't Sleep by Beth Shoshan
The Moon Might Be Milk by Lisa Shulman
Little Moon Dog by Helen Ward

Videos we watched:
Happy Birthday Moon
Moon Man
A closer look at space: the moon

Bible
We got Proverbs 14:30 memorized last week.  Here is the video of him reciting that. (click here if you are viewing this post from email to see the video on the blog)

We didn't get a proverb memorized this week :-(  (just so much going on I just didn't do a good job getting to that).  But Seth has memorized the first 16 books of the bible now!!  Here is a video of him reciting them!  (once again click here if you are viewing this from email to see the video on the blog)

We also finished our study on creation and we did the story of the Garden of Eden and The First Sin.  I used the stories in the TM but used the stick figures from Grapevine Studies to tell the story with!  Aaron participates in this with us.  Both boys have a notebook to make their drawings in and then after we have completed the lesson both boys have to go up to the blackboard and retell me the story using the pictures on the board!  I am happy with both boys retention but I am so impressed with Aaron's retention!  He is doing so well.  Below are pictures of the boys at the board retelling the story of the Garden of Eden.

And here is a shot of my teacher's manual with my little stick figures drawn in where I want to put them in the story!

Aaron And Alyssa
They are doing better and better about learning how to quietly play during school time.  Aaron loves playing his games on the ipad or playing computer cool school.  And of course having him more involved with Seth now that the bible lessons are more involved has been a good thing as well :-)

Aaron is doing well at his speech therapy sessions.  This week his therapist gave us a homework page of three syllable words to work on saying (working on getting all the sounds in).  Since Seth has recently been introduced to learning syllables I figured out a way to do an exercise that would help both!  I put all the words on a paper (with pictures) and then put three circles beside them.  Aaron has to dot paint or stamp each circle as he says each part of the word (like he did in his session and LOVED) and Seth has to dot paint or stamp each circle when he says each syllable!  They enjoyed doing this!  I think Aaron really liked the fact that he Seth was the doing the same thing he was :-).  Aaron's therapist wants him to be fluent in the words by next week and I think by doing this we will be able to accomplish that!

 Of course Seth had to stamp his hand - LOL!

Of course Alyssa and Aaron also love story time and love watching the videos as well.

And our mascot loves to come in and snuggle during video time as well :-)  Such a spoiled little puppy!

I think Seth is excited about his week off next week!  :-)  He has worked so hard - he deserves it!!

We will have one more "normal" week after next week and then we are going to be in our FUN December school!!!

Until next time,
Kellie

MFW 1st Grade - Weeks 11 and 12 in Review

Hey guys!  I'm sorry I missed the review of last week.  We had a short week and left last Thursday morning for a fun fun "Fall Camping Party".  It was a weekend of camping and doing fun fall activities with some friends of our.  I blogged all about it on our RV journal - feel free to go check out that post by clicking here. I will give highlights from that short week of school, along with this awesome week of school on this post.  :-)
ReadingMan Seth is doing so well in his reading!  It seems to really be starting to click with him! YAY!  Last week for MFW we did days 42 through 44 of the TM.  This included more reading of the bible reader, which Seth is doing very well with.
This week we did days 44 through 48 of the TM (skipping day 46 since it had no reading assigned).  It is neat to see how Seth is starting to retain some of these phonics rules!  YAY!
We have found this week that, at least for creation, things are lining up so well with our Grapevine Studies (explained more further down in this post).  We are doing our Grapevine studies and bible story the day before we learn the new words and read from our bible reader.  (so for example - for those who use MFW - on day 48 in the TM, we will do the bible story and bible notebook on one day, along with our Grapevine Studies, and then the next day learn our new words and read from the bible reader).  What I have discovered this week that is neat about this is that I will leave up the stick figure picture from the Grapevine Studies and I will label it with our new words.  Here is a picture from day 48 - which was day 4 of creation.  You will see the picture (in orange) with the words to learn labeled around the picture. (for the words that were not part of the picture I just wrote them on the side)

I don't know if this will continue to work this well as we move along in the Old Testament - but I am enjoying this for now.  :-)

Seth started reading his Pathways reader last week as well!  He really is LOVING it and is doing it so well!  In the past two weeks he has read the first 3 stories of the book!  We spend two days on each story.  The first day I will introduce the new words and will read the Teacher's story to Seth.  He does very well answering the questions at the end.  And then he reads his story.  On the next day we review the new words and he rereads his story and then we do the workbook pages that go with the story!  I am LOVING this reading curriculum and am so glad we decided to try it out!  I will definitely be doing this Aaron and Alyssa!
Seth has been enjoying doing his Explode the code lessons as his homework every day and is doing very well with that as well.
MathWe are still working on addition and subtraction.  Seth is doing very well with this and really likes his workbook pages from the math book!  He is also enjoying Rocket Math on the ipad as well!  He has to solve addition and subtraction problems to earn money to buy parts to build cool rockets.  He is so excited that he is doing so well with math now that he is earning a lot of money for his game!  :-)
He also had a lot of fun with the workbook pages that involved using the dice!

Books we read for Math over the past two weeks:

Hershey's Kisses Addition Book by Jerry Pallotta

One Less Fish by Kim Michelle Toft

Adding and Subtracting at the lake by Amy Rauen

I can Subtract! It's Not An Act! by Tracy Kompelien

I can Add! It's not so bad! by Tracy Kompelien

Ten Terrible Dinosaurs by Paul Strickland

The Rooster Who Set Out To See the World by Eric Carle

How many blue birds flew away? by Paul Giganti

Science

Over the past two weeks our science focus has been on Beaches and Waves (and we finished up our focus on rivers at the beginning of last week).  Once again we didn't do any of the experiments in the TM - just didn't work out for us.  All of our science focus has been through reading books, mainly storybooks, on the subjects.

Books we read for science over the past two weeks:

Turtle Turtle watch out! by April Pulley Sayre

Lonesome George, the giant tortoise by Francine Jacobs

A Beach Tail by Karen Lynn Williams

Scaredy Squirrel at the beach by Melanie Watt

Sneakers the seaside cat by Margaret Wise Brown

The Riverbank: The Wind and the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

Moonlight on the river by Deborah Kovacs

What is a wave? by Chris Arvetis

A day at the beach by Ed Briant

The Berenstain Bears go on vacation by Stan Berenstain

Sherman swaps shells by Jane Clarke

Otto goes to the beach by Todd Parr

What the sea saw by Stephanie St. Pierre

Old Shell, New Shell by Helen Ward

Videos we watched for science:

Ready Set Larn with Paz: Seaworthy

I Spy: Seashells by the Seashore

Save Ums: Picnic panic in Wave World

Bible

We did not memorize a Proverbs last week since it was such a short week.  Seth memorized Proverbs 13:1.

We have also started memorizing the books of the bible.  The video below is Seth reciting Proverbs 13:1 and the first 6 books of the bible!!  (remember if you are viewing this on email then click here to go view the video on the blog)  And yes, we did have pajama day today!  We had a COLD front come in last night...and since we are not planning on getting out at all today we decided it was a good day to stay in our nice warm pjs. :-)

So far Seth is enjoying the bible notebook (of course it is just a lot of coloring, cutting and pasting on the first page LOL).  Aaron is doing one as well with him.  I will make sure to get a picture of their creation page when they finish.

We are also enjoying our Grapevine studies - we have almost completed the 7 days of creation!  Aaron is also enjoying doing this with us as well!

Aaron and Alyssa

As mentioned above, Aaron is enjoying doing the bible notebook and Grapevine Studies alongside Seth!  

He also started his weekly speech therapy sessions last week and is doing well with those!  He really likes his therapist.

He is also enjoying playing computer cool school while sitting in his bean bag chair!  He will sit there and play his games through all of Seth's reading and math lessons.  (I wish I could get his sister to cooperate as well!)

Sorry there were not that many pictures!  We just get so busy and forget to get the camera out sometimes!

Planning Ahead

We are hosting Thanksgiving Dinner at our house this year and I am so very excited!  I want to put a very big emphasis on Thanksgiving this year!  Starting today, we are going to start decorating our house for Thanksgiving.  The kids are going to help me make the decorations :-)  I have found some really cool ideas and am looking forward to seeing how everything turns out.  I think it will be so very neat!

I am also fixing to start planning what we are going to do for School for the month of December.  It is going to be very relaxed for us.  We will not be doing anything new in MFW or Pathways, or anything else.  It will be a month of reviewing what we have already learned in reading and math.  I am hoping to come up with some fun Christmas games to do our reviewing with.  I thought about taking a complete break but my kids do so much better when there is structure and routine in our day so we will come to the school house.  But it will be for these fun review games or to work on Christmas decorations or work on making Christmas presents.  It should be a very fun month and I am very much looking forward to it!  (just need to figure out how to find the time to plan for it - LOL!)

Well that's it for now!

Until next time,

Kellie

MFW 1st Grade - Week 10 in Review

Well another week has come and gone!  We are just truckin' right along!  :-)  We are looking forward to a short week next week due to the fact that we are CAMPING next week!!  But more on that later :-) Here is what we did this week!
ReadingWe did days 37-41 of the Teacher's Manual (skipping day 40 because there was no reading assigned to it that day.  I have found it to be best to just keep moving on reading.).  This week we introduced our bible reader and read the first couple of pages!  Seth was pretty excited about this.  We even took time to make a cute monster book mark for our reader.

We also just about finished our Before We Read workbook for our Pathway reading program.  We are super excited to read the first book in our First Steps pathways reader next week!
We also did lesson one of our Explode the Code workbook.  I have that this is a perfect workbook to get him to do during his "nap-work" (homework during nap time).
MathWe had quite a fun week in Math this week1  We finished up our study of geometry by reading a book that was teaching the different shapes using Twizzlers candy! Of course this was a winner for the kids!

We also started our focus on addition and subtraction.  Seth loved using his counting bears to complete the worksheets in the math book.

I also set up our restaurant for the kids.  You can read more details on it by clicking here to see the post I made yesterday about it (and even print off your own menu and quest checks, and waiter tally sheets if you would like!)  This was a big hit and is a fun way to teach addition. Seth was adding 4 numbers together playing this game!!

Books we read for Math this week:The Mission of Addition by Brian P ClearyMission: Addition by Loreen LeedyDealing with Addition by Lynette LongAdding Puppies and Kittens by Patricia J MurphySubtracting Puppies and Kittens by Patricia J MurphyPointy, Long or Round: A book about animal shapes by Patricia M StocklandTwizzlers Shapes and Patterns by Jerry Pallotta
Videos we watched:Math Monsters: The making of Tens
Science   For science this week we did days 33-36 of the Teacher's Manual and focused on Rivers.  Our focus was mainly through reading books and watching a couple of videos.
Books we read for Science this week:River Day by Jane B MasonWhite Water by Jonathan LondonRiver Friendly, River Wild by Jane KurtzThe Raft by Jim LaMarcheThe Turtle and the Hippopotamus by Kate BanksBig Day on the River by Sarah WilsonThree Days on a river in a red canoe by Vera B WilliamsWhat is a river? by Chris ArvetisDaisy Comes Home by Jan BrettUp River by Frank Asch
Videos we watched:Magic School Bus Wet All OverMagic School Bus Goes Upstream
BibleWe had an exciting week for bible this week! 
First - we memorized another Proverbs.  Here is Seth reciting Proverbs 12:22.  (remember if you are viewing this by email click here to view the video on the blog).

We introduced the timeline this week.  I didn't get a good picture of our timeline.  I used the string that I had attached to the wall for hanging our projects.  I haven't decided if I am going to put the pieces that you are suppose to add to the timeline here or with the Grapevine Studies timeline I have on the other side of the room.  Still thinking on that one.

I put Seth, Aaron and Alyssa's birth years on the timeline
Speaking of Grapevine Studies we started that this week!  YAY!  (sorry...forgot to get pictures).  Aaron is participating with us in this :-) and I think both boys are going to enjoy this!  I just really think this will make the bible verses so much more interesting than just reading them to the kids!  
Another activity that was in the book for this week was to write a letter to a relative (and explaining that the bible is like a letter written by God).  Well we were already planning on writing a letter to Mimi this week so that worked out perfect!  (So Mimi keep an eye out in your mailbox...it should arrive hopefully tomorrow!)
We also introduced the bible notebook this week :-)
Aaron and AlyssaI already mentioned how Aaron was participating in the Grapevine Studies stick figuring through the bible with us!  I am excited that he will be doing this with us (and I think he is excited he gets to do something that Seth is doing!)
Of course Alyssa and Aaron also get to be involved with the restaurant game!  They do a very good job being customers for Seth and love ordering their food!  :-)  

They are still enjoying exploring their busy box at times.  Those times are golden!  :-)

Alyssa LOVES LOVES LOVES to write on the white board!  She drew this "masterpiece" on Monday.

What's funny is that I didn't erase it and Tuesday and Wednesday she didn't even ask if she could draw on the board.  Thursday morning though before she woke up (we can sometimes get to the schoolhouse and get something done before she wakes up) I erased the board and even mentioned to Seth that she would probably want to draw again since I erased her work.  Sure enough, as soon as she walked in and saw the clean board the first thing she did was ask if she could draw! LOL!
Oh well - I guess at least it kept her busy!
We had a fun day at co-op classes today!  Alyssa is sound asleep and the boys are half asleep on the couch watching cartoons!  Co-op classes wear us out!!
Until next time,Kellie

MFW 1st Grade - Week 9 in Review

It's hard to believe this school week has already come to a close.  Even with me struggling with allergies to the point that I had to go get a cortizone shot on Monday, the week still flew by!  (And thankfully we didn't lose any school days due to my sickness...I just kept plowing through!  Of course it helps when the kids are so excited about school.)

We are getting into a really good routine.  Seth has learned that when we get in the classroom he is to get his daily folder out and work on it.  In that folder I have his number of the day sheet, calendar page, place value chart, weather graph, tally mark sheet, and measuring page (he is drawing lines that the length of the number of the day in cm).  He has really in the past week or two gotten very independent with this folder, which is what I was trying to accomplish!

Reading

We did days 32-36 of the TM this week (omitting day 35 since there was no assigned reading that day).  The rules are getting a bit harder for Seth to grasp but he is really doing a good job though.  On the review the next day he doesn't have a problem and when there are words put in his reading lists from past rules he remembers most of them.  But this week we did the /or/, when /ir/, /er/ and /ur/ make the /er/ sound, the /aw/ sound spelled aw and a, and the short u sound spelled a, e, i, o and u.  I think Seth has decided that the vowels are just mean because they try to be so tricky to him.  (I think I have to agree - LOL!)

I have added another thing to our curriculum that I think will help him grasp these rules and that is the "Explode the Code" workbooks!  I ordered book 1 and it came in this week!  We did the beginning consonants pre-test this week, which he passed with flying colors.  

I am excited that next week Seth will be introduced to his MFW bible reader and will start his readings in that book! YAY!  :-) 

We also made great progress in our Before We Read workbook for the pathway readers.  we did pages 16-39 this week!!  He is loving this workbook and does not complain AT ALL about doing any of it!  This week he learned to read the names of the eight basic colors (red, blue, green, yellow, black, brown, purple, orange) and he has got them down!  He gets excited when we come to another worksheet to review them (just a few short months ago I couldn't get him to color for nothing!)

Today we got to the page where they introduced Rachel, the little girl in the family that he will be reading about in the readers.  I had to tell a short story about her and then have him answer questions.  He got all the questions right and really seemed to enjoy the story! YAY!  He is getting very excited about starting the book about this family!

I think I mentioned before about taking the knock-off version of a Jenga game and adding words to the blocks for a reading game.  I introduced that game to Seth this week!  I showed him a word on each block and for each one he got right he got to use that block in the game.  When we finished reading the words we played the game (Aaron played with us).  They had a lot of fun with this!  We played it two days this week!

our tall tower - right before it fell!

Math

We did days 28-31 this week.  To be honest I didn't spend much time on math this week.  Seth has always been really good at knowing his shapes and sizes.  He even did his worksheets out of the Math book as part of his homework a few days and had no problem at all completing them.   We did, though, read a lot of books on shapes and sizes this week.  This not only helped cement the concepts for Seth, but also helped Alyssa and Aaron with them as well.

Books we read on shapes and sizes:

The Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns

Tinka by Rainy Dohaney

The Wing on a flea: a book about shapes by Ed Emberley

Two Greedy Bears by Mirra Ginsburg

The Littlest Dinosaur's Big Adventure by Michael Foreman

My Very Own Book of Sizes by Guy Smalley

Circus Shapes by Stuart J Murphy

What is Shape? by Tea Benduhn

Color Zoo by Lois Ehlert

Learning About Sizes by Tina Thoburn

We also watched a Math Monsters video on geometry.

Science

This week we focused on our Thunder and Lightening theme.  Other than reading the pages in our Things Outdoors book, we read a lot of books on storms and thunder and lightening, and watched some videos as well.  And God helped us out this week by bringing us a good rainy, stormy day!  Seeing that we have been in a HORRIBLE drought lately, we welcomed the storms with open arms and enjoyed every second of them!!  :-)

Beautiful grey clouds during a break in the rain!!

Books we read on thunder and lightening:

Why Does It thunder and lightening? by Chris Arvetis

Are you ready to play outside? by Mo Willems

The Monster Storm by Jeanne Willis

Thunder-Boomer! by Shutta Crum

The Berenstain Bears count their blessings by Stan Berenstain

One Dark Night by J.J. Hutchins

Videos we watched:

Magic School Bus Kicks Up A Storm

Peep and The Big Wide World: Stormy Weather

Bible

Seth memorized Proverbs 12:18 this week and we talked about healing words vs hurting words.  Here is the video of him saying his proverbs.  He had trouble all week remembering the word piercings.

(If you are viewing this post via email click here to go view it on the blog).

I showed him the page of the greek alphabet and agreed to try to copy a few of the letters, but wasn't interested in doing the whole page, and I didn't push.  I also showed him the Genesis 1:1 verse written in Hebrew.  He thought this was pretty cool and had fun decorating it with trees and flowers and grass. (I forgot to get a picture of it).

I am super excited to start our Grapevine Studies next week as we begin our Old Testament studies!

This week instead of doing copy work of our Proverbs we wrote a letter to our missionary family that we are praying for.  (remember last week I mentioned that they have a boy the exact same age as Seth).  Seth told me what he wanted to tell his missionary friend and I wrote it on the board and he copied it onto his paper.  He was much more willing to write this letter than he is writing his proverbs.  He did a very very good job with it too!   We got a small toy to send with the letter today and got the letter in the mail.  (We realized though that we are not going to be able to send a toy every time because the shipping cost was quite pricy...oh well...we did find out that sending just a letter sized envelope is not!  Seth said he could just draw him pictures :-) )  It is neat to see him so excited about writing his friend!  

Aaron and Alyssa

Aaron had fun doing pages from a boy's busy book that his Granny had gotten him.  It is a book that has lots of stickers, and stencils and coloring pages.  He enjoyed doing these this week while Seth worked on his reading lessons :-)  He loves stickers so much!  I am going to have to try to find some inexpensive stickers.  I seriously think I could stick a page of stickers and a white sheet of paper in front of him and he would have fun and be content with that for quite some time!  (same things for going cutting paper)

I am, of course, still trying to figure out Alyssa.  (I swear I will be writing this statement every week - UGH!)  This week was kind of a tough week.  She was in a destructive mood and really didn't want to do anything that I would like her to do. No, she was just trying to destroy the school house!  UGH!  I did get her to watch her show on the computer one day.  Man, that was a nice day!

We did enjoy some puzzle time this week!!  

 she played puzzles for maybe 5 minutes!

It was all in all a good week!!  :-)

We are headed to see Mimi and Poppy this weekend!

Until next time,

Kellie

MFW 1st Grade - Week 8 in Review

Wow!  Another week has FLOWN by!!  Where does time go??  We only had school for three days this week due to the fact that Aaron had two different dr appointments on Tuesday!  Tuesday just ended up being a run day!  I went ahead and did my grocery shopping and errands while we were already out so that we only lost one day of school!

Reading

We did days 28-31 of the Teacher's Manual for reading this week.  We skipped the Day 30 Exploration day for reading since there wasn't any assigned reading on that day.  So this week we focused on learning the /th/, /oo/ (as in book), and /ar/ sounds.  Seth is seeming to get bored with the same drill of reading the words on the page every day.  So today when we were working on the /ar/ sound I just wrote the words on the board and had him read them off the board.  That really seemed to help.

I have heard a lot about the Pathway Readers by Rod and Staff publications!  I have a good friend who uses them and loves them!  I was able to get a close look at them a couple of weeks ago and decided that this would be really good for Seth.  I went ahead and ordered the first books.  We started on the first workbook "Before We Read" this week and Seth is loving it!!! It is so very simple but yet it is keeping his attention and is actually enjoyable for him!  We are still doing the MFW reading... but starting in 2nd grade of MFW there is no reading curriculum, and they give suggestions for curriculum to supplement with, but they don't have any recommendations for continued phonics... that is a bit unsettling with me.  I believe Seth needs at least another year of phonics, if not a couple of more years.  This Pathways curriculum does that!  And the good thing about it is that, no matter what I decide for next year, I know I have my reading curriculum decided on :-).  (Yes I do believe it is that good that I can go ahead and say it will be our reading curriculum next year...it is impressing me that much!  And to top it off - IT IS CHEAP!!!!)

Anyways, I know I probably give too may details, LOL!, but we completed the first 15 pages of the Before We Read workbook this week!

Math

We did days 25-27 of math this week, finishing our concept of numbers and counting.  This was an easy week for math for us.  We mainly did all of our math through reading this week :-)  And I have to say, again, Aaron and Alyssa have really strengthened their counting skills by listening to the stories as well!  Aaron impressed his Granny and PaPa last night by counting to 20!  :-)

Books We Read for Math this week:

Skip Count by 10, Let's Do It Again by Tracy Kompelein 

Skip Count by 5, It's No Jive by Tracy Kompelein

Skip Count by 2, Now Can You? by Tracy Kompelein

1,2.3, It's Easy For Me by Tracy Kompelein

Too Many Balloons by Catherine Matthias

Buzzing Bees: Discovering Odd Numbers by Amanda Doering Tourville

Click, Clack, Splish Splash: A Counting Adventure by Doreen Cronin

Science

This week we did days 25 through 27 of the Teacher's Manual.  We finished our study on rain, and started talking about thunder and lightening.  I have to admit - we did not make it to doing our experiment on making rain...just didn't work out this week.  We did enjoy reading books on the subject though.

Books we read this week for Science:

It is Stormy by Kelly Doudna

It is Raining by Kelly Doudna

Rumble, Boom!: A book about Thunderstorms by Rick Thomas

Why Does It Rain? by Fran Harvey

I Love The Rain by Margaret Park Bridges

Raindrop, Plop! by Wendy Cheyette Lewison

Franklin and the Thunderstorm by Paulette Bourgeois

Smudge by Julie Sykes

Bible

Seth memorized yet another Proverbs this week.  He memorized Proverbs 29:11.  Here is the video.  You will need to turn your speakers up because he is soft spoken in the video today.  (as always if you are receiving this through email you will need to go to the blog to view the video.  Click here to do so).

We also learned how to draw a map of the bible lands this week using the silly little poem in the teacher's manual.  Seth caught on to this really quick and did very well drawing his map.

The Teacher's Manual mentioned making a large map to put up in the room to refer to when we start doing our Old Testament study in a couple of weeks.  Well, I tried but I kept being unhappy with my drawing and the placement of the countries and places when looking at other maps that I decided to just find some good maps online that I could print and use.  Next week when we revisit our map again and to learn the bodies of the water I will outline around my printed off map with the lines that Seth can make to make his map .  but I feel that the printed map with all of the places already labeled will be MUCH easier to use in the Old Testament lessons!

Here is a picture of my nicely printed maps - on the wall, ready to go!  (I found a map of the whole area, and then a close up of Israel showing Jerusalem, Bethlehem, etc...

We are just within a couple of weeks of starting the Old Testament Study!  I am so very excited!!  The reason why I am so very excited is because we are going to be using the Grapevine Studies Stick figuring through the bible!  It goes along with the MFW lessons so well and I think Seth will really enjoy these and it will help him to learn the stories and put a really fun spin on it!! 

The friend of mine that introduced it to me has already completed the Old Testament Overview with her kids so she is letting us borrow her timeline that she made of the old testament.  I got that put in our room this week!  It hangs over the top of our whiteboard a bit, but, thankfully our board is big enough to handle it :-).

When we do the timeline with MFW we will just clip those pictures along this other timeline where they fit in.  I think it will work so nicely together and I am so very excited about this!

Here is a couple of pictures of the timeline up on our wall.

trying to show how it stretches across the whole long wall, and turns to go a bit as well.  The picture really didn't come out well.. oh well...

Another thing that I want to mention in the bible section this week is the fact that we have a missionary family that we are praying for as part of our homeschool.  Our church supports over 100 missionaries from all over the world.  Every year families choose a missionary family to pray for for the next year.  We just had our service where we did that a few weeks ago.  I chose a missionary family to personally pray for and I also chose a family for the kids to pray for as part of school.  The family I chose was the Picketts, who are missionaries to England.  This family is quite special to us.  Daniel and I really liked them when they came to the church while on deputation almost 10 years ago and have kept up with them since then.  Then they had a son on the exact same day that Seth was born!  Then last year they were back at our church while on furlough and Seth got to meet their son and they really hit it off!!  In fact, Seth asks about him all the time!  So with that history I thought they were the perfect family for Seth to be praying for this year!  Seth is also going to become pen pals with their son!!  I have gotten their address and we will be working on our first letter and package to him next week!

I put up a poster with a picture of the family, a world map so he could see how far they were from us, and a close up map of the United Kingdom.  Here is a picture of that poster (I have blocked out their address on the poster for this blog).

Aaron and Alyssa

A couple of weeks ago in co-op classes Aaron's Around the World class learned about Australia.  They got to do some dot painting, like what is done in Australia.  Aaron really took to this and did an excellent job on his picture!!  He has been talking about doing it ever since.  So this week he got to show Seth and Alyssa how to dot paint.  Here is a video of him explaining dot painting.  I figured that we always have a video of Seth, we need one of Aaron too.  (remember to click here if you are viewing from email to view the video on the blog)

Alyssa wanted to draw on the white board again today.  I gave her a marker and man did she go to town!!  Look at this piece of art!!

Aaron is taking more and more interest in school!  He is really trying hard at his counting and his letters and is enjoying doing workbooks with Seth!  It's neat watching him take interest.  :-)  Here are the kids watching Leap Frog's Letter Factory!  It just seems like yesterday that Seth was watching this!  After just a few times watching it Seth knew all his basic letter sounds!  I am hoping Aaron catches on as quick as well (which I really have no doubt he will!)

We have another fun filled day of co-op classes that we are looking forward to tomorrow!

Well that's all for this week!  For a shorter week of school, this really turned out to be a quite lengthy review! LOL!!  There are just some exciting things happening!  And it just thrills my heart that the kids ask almost every night "is tomorrow a school day?" and when I say "YES!" they start jumping up and down getting so excited!!  It just THRILLS my heart!!

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!! See you next week!

Kellie

MFW 1st Grade - Week 7 in Review

Week 7 is in the books!!  Whoo Hoo!!  As I am typing this post we are sitting out at our campsite :-)  We have decided to have a nice relaxing weekend in the RV!  It has been so long since we have been able to take the RV out due to this HOT summer we had!!  It is nice to get in the outdoors (even though the days are still pretty warm, at least the nights are cooling down).  And to make it even more fun we have some friends that are joining us with their RV tomorrow morning!!  :-)  I believe lots of memories will be made this weekend!

We only had 3 days of school this week due to the fact that Aaron had a speech therapy evaluation on Monday!  But Seth was able to have a little bit of "school" at a friend's house while Aaron and I were at the evaluation.  He just about memorized his new proverbs there and worked on some phonics and got to play with a pocket chart having fun with word families.  Thank you Mrs. Angela for being the "substitute" teacher that day for us!  (oh and Alyssa enjoyed being spoiled by their family that day as well - LOL!)

We did Days 24 - 27 of the Teacher's Manual this week for reading.  (we skipped the day 25 exploration day since it doesn't involve reading).  We continued our work on long vowels and today worked on the sound /oo/ as in spoon.  Seth was so funny with this one.   He kept trying to add the /n/ sound at the end of it.  He was so cute.  I figure I had him say /oo/ 50 times or more - LOL!  But he started getting it at the end.

MathWe did days 22 through 24 of the math grid this week.  We continued our work on learning numbers.  As I shared a couple of days ago Seth learned about the alligator that likes to eat bigger numbers (greater than/less than signs)

Books we read this week for Math:
Prairie Dogs Perching: Counting by 3s by Amanda Doering Tourville
Sunning Sea Lions: Discovering Even Numbers by Amanda Doering Tourville
Hiding Hippos: Counting from 1 to 10 by Amanda Doering Tourville
Look Who's Counting by Suse MacDonald
How High Can A Dinosaur Count by Valorie Fisher
Counting by Sar Pistoia
Underwater Counting by Jerry Pallotta

Science
We did days 22 through 24 of the teacher's manual this week for science, which means we finished our study on trees and started our study on rain.  Of course it would be a lot funner to study rain if we could actually experience some rain.  Here in Texas were we live we are under a very bad drought right now (in fact the lake we are camping at this weekend is quite low!  There are large beach areas that are  usually not there).  But I guess I can show them how things in the state they are in outside right now are a result of no rain and how the ground and the trees and the animals need rain to survive.

I am looking forward to our experiments next week.  We are going study evaporation by watching how water disappears from a bowl (shouldn't take too many days to dry up that bowl - LOL!) and we are going to create rain!  (oh how I wish we could maginfy the amount we are going to create and actually produce a good rainfall outside! Oh well - I guess creating a little bit in the kitchen from a jar will have to be good enough).

Books we read this week
The Busy Tree by Jennifer Ward
One Rainy Day by Christina Butler (VERY CUTE book!!)
When Rain Falls by Melissa Stewart

Bible
We memorized Proverbs 16:24.  Here is the video of Seth saying his Proverbs.  (remember if you are viewing this from email you will have to go to the blog to see the video)

We also didn't get to our activity of making a bible costume today since we wanted to get things packed up for camping... I am hoping to work that in to next week sometime.  I have planned my lessons for next week - that will be the week where Seth (and Mommy) learn how to make a map of the Bible lands map!  That should be very interesting!  I am going to have to get creative though on the day that we are suppose to be looking at a globe and a flat map...because I haven't gotten our globe yet...

Aaron and Alyssa

As mentioned, Aaron had a speech therapy evaluation on  Monday and is being recommended for speech therapy.  We are playing the waiting game right now waiting to see if insurance will cover it with this facility that we had the evaluation at.  In the meantime I have been given good information to start working with him at home.  I have found several websites that have a lot of good printables, games, etc for us to do.  And I have found some good ipad apps (which works well since Aaron LOVES the ipad).  I mentioned the Tiga Talk app the other day in this post if you want to read more information on that.



Aaron and Alyssa have finally shown interest in my "busy box" that I made up for them!  I am so excited and hope that the activities will hold their attention while I try to work with Seth.

I didn't do a very good job getting pictures this week! I am hoping to have some more schoolroom pics to show next week :-) I have figured out yet another way to rearrange my room to give us more space and have better use of the space we have!  Hubby has agreed to getting in there with me on Sunday afternoon to help me move things around!  I am so excited!!!  It will make a BIG change, but will solve a lot of the headache I have been having with the room set up :-)!!  I can't wait to share pics with yall!!

But for now I am going to go back to relaxing with my family!

Until next time,
Kellie