Training Up A Child: MFW 1st Grade

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!