As I have mentioned, I have changed some things. I have to be honest and say I just decided that I have not liked the reading/phonics portion of My Father's World 1st Grade, and neither did Seth. I finally came to the realization that it just was not working for us and decided to stop fighting it and just set it aside. Thankfully I have found Pathways and LOVE Pathways so that made sitting MFW aside easier. :-)
So for our Reading/Phonics we are mainly concentrating on the Pathways readers. We have stepped it up a notch and Seth is now reading a new story every day (we will of course take breaks as needed). He read four stories this week and did very well! I also ordered the Climbing to Good English workbook that goes along with the Pathway readers and we started that this week as well. Seth is still doing Explode the Code for his "napwork" and I have a couple of other workbooks that I am using as fillers as I see fit. I am really excited about these changes helping his reading really take off!
We are still using MFW for the bible stories, doing like I have been doing and combining them with the Grapevine Studies Stick Figuring Through the Bible. That has worked for us and I believe will continue to work for us. I am having Seth read the bible story in the bible reader as we do that bible lesson. I was very pleased at how well he was reading those this week. I have to help him some, but not as much as I thought I would have.
For Math we are still working on the Complete Book of Math but I decided that it wasn't challenging enough for him. I think Seth is going to be a math wizard so I wanted to turn it up a notch. My mom, being a public school teacher, has given me many resources. One of the things she gave me this summer was a teacher's edition and student book for Scott Foresman Math. We are adding those lessons. I will be honest, it is not my favorite layout, but I think with some tweaking I think I can make it work for us for the rest of the 1st grade year and then I will do research and hopefully find a math curriculum for 2nd grade that I like (and will probably try to find another one for 1st grade when it comes time for Aaron and Alyssa to get there...but for now it works and saves me some money in the present time).
For science we are sticking with MFW as well but I am doing research online to try to add in some other experiments and stuff to add to it.
Handwriting is another area that I am in an "I don't know" stage right now. Seth hates handwriting, it is a struggle to get him to write anything, and I feel his handwriting needs MUCH improvement. I have tried Handwriting without tears, and he will handle it sometimes...but not always. I am going to try the Draw Write Now books and see if that works with him doing some copy work of the sentences that accompany the drawings. We shall see...
Anyways - sorry that was a small book - but those are the changes.
Here are some pictures from our week :-)
I found a neat app on the ipad - it is a spelling app where you can make your own lists. So this week when we discussed the new words presented in our Pathways story I would put those words in a list and then let Seth have fun spelling them out.
Here's a cute shot of Seth reading while Aaron is on the ipad playing his games.
We had an activity this week with our bible lessons of making a map of the bible lands. For ours I drew out the bodies of water on posterboard that we colored blue and then we used the Crayola air dry clay to make the land masses. (I have a plastic lid for a container that has not had a container for some time that I am using to keep the map on). I wanted to make sure that the clay is able to dry well - next week we will label the map. I want to make some little figures out of game pieces so that we can use this map to show areas where people are as we go through our bible stories.
Seth wanted me to get a picture of the map they made with the map we used as our guide. :-)
PUZZLE TIME!! The boys got 24 new puzzles for Christmas!! So we will be adding lots of puzzle time in our school time LOL! (of course if you ask me I like puzzles SO MUCH BETTER than any video game!)
Seth discovered his reader bookmark this week (I forgot I had it). It is a book mark that he can move along the page and it shows one line at a time through the window. He really enjoyed using this to read his stories. Hey! Anything to help him want to read is fine by me!
I had to throw this picture in of Alyssa. She decided to throw a dinner party for her dolls and animals on the couch one day.
Ok - I have to admit - we did not do a good job of getting our Proverb memorized or working on our books of the bible this week...I am hoping we can do a better job of that next week :-).
But that's our week!
Until next time,
Kellie
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