Week 3 of MFW Learning God's Story

http://www.kidsofintegrity.com/

This week has been a rough one!  We've had a lot going on with our extended family recently, and stressed mama = stressed babies!  Squirrely Girl has also taken to lying, which is something we obviously are wanting to nip in the bud.  In our search for something to address this issue, I ended up stumbling upon Kids of Integrity.  It's from Focus on the Family, and is a site with lots of parental resources with some important topics.  We're planning on using the site as needed for character development, along with a few other resources. 

Learning God's Story

School work for the past week has gone well.  Much of the initial stuff is still review for Squirrely Girl, but she hasn't complained of boredom, so it's all good!  Can't hurt to cement the phonics rules in her mind in any case.

Bible:

Our verse for the week is Proverbs 9:10:

"If you really want to become wise, you must begin by having respect for the Lord."

We've all been working to memorize the verse and apply it to our lives.  We were also able to tie in our talk about obeying our parents and being honest with how we show honor and respect for God.  It was great! 

Both of the girls have been doing really well with memorization!  In all honesty, I wasn't quite sure how well they would do with this, but I can see that sometimes we really are just dumbing things down for them when it doesn't need to be!  They're little sponges, just waiting to soak everything up!




Language Arts:

Squirrely Girl and Bear have been working with short vowel sounds.  I went ahead and laminated the foursquare cards and added some Velcro for the sentences.  This way, they're more durable and can be used again and again!

Bear has been continuing to practice her ABC handwriting as well.  I'm still using highlighters to write out much of what she's writing, but her work is already much neater than it was a few weeks ago.  She also has gotten a lot better at matching upper and lower case letters together.

Squirrely Girl has also continued with her leveled readers, and has taken it upon herself to read books to Bear and Bubba in the afternoons as well!










Math:

This weeks topic was sorting and classifying.  We went ahead and went with the lesson plans, and Squirrely Girl ended up completing all of the worksheets from CBM for the week.  She really likes the expanded form cards.  A lot.  She has asked to use them several times after we've already finished school for the day, and has sat there using them. 

Bear did the hands on work for this week as well as some worksheets with comparing quantity.  We also got quite a few free printables from 3 Dinosaurs a while back that I had laminated, so she's been using those to practice counting and addition.

Bubba has been playing with lots of our manipulatives this week as well.  One of his favorite activities right now is to play with the magnetic letters on our front door!  

Science:

This weeks science topic was Flowers.  In addition to the reading and activity in the TM, we read quite a bit about flowers.   The kids really enjoyed reaching The Magic School Bus Plants Seeds.   

We also used this simple little game to remember the parts of a flower and talked about what each part does.  It's just a worksheet that we colored and laminated.  I wrote numbers on the back and the kids rolled dice to get a piece of the plant.

Art:

For Science/Art, we ended up making these great Season's collages instead of making a seasons booklet.  I went ahead and laminated them because I'm planning on cutting them apart and using them, along with plants and animal cards, for sorting.  I figure it will be a great way to include harvest times as well as hibernation.

How was your week? What fun things did your kiddos do this week?  I'd love to hear about your activities in the comments!

Circle Time

I love how our "circle time" starts our school day off.  It gets the kids into learning mode in a gently way, and I am able to knock out some of our books that we are reading together.  I love that we will be able to do part of our learning together before breaking apart to do age appropriate work. 

I had read numerous blogs about what they were doing for their "circle time", but none of them seemed to be exactly what I was wanting our morning to look like.  Then, I stumbled upon The Unlikely Homeschool.  This seemed to be just what I was looking for! Instead of the traditional circle time we think of with preschool, her family uses a "Start the Day Together Basket". 

I immediately fell in love with the ideas presented in her post, and went to work putting our own version of the basket together.   This is also where we keep the book basket books pertaining to the weeks topic.  I love that I have everything that I need for starting our day all in one convenient, portable place.

What does circle time look like for our family?

• I usually begin with a few songs. 
  These include hymns/worship songs, learning song, and game songs. 
• Following singing, we work on our memory work.This includes our verse for the homeschool year as well as the Proverbs we will be learning each week.
• We then read out of our devotional or bible storybook.
  
• Next, I read aloud from one of our read-alouds.This includes folk tales, fairy tales, poetry
• Then, we read a book about our science topic.On Mondays, we read from the Usborne Science books from MFW.  The rest of the days, we read various books about the topic from the MFW "book basket" suggestions and others we find.
• Finally, I go over any instructions needed for the day.

 

So, what exactly is in our Start the Day Together Basket?

Every week the contents of our basket change a bit since we are using this as our book basket as well.  I include books on topics we will be covering and some pertinent flashcards as well if we have them.  Even so, a few things remain in the basket.

•  Science with Plants
• Science with Water
• Things Outdoors
• Fun with Nature: Take-Along Guide
• The Big Book of 5 Minute Devotionals
• Folk Tales from Many Lands
• 365 Read-Aloud Bedtime Bible Stories
• Index cards with our memory verses on them.
• An activity to keep little hands busy.  (I really like these and these.)
   

As the kids grow, I'm planning on adding composer and artist studies along with map work in the mornings.  For now, this is just enough for a 6 year old, 4 year old, and 2 year old to handle.

 

 

Does your family have a circle time to start the day?  What all do you include during this time?

I linked this post to

Hip Homeschool Moms

2014-2015 Homeschool Verse

This is our second year homeschooling, and since Squirrely Girl is now a First grader, I am now doing something more structured.  I've already spoken some about our decision to use My Father's World curriculum.  I had seen it on quite a few blogs, and when I was researching curriculums I kept being drawn back to this one.  God has a way of weeding through all of the unnecessary stuff for us!

In addition to doing the MFW 1st Grade: Learning God's Story, my husband and I are really wanting to focus on biblical character training.  This led us to adopt a verse for the year.  Since our kids are still so young, we wanted to start them out with a good foundation on how we should act. 

So I sat down, bible opened before me, and prayed that God would lead me to the perfect verse for our coming school year.  As I began reading, I was drawn to Galatians 5.  I immediately knew that this was a wonderful verse for our family for the upcoming year.  With all of us trying to become more structured with our schooling, we are bound to have hard days where the tears flow and the frustration levels rise.  What better thing to cling to than our Savior's provision to handle all these things?!

 

 

With everything that I am wanting to include in our day--from the math facts and phonics lessons to the science experiments and cooking lessons--I don't want to forget to focus on what's truly important.  One of the most important reasons we decided to homeschool was so that we could "train our children in the way they should go" (Proverbs 22:6). 

If in my zeal to check off my lesson plans and cram as much fun, interesting instruction I can into their little brains I forget the weightier matters such as love and mercy, then it is all for naught.  God gave me these three little blessings to raise into people that love and praise Him with every fiber of their being.  How will they know unless I point them to the One who did it all? 

Above all, if my children learn nothing else this year, I want them to learn to rely on God and know that in Him we can be victorious in all things.  Through Him we are able to truly love, have pure joy, a peace that surpasses understanding, patience in all things, show kindness at all times, goodness in all circumstances, faithfulness in following Him, a gentle spirit, and self-control. 

To help the kids memorize the verse, I got the bible verse printout as well as the fruit basket printouts from Christian Preschool Printables.  I laminated the verse and hung it in our living room so that we would see it often throughout the day.  I also laminated the fruit basket pieces and used some Velcro to make a game for the kids to practice our verse.  We've played many variations with it, and already Squirrely Girl has memorized our verse.  Bear in well on her way to having it memorized as well. 





Does your family have a verse for the homeschool year?  I'd love to hear your story in the comments.