MFW 1st: Week 28

Another full week for us in anticipation of Easter break next week with Grammy (and a tonscilectomy ... bleh). Like I mentioned before, my goal was to get through Day 125 before Easter so that we could start on May 2nd with Day 126, which lands our Exploration Day on Fridays. Much better for our crew.

Today (Friday) we will be making a neat Jonah craft, meeting up with Pagoo, and tackling much-neglected science experiments. Next week, on our break, we will still have a Proverb to learn and apply (Proverbs 10:9) and we will do one science experiment per day. We are nearly finished with our read-aloud, The Doll People, and we are ridiculously excited to be moving on to Mr Popper's Penguins during our quiet week, as well.

To recap our awesome week in which we said goodbye (for now) to the Old Testament ...

Bible History

Jonah! What child does not love the story of Jonah and the whale? It was such fun digging deeper into the story and learning about what made Jonah a prophet of God.













I found the most darling used book called The Man Caught By a Fish by Brem and I have a neat art project planned for our lazy Friday. The whale is depicted in this book as a giant goldfish and the story is awfully endearing.



We witnessed as God allowed the enemy to capture Israel and take his people as prisoners to Babylon. Oh how this made Sugar upset!



For two reasons Sugar loved the story of The Fiery Furnace. 1) She loved saying "Nebuchadnezzar". 2) She loved the image in her mind of the angel of God in the furnace with the three Jews. When deciding how to illustrate her Bible notebook, she opted for only showing the fiery furnace, as she felt that the image of the angel was too heavenly to put onto paper. She is so sensitive and intuitive.







Even Bugs was riveted by the story of Daniel and the Lions. Another special story of faith in God and in his mighty plans. On a separate note, I'm really eager to see the new big cat movie by Disney and I am pretty certain my kids will be enthralled. Some of our most favorite conversation relates to faith, being faithful, God's faithfulness, and providence, especially as we continue to wait with utter faith that His timing is perfect and that we are called to demonstrate our unwavering faith to those around us. We surely try to these sweet Bible stories really echo our daily adoption walk.





Queen Esther. So beautiful, clever, and full of heart for her people. (Here's my very own Queen Esther, complete with our homemade crown with our homemade jewels from our lesson on King Solomon).





When Grammy is here next week we will have a little Purim celebration (yes, we know that was in March) complete with Hamantaschen cookies. Mmm.

What we took most of all from the story of Esther was how fervently and intentionally she prayed before doing anything. Excellent lesson. She also reminds us to always be a voice for the voiceless and to use our gifts and place in life to stand up when others cannot. Sugar loved this story so very much.

As our Old Testament journey came to a close, we finished with the Jews returning home, to Jerusalem. Beautiful.



Our timeline is gorgeous (if I do say so) ... it really came together and wow does Sugar feel a sense of accomplishment seeing all that she discovered thus far. It has been incredibly useful to all of us ... we read from the Bible nightly and the girls hop up often to see when things happened in relation to the Bible we learned in the Old Testament with MFW.



Copywork

[caption id="attachment_603" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. --Proverbs 25:21"][/caption]

Reading

This week Sugar was introduced to irregular plurals (man ... men), antonyms, and infrequent sound-spelling variations.









Sugar continues to read aloud to me for 15 minutes per day, and I read aloud to all three for 30 minutes per day. Language Arts take a 180-turn come the week after our Easter break. I can hardly wait for the fresh changes to our lessons.

Math

Sugar completed Singapore 1A!!! She breezes through most math, and I have to reiterate that I believe this stems from her early exposure (first semester of first grade) to Miquon math and Cuisenaire rods. We get to crack open Singapore 1B after Easter break ... pretty fabulous how refreshing our start to school will be after our little break.

This week was spent on shapes and measurement. I think that she was happy for the departure from addition and subtraction for a bit.







Sparkler and Bugsy are always in the mix ... learning, laughing, making messes, and having cookies.









Art

Isn't doodling and drawing on a chalkboard the.best.ever? Sugar thinks so. She feels very teacher-ly, I suppose. :)





Kattie at 2ladybugsandalizard is hosting this week's MFW linkup. It's always enlightening reading and learning from other MFW homeschool families. Enjoy!

Because of Him.

♥Second Grade♥

I think that I can honestly say that with every bit of my being I have poured over every nuance of far too many homeschool curricula ... My Father's World, Beautiful Feet, WinterPromise, Simply Charlotte Mason, Heart of Dakota, Five in a Row, Queen ... the list just never seemed to end. Just ask my husband.

Before I ever actually taught with MFW I received a catalog and thought, whoa, I *must* teach Adventures in My Father's World. Must. Here we are, nearing the time when we should be preparing for Adventures, and I started wandering.

My two big worries with MFW Adv is that it is too much of a cursory overview of history with a state study that felt unbalanced in the framework of the year, thus not enough living Early American History, and it does not shine with the pure Charlotte Mason that I adore so much. What to do, what to do?

So, I wavered on pulling together my own Charlotte Mason curriculum with the help of Simply Charlotte Mason.  I came upon Module 5 and I was smitten. It had the depth I was seeking alongside beautiful Bible family study and smart Geography using a truly inspiring work. (ETA: It is not as thorough as I at-first thought, but it is beautifully written and the history spine, A Child's Story of the US, is so, so good. SO good that today I ordered the SCM rendition to use with our history upcoming.)

But, then I reigned myself in and looked at the much bigger picture. Ideally, I would like to hold off on putting Sugar into the 5-year history cycle with MFW until she is in fourth grade. This would make Sparkler and Sinclair second graders and I am more comfortable with those ages/levels beginning together with Exploring Countries and Cultures. Looking waaaaay down the road, this also means that when Bugsy is ready to be folded into the history cycle, all four will be in Explorers to 1850 and Bugs will have the second/third-grade supplement from the Adventures year. This works simply and comfortably in my mind and heart, and that is more than half the battle.

Essentially, this gives me two years, second and third grade, as sort of gap years before beginning the history cycle. I printed out the TOCs for Adventures and Module5 (SCM) and started dissecting. I compared the topics of study, how many lessons/weeks per event or figure, I sought to decipher a method to the order and choice of topics, and then I plugged in living books that I cannot do without (and that will put my mind at ease since our library is mediocre, at best, and I am too orderly to simply hope that I will find the living books I desire) to enrich the studies.

Even though I lost hours of my life doing this task, I am SO thankful I took the time. I discovered that I need to do Adventures this year to give Sugar the pegs on which to hang more in-depth Early American History study a little later. "A little later" being third grade, in which I plan to
teach Module5 from SCM in full
 craft my own curriculum for the year, and it will be another year of American History ... perhaps with Module5 since it marries Early American History alongside World History of the same era ... or it may be something entirely different than SCM (too soon to tell). I am learning to take this one year at a time. Sugar will be more ready to delve into the beauty and harsher realities of the making of our nation. My heart says she needs another year to reach that readiness, aside from the fact that she will be tackling so much new learning in second grade ... cursive, grammar, spelling, and one-on-one with Jesus Bible study.

Adventures will allow her the grace to flourish and to find a confidence in her learning before moving forward with the curriculum that fits her best at that time. Module5 is lovely and pure Charlotte Mason, and that vibe is the soul of our homeschool, well, at least I hope it is. I love Beautiful Feet so very much that my husband has gifted me the opportunity to order the Early American History guide and literature (all but the spine and CDs) ... these gorgeous books will be the cornerstone of our book basket, which I will also fill with books that I can find with ease at our library.

At this point in our journey, MFW meets the needs of my children by establishing a balance between the nature of CM-inspired, literature-rich learning and Classical sensibilities, while keeping Christ at the center.

I love American history and I am eager to spark a passion in her for the people, events, and places that shaped our country, and to instill a patriotism to carry close.

Because of Him.