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.

Yummy Success

After many, many weeks, our rock candy experiment is complete and it was a SuCcEsS!!!

[gallery link="file" columns="2"]

Yum.

Because of Him.

MFW 1st Grade: Week 27 (a twofer)

I smooshed two weeks into one. I hate it when I do this, but magically, it worked this week. We got behind a few weeks back and I reeeeeeeeeally wanted to get to Day 126 by the Monday after our Easter break and start the remainder of the school year on a slightly different schedule. Essentially, instead of having our exploration day on Wednesday we'd have it on Fridays. So, we smooshed. (And, this week we're adding two days as well ... really I don't just tack on a day ... I group like kinds of work and extend our lessons by ten minutes ... so it's not as tiresome as it might sound.)

I will forewarn you that this will be a long post packed with pictures.

Bible

We began with David & Goliath ... such a fun and powerful story. Before we were expecting our little boy from Ethiopia, our blog was called Five Smooth Stones. I love David's heart and tried to impress his grace upon my girls.

We also learned about King Solomon ... the wisest and most lovable king to ever rule. In honor of King Solomon we made jewels out of dollops of white glue. We globbed it onto tin foil and it (mostly) dried into little jewel-shaped blobs. The girls (and Bugs) then colored the jewels with bright markers and, naturally, we made crowns. Why I didn't get a picture of the finished crowns, I can't say ... exhaustion maybe? Sugar also made more jewels to illustrate her Bible notebook.

Then, sadly, Israel split. We noted this on our timeline, which I'll highlight next week since we've added so many new people and events over the last week and a half.

Elijah taught us about sacrifice and faith. Something so beautiful happened for Sugar with this story ... she made the connection, on her own, about evangelizing God's goodness. How awesome is that!?! She began to see a pattern in the momentous figures of the Old Testament and discovered that there was a greater purpose for their lives. I can tell the stories and share the awesomeness of God's prophets, but it just had to come together for her, and it did, with Elijah.

The miracles in the Jordan River with Naaman and Elisha made more concrete the connections Sugar was making with the need for the great prophets of God. She even gave examples of how she could minister to her friends at church. Wonderfulness.

Our bloggy friend at 2ladybugsandalizard (her daughter is wildly artistic ... lovely) inspired Sugar to cut out pictures from her National Geographic Kids magazine to make her Bible notebook illustrations feel more authentic. :) She's sweet.

In anticipation of next week ... Jonah and Daniel ... I found a great little used book on Amazon and prepared a cool craft. Can't wait.

Copywork

[caption id="attachment_563" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="Fear of man will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe. Proverbs 29:25"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_539" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="There is no wisdom, no insight, no plan that can succeed against the Lord. Proverbs 21:30"][/caption]

Reading



We learned a bit about comparison today ... -er, -est ... comparing two things and more than two things.



Sugar met more rules to compartmentalized into her phonics box in her brain. Namely, that wr sounds like /r/ and /m/ is sometimes spelled mb. English is hard to teach and rationalize.

The week ended with alphabetizing, which at first glance seems pretty obvious, but when the words have same first two or three letters, it can get tricky.









I know I've sung their praises over and over, but I appreciate so much how gently MFW introduces grammar. I do not believe in teaching formal grammar at this age or stage of learning, but MFW sprinkles in the right amount, and it is useful.

Math







We are nearing the end of Singapore 1A. One happy girl. Sugar loves math and can hardly wait to crack open 1B. She especially begs for Calculadder, daily. I have to convince her to stop the lessons. Pretty fantastic. I hope her enthusiasm sticks.

ArtPac

We enjoyed a few more lessons in coloring. It's such a sweet, quiet time together. Next year I think we'll likely move on to another approach to art, but for now, this is perfect.



[caption id="attachment_541" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Sparkler ... light and medium"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_542" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="Sugar ... light and medium"][/caption]

Nature

We continued reading aloud from Pagoo. Sugar narrated the two chapters and both girls illustrated them in their notebook. Lots of glitter, sequence, glue, and oil pastels.













The Wee Ones

Sparkler learns the same Bible history with Sugar, but with her Rod & Staff Bible storybook and coloring book. She also listens in on the MFW adaptation of the story, and she listens intently to the same stories (and those in between) from our family Bible. She plays with cuisinare  rods and makes endless math problems. She's a math whiz. She's a natural reader so we give her a basket full of good books to read and look at as she feels stirred. Art is family time so the girls and Bugs do lots of daily art in some fashion. She practices a bit of penmanship daily ... this is her greatest hurdle and another reason I am blessed to be her teacher.

I'll leave you with some precious pictures that need no description. Thanks for reading so long.













Because of Him.

Spring Sun & Bicycles

[slideshow]

The sun is shining, the snow has melted, the grass is greening, the woods are beginning to bloom ... time for learning to ride bikes with daddy! We are so proud of our Sugar who has been desperate to learn to ride her bike for some time ... this day it clicked for her. We will leave you with pictures, instead of the video (since you would be so distracted by this mama's screaming and woo-hoos that you'd miss Sugar's moment). Next up was Sparkler ... she's getting there. Sweet girls. Bugs had snacks and supervised in his warm hat. Happy Spring and thank heavens for little ones and bicycles!

Because of Him.

Spelling Conundrum

I am torn on whether to start Sugar on spelling in August.

MFW suggest Spelling by Sound and Structure with Adventures in 2nd grade, and I believe that it is a solid, affordable program that gets the job done, but yet again, I can't help but nod fervently when I read about Charlotte Mason's approach to spelling through prepared dictation. She also suggests that children should not begin spelling lessons until later elementary ... 3rd or 4th grade, but I am not neurotic (mostly) and so I am led first by the needs of my child, and then by the philosophy that makes the most sense to our overreaching homeschool goals.

SCM has an incredible discussion board that has been such a gift. I am led to Spelling Wisdom because of its practical and pure Charlotte Mason approach, but also because Sugar is not inclined to the language arts side of school as much as the math and nature. I fear that a spelling workbook will turn her off just enough to discourage her from continuing to blossom with reading. Also, she knows the phonics rules. She has them down. She can sound out the most complex words, but a memory and ability to apply every phonics rule will not produce a fluent reader, necessarily, and that is where I'm at with Sugar. Moving from two years of intensive, systematic phonics to reading for fluency, comprehension, and pace. This is where I think that Charlotte Mason sparkles. Bridging Sugar's phonics knowledge with learning to spell through rules and exceptions, when exception are more frequent than the rule in English, just doesn't settle with me at this moment.

Sparkler has begun reading on her own, more naturally, as we have not instructed her in any true way. I'm realizing that she will be ahead of MFWK in reading, but not in phonics per se, so we will press on with MFWK ... it is NOT to be missed. She will also hone her reading skills, I hope, by reading to Sinclair and helping him to learn English.

Between Sugar needed a nudge toward fluent reading and Sparkler needing a little more instruction than MFWK will provide, I am considering Delightful Reading. Meaning, the girls can work together to both learn to read and make the turn from emergent to fluent reader. To be clear, though, I've discovered with Sugar that learning to read is not one-dimensional, and perhaps blending intensive phonics with CM's method is the best of both worlds, and since we homeschool, we have the unique opportunity to meet each child where he/she is at and teach to their needs and embrace their strengths/weaknesses.

For 2nd grade, then, and Kinder for Sparkler, I am leaning toward Delightful Reading as a supplement to MFWK and as a post-phonics, pre-spelling program for Sugar. In 3rd grade, Sugar and I may then delve into Spelling Wisdom.

I'm curious about All About Spelling and All About Reading (for Sinclair) ... so I might change my mind. I do that sometimes.

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.