MFW 1st grade: Week 1

Boo finished her first week of 1st grade! I wrote a little about our first day of school in the last post. Now I wanted to write about Boo's new curriculum and her first week.We started My Father's World: Learning God's Story.This was a pretty light week for her because the first couple weeks are mostly review. We're working on getting use to our new workboxes and reviewing everything we learned in K. My favorite quote from week one..."This year we will be learning history. History is all the things that have already happened in the past." "Like wars?" "yes exactly!" "oh and like when Abraham Lincoln discovered the faces on that mountain (referring to Mount Rushmore)"  Hmmmm...I think we have a lot to cover yet! HA!

We talked about scrolls this week in history. We learned that before there were books old writings like the bible were written on scrolls. We started a large scroll project that will have all the letters of the alphabet written on it by the time it's finished. She's done a lot of practice writing her letters this week. For an art project she also made a mini scroll. We used popcicle sticks, white construction paper and brown watercolors.

For science we started reading "Things Outdoors." Our lesson was called "Close to the ground." We looked at what types of things that live close to the ground and what we can discover about soil, plants, bugs, if we look a  little closer.


Boo also started her own read-aloud time with mom. Our curriculum is the one that suggests to read aloud to your child daily. I have to admit though that I started feeling guilty. Boo and Baby Bear have always joined  us for story times and we often all 4 read a bedtime story together too. However, I realized that Boo and I have never really got to have that one-on-one reading time without her sisters like Sis did when she was little. Somehow it seemed a little unfair and I don't know if the benefits of daily reading to your child are as effective if it's in a group setting. When you have an only child it's so much easier to find alone time to spend with that child. When you have 3 or more that gets much more difficult and you end up doing more things as a group. So something new that we are doing is Boo and I sneak off while Sis is doing independent work and we read a picture book just the 2 of us. I started going through our at home library and we found a huge pile of book that Boo has never even heard (books that Sis and I read all the time when she was little!)..another confirmation that Boo needs her own story time with mom.

For Bible Boo has her own devotional book this year. Each page is a full color story that teaches a lesson and a Bible verse to go with it. This is the first year that the girls have done Bible time separately. We still have family devotions and worship after dinner with Daddy so I'm not too worried about splitting them up at school time. I do miss doing our Bible story and discussion together though. I'm thinking we will go back to that at some point. So far though Boo has liked this book.

To say math has been frustrating this first week is an understatement. As part of our math we will still be doing calendar, weather, and a 100 chart daily. We have decided to stick with MathUsee this year. It seems though that summer has caused her to forget what a number is! We're slowly trying to recover the information she forgot before we move forward with anything new. I'm praying that somehow math gets easier for her soon.

Overall I think we're off to a good start. Later in the year Boo will be reading stories on her own and making a special bible notebook. Looking forward to posting about the rest of the school year.

HOD: Preparing Week 1

It's that time of year again! Time to get back on schedule and dive into all of our new materials. We just finished up our first week back to school. We decided to embark on a new adventure with Sis and chose "Heart Of Dakota: Preparing Hearts For His Glory" for her core curriculum this year. So far I am very happy with our choice. Boo began "My Father's World 1st grade: Learning God's Story." (I will be blogging about her first week in a separate post. I decided it will be easier for those following only one grade level curriculum if I post each separate.
 Today I wanted to write about Sis's first week of 4th grade and I will write about Boo's 1st week in a separate post under the MFW 1st grade"tab.

Our first week started out kind of slow. I am still recovering from a surgery. I like to start out slowly anyway to get us back in the swing of things. Our first day was really light. I introduced the girls to their new books and workboxes. We also had our annual school supply hunt again. I decided to change that up this year though. I know they like picking out their own folders and pencils so instead of hiding our usual school supplies. I hid 10 $1 bills in the back yard. Each girl got $5. I made a list of things we needed yet and after our lessons we headed to the Dollar tree for each girl to pick out her own new supplies. We did a little bit of reviewing, had a short lesson, and spent the rest of the day at the County Fair.

HISTORY:  This year's history is an overview of all of history, beginning at creation and moving chronologically focusing on key events till present time. Most of our books are real "living books" and we will be learning about history through stories that bring it to life rather than traditional text books.

The first of those books is called Grandpa's Box.We read the first chapter
together on day 1. This is part of Sis's history curriculum. I have to say I LOVE this book so far. We will be reading through it over the next month or so. It's basically a story about a grandpa who has a yellow box full of little wooden figures that he's carved. He uses each wooden figure illustrate part of a story that he's telling to his grandchildren about a great war we are all part of. It's the great spiritual battle all Christians are fighting that began long ago in the garden of Eden. We made our own "Grandpa's Box" and as we read each chapter we draw grandpa's little figures. We're going to laminate them and store them in our box. This has been one of our favorite parts of week one.



Sis is also using Draw and Write Through History this year. She is a natural artist and drawing is sort of her thing, so she's liking this part of the curriculum. On certain days she has to write a paragraph on a history subject and then follow step by step instructions on how to draw the pictures. This week she learned to draw a plant, a tree, and a dinosaur and wrote about the very beginning of world history.

Another thing I like so far is the weekly history project. Each week Sis is assigned a special project that relates to her history lesson. She will work on it a little (about 10-15 mins) each day. This weeks project was to research a "coat of arms" and design your own coat of arms and shield.


MATH: For math this year we are continuing with MathUsee. Sis does really well with this curriculum so I see no need to try other things. She began Delta which focuses mainly on division this year.

BIBLE:  

I am so excited about the Bible curriculum we choose this year. We are using Apologia's Worldview :What We Believe Curriculum. This year we will be going through book 1of 3 which is "Who is God?". Sis is at a place in life where she has a lot of questions and a lot of "how can I know for sures?" She was needing something deeper than just bible stories.We have been trying our best to help her and answer all of those questions. Then I came across this! The first words out of Sis mouth after our first lesson "Wow mom this book is gonna be perfect for me! It's about a lot of the stuff I've been asking about!" Some topics dealt with are : Where am I building my life? How can I know what is true? What is God like? Why isn't the world perfect? Why did God create me? Already one week into this curriculum she and I have had so many great and important discussions. The text also comes with a journal of activities, worksheets, and pages for recording prayers and praise reports.

LANGUAGE: 
We decided to stick with the same materials that we used last year for English. We will be using First Language Lessons For the Well Trained Mind Level 4. After I bought the books and realized the whole year is diagramming sentences I was sorry I chose to stick with it. However, Sis's response was "YES! I love diagramming sentences!"..hmmm I will never understand that one but I guess if she's happy, I'm happy. For spelling Sis is using 5th grade Rod and Staff. There is also a lot of LA in the HOD manual including a weekly poetry study, vocabulary words, and handwriting. 
This is Sis's Vocabulary Journal she has to choose 3 out of 5 words from our history text to look up in her dictionary. Then write definition, a sample sentence, and a picture for each word. I let her pick out a new sparkly blue notebook for her journal so that was exciting to her. However, our first vocabulary assignment took her 1 hour! I'm praying it's just because it's new. 



READING:

I decided to use HOD's reading/literature program this year "Drawn Into The Heart of Reading" (DITHOR). Sis LOVES to read and even in the summer she spends most of her day reading books. I send her outside to play, look out and shes reading a book on the trampoline or swing. This is the first year though that we are trying an actual literature program. Sis will study one specific genera of  literature at a time. Reading 1-2 books in that category. I let her pick the order that we will do them. She chose Historical Fiction first. I knew she would because our book choice for that is "Little Women," which is set during the civil war. This might be odd for a 9 year old but mine has been obsessively in love with Little Women for about a year. It is her most favorite cartoon. She knows all the names and about each of the March sisters. She will sit for hours watching episodes over and over again (she had 80 episodes DVRed!!!)  and tell me all about it! I'm not complaining though I would rather that be her favorite show than most of the options available these days! However, she has never read the classic book! So she was jumping up and down excited when I told her I bought her Little Women as one of her literature choices this year. She will either read aloud to me or read silently on her own. Then she has a workbook with daily assignments where she will answer questions about her book and learn about the genera. Before each new genera there is a "kickoff day." For our historical fiction kickoff Sis chose a character and time period in history, made up a story and acted out a little historical fiction play for me. She chose to be a pilgrim heading to America for the first time. Boo wanted to join in and so she pretended to be on the boat too with a suitcase full of cheese and a toothbrush! Weird kids. 

Our first week was very tiring! We're all still trying to get out of summer mode. I think it was a successful week overall. Next week we will be adding science to our list and I can't wait to write about that one. It looks like it's going to be a lot of fun this year!

Workboxes!!!!!!

Well it's been 2 years that I've been playing with the idea of workboxes. I've watched numerous Youtube videos, heard other mom's talk about theirs, and even tried a simpler version with folders, but I finally decided this was the year. I'm finally going to implement a workbox system in our homeschool. A lot is changing with Boo starting 1st grade. K was only about an hour a day, but now she will be having longer school days. Our schooling has been transitioning from 1 student and a tag along, to two students (but one with really light work), to two full time students doing separate curriculum! This is completely outside of my experience and a little overwhelming! What will I do when I have 3 in school! yikes! I'm praying that we can find some sort of system that works for us and that things will begin to flow more smoothly a few weeks into the school year. Workboxes sounded like a great idea for keeping everyone on track and all of our work organized. In other areas of my life I am very unorganized so I know that if I don't put in a real effort our school days could quickly turn into a frazzled disaster!

For those of you unfamiliar with workboxes. This is a whole system that was created by Sue Patrick that uses boxes or drawers to organize your homeschool materials, helps kids stay on task and become more independent. The idea was originally designed to help children with autism or ADHD stay focused, and better visualize their day. However, so many homeschoolers loved the idea that it became apparent that this a great system for all homeschoolers!

Sue's system is a bit more complex than ours. Hers consists of 12 boxes for each child, a schedule strip for each days work, centers set up for them to work at, a box for finished work, lots of removable labels, posters, charts. Everyone does workboxes a little differently though and uses whatever is best for their family.If you want to learn more about the original workbox system you can purchase her book or here is a link her site with a short video...Sue Patrick's Workbox System

I decided to keep ours simple..Here's what ours look like so far. As we get experience using them I'm sure we will change some things as we find out what works and what doesn't.

I've heard pros and cons for the different types of boxes. Most people use the rolling carts with removable trays, some even use shoe boxes and shelves. I like the colorful rolling carts, but have heard some complain about them not being very sturdy. I also don't like the idea of my kids being able to roll their carts around. I decided to go with more sturdy plastic Sterilite drawers that I found at Walmart. These are sold in sets of 3 12x12 drawers for around $12 and they are stackable so you can buy as many as you need and snap them together to build a tower. The only down side so far to these is that the drawers are a little bit harder to take in and out than the trays are.

Sis has 9 boxes (3 sets of 3) and Boo has 6 boxes.  Since I decided to keep ours as simple as possible,  we're not using the task cards, schedule strips, having the removable labels on our boxes, or a separate place for finished work. I decided it would be easiest to put more permanent labels on their drawers rather than being able to switch the subjects/drawers around. I taped simple handwritten labels to the insides of the drawers so that they show through the front. Sis's Spelling drawer will stay her spelling drawer all year and she'll know exactly where that drawer is located.

While we do have a small school room for our supplies and books. We don't actually do much "schooling" in there. School more often just happens where ever we are, dining room table, living room floor, couch, bed, backyard, etc...and we like it better that way. (off subject and a moment to rant..but) A few years back I loved the idea of having a school room in our home. It helps at times to have a quiet room for Sis especially when there are little ones running around and we need somewhere to keep all of our stuff.  However, I made up my mind a while back that I didn't want school to feel separate from the rest of our lives and if I wanted my kids to sit in a classroom all day I would send them to school! Ok back on track...Anyway,I decided to keep our workboxes in the dining room where we will have easy access and be able to see them all day.

This year for 4th grade Sis will be using Heart Of Dakota: Preparing Hearts for His Glory. I will label each of her drawers according to the subjects scheduled in her manual that we will be using..her drawers are: History (which will also include the Independent History section), Bible, Spelling, LA, Storytime, Weekly Activity&Project, Science, Math, and DIHOR (which is her literature/reading.)

Boo will be using MFW 1st grade:Learning God's Story. Her boxes will be labeled according to her curriculum: History, Reading/LA(this includes her bible), Handwriting, math, Science, and Read-aloud.

Once we find an order that works well for our subjects then I'll try to put our boxes in that order. I'm thinking Bible first and then try to schedule Boo's harder subjects while Sis is doing independent work. Basically this is how it will work. I will put the boxes in the order I expect them completed that way there's no need to number them, so they don't need to be told what we are doing next. When it's time to begin a new subject they will each go get their next box for the day and take it to where ever they are working (Sis likes to do a lot of her independent work in her room. Boo is usually in the living room floor or at the table) Their box will contain all the materials they will need to complete the subject even a sharpened pencil in each drawer. I will help each child with completing their box as instruction is needed.

We will probably take a small break in between each box for a snack or outside time, etc. When both kids have completed all their boxes for the day we're done!

I made red laminated circles with velcro sticky backs for the front of each box. All the boxes will start out with a red dot each morning. When the girls finish a box they will put their finished work inside the box on top and they will also remove the red dot from that box and place it inside the box. Now the box is marked "done." Then they will return their box to it's place in the cart. This way if we do decide to skip around boxes they will easily be able to tell which boxes are complete. They will also be able at glance to see how many boxes they have left to complete for the day. When all the red dots are gone, they know they're done! If there is a subject/box that we will not be using that day I will just leave the red dot off of that box that morning.

That's pretty much it! Pretty simple, yet I think it will help our days run more smoothly.