MFW 1st grade: Week 2

Well school is now in full swing over here! Boo is starting to get the hang of how all this new 1st grade stuff is going to work. Her first subject every morning is reading/phonics while Sis does her math and spelling. So far reading has all been review. She is still reading CVC words and practicing sounds. We've only learned short vowel sounds up to this point so our words are limited. We're one lesson away from finishing our handwriting review of all our upper and lowercase letters. She's been working really hard at it though.

Boo is still really struggling in math, but I keep saying that she's only 5 and she will get there. We spent this week reviewing our numbers and practicing writing them. We also did a lot of practice with place value and reading larger numbers. I've decided we're just gonna take it slow and move at her pace. When she's ready we'll move to addition. I think that pushing her ahead will only cause frustration and cause her to hate math. Another reason I love homeschooling...In a classroom she would probably be left behind as the class moves on to the next level. Here I can help her at her own pace until she's got it, with no pressure or grades. There were a few tears shed and a few "I'm no good at this!" I just tell her school is not a competition. As long as she's trying her best that's good enough. The Lord will help her to remember and understand her math as long as she keeps trying and doesn't give up.

We started using "Science with Plants," for science. We will go back and forth between 3 different science books over the course of the school year. This weeks lesson was about soil and leaf litter.

Boo's science project was to collect a pile of leaf litter and examine with a magnifying glass to see what she could find in her pile...sorry no pictures.

She also had to gather a scoop of soil from the backyard into a glass jar. Add water to the jar and watch it over the next few days to see if the different particles in the soil separate. the heavier parts of the soil like sand and rocks sink to the bottom and the lighter ones like pieces of rotted plants float to the top.

One of our projects this week was for history was to make a Jewish calendar. Ok so I went back and forth as to whether we should do this. One because Boo is still learning our regular calendar and I didn't want to confuse her with extra info. Two because Sis did this same project in 1st grade and I don't remember her actually learning anything from it. I was all set to toss it and then another MFW mother pointed out that the little chart was still cute for teaching the months and seasons...I ageed sooooo...we ended up keeping it but totally skipping all things Jewish.lol...We colored the seasons and then we colored in the month we are in. We talked about which months fall in which seasons and we hung it up to color in each month.