MFW 1st grade: week 11

Boo moved on to week 11 in My Father's World Learning God's Story. This week she learned to read four new sounds /oo/ /aw/ /a/ as in "walk," and /uh/ as in "was." The one thing I've learned is that the English language is crazy! Why do so many vowels have to say /uh/? Why can't we just stick with the letter "u?" (does, was, the, love, what...and don't even get me started on "banana!") It's so hard to teach and so confusing for poor little kids who want so badly to be able to read! So many times a day I have to say "well this word doesn't obey the rules, it says something different." I guess I shouldn't complain since the Chinese children have to memorize 600 symbols or picture words before being able to read simple sentences. We only have 26 letters to deal with, still it's so frustrating sometimes.

Boo is still working on her "Animal Tales," booklet and practicing her handwriting. She had to write a bunch of /oo/ words to make cards for an activity that is scheduled in a week or so.

 Our memory verse this week was Proverbs 12:22 "The Lord detests lying lips, but delights in men who are truthful." We learned the meaning of the words "detest and delight." Then we talked about God hating sins. We learned that we should always tell the truth, so that we can be trustworthy and God will delight in us.

Something new that we started this week is a weather chart. For four weeks Boo is suppose to look out the window and each day circle either "sunny, cloudy, rainy, or snowy" on her chart. I think we will be using the chart for an activity when the four weeks is over.

This week Boo learned to draw a tiger for art.

In math Boo has learned adding her +0,+1, and +2's. This week she is solving for the unknown...? +2=5.
MathUsee introduces algebra problems like these early on because they say it helps with subtraction later on. Boo has done ok with it, but the whole concept confuses her a bit. She still has to count or rely totally on her blocks to find the answers to any of her math problems. The goal is to memorize without having to count, so I think we will slow down with math facts and work on memorizing the ones we've already learned.

We also have a lot of Christmas fun to look forward to this weekend! Sunday all the girls will be singing and participating in their Christmas program at church. We also have our annual Family Christmas baking day.