MFW 1st grade: Week 20

Week 20, finally!! The 1st grade curriculum has 34 weeks. That means 14 weeks of school left for Boo. That would put us at the end of June. I'm trying to decide what to do. We will probably just keep moving at our own pace and end up having some short lessons through the summer months with breaks in between. Considering that we have been doing some weeks at half speed, plus we're going on a family vacation before June, I'm thinking we're not going to finish before summer. I already know that Boo will at least need reviewing (especially in reading) through the summer anyway to retain what she's learned this year.

I have been seeing notable improvement in her reading though, she is starting to be able to recognize more words without my help and being able to sound out words faster than she could a few months ago. She's getting there. This week we learned the the /kn/ and /gn/ just make the /n/ sound.


We also continued stories about Moses. We learned about the burning bush and all of the plagues on Egypt. Here are her notebook pages. The writing is really light, so it's not showing up well in the pictures.

Boo also learned to read number words and we labeled the 10 plagues in the order that they happened. For math we practiced subtraction.

Here is a pic of Boo having fun dying her Easter eggs this week.

Unit 26: Preparing

History:  This week we continued our studies of the middle ages. We studied the crusades. This was a dark time in christian history. The stories of the crusaders are not very pleasant ones, but they are a real part of our history. We talked about the dark ages and how so many people were confused and uneducated in those days. Very few could read the Bible. We also talked about the difference between a true born again believer and those who are only "Christian" by title. Our history book claimed that many of the crusaders were not "good Christians, but joined the crusaders looking for adventure and an excuse to rob and plunder."

Sis researched relics. Relics were items that were thought to be holy in the middle ages. People would worship these relics and believed they could do miracles. Often these relics were traded or stolen in a cities efforts to own to best relics. We talked about why as Christians we should not worship relics. We worship the creator alone, not his creation. Relics were a big deal in the middle ages though. For our project we were suppose to make a fake relic. I didn't really feel comfortable making a relic or idol of any kind even if it's just for an art project, so we looked up pictures and had discussions, but skipped the project. It happens to be Easter week though, so instead we dyed eggs for our art project.

Reading: We're still painfully trying to get through "The Door in the Wall." Ok, so one of the reasons that we have loved HOD this year is the great selection of books. We have really enjoyed all of the literature, making reading time the highlight of our day. However, this book is so hard for us to read. First they talk in old English. It's like trying to read a King James Bible. It's hard to understand what they're saying sometimes and this book just seems to be dragging. We really want to be done with it, but we're going to try to get through it. I hate to quit halfway through the story. I now the book won an award and I'm sure it will have a good message, just not a favorite of ours.

Science: We finally finished learning about the heart this week in anatomy. Sis labeled and colored a diagram with the parts of the heart. Then we finished up the chapter with a project. Sis made her own stethoscope. I'm so glad that we chose to purchase the lab kit at the beginning of the school year. It came with all the supplies needed to do the projects. A lot of them like this one, we probably would have skipped because we didn't have the items needed on hand. This one called for a small funnel, long thick tubing, and a balloon. The girls all had fun listening to their heart beat with Sis' stethoscope.

MFW 1st grade: Week 19

This past week was a pretty busy one. On Monday the girls had a swim party at swim class. All three of them got to swim and have cookies and pop with their class. They also got certificates and awards. 

 On Thursday we celebrated St. Patrick's Day after school at Grandma's house. Our tradition is to make corned beef and cabbage and have dinner with my mom. We made shamrock ribbons to wear, and did a craft where we used large marshmallows as stampers. We dipped them in green paint and made shamrock pictures. With our dinner we had green drinks for the kids and shamrock frosted sugar cookies! We also played board games and watched a movie. It was a fun evening.    

 

Boo learned about Moses this week in school. We read about baby Moses in the basket. We also read about Moses killing the Egyptian and fleeing to Midian. Sis did several pages in her phonics workbook. We're still adding new phonics sounds each week. One thing that made me happy is that twice this week Boo has asked to read her Bible reader on her own after school. She takes it to her bed and tries to read it to her dolls while I'm working with Sis. That tells me that she at least doesn't hate reading (sometimes she gets so frustrated during reading time that it makes me wonder!)

She drew a picture of the princess bringing baby Moses up out of the river and wrote her summery sentence. I feel like her notebook pages have been getting sloppier each week. This is probably for several reasons. First, the newness of the bible notebook has worn off (on day 1 she was so excited she worked on her artwork for a half hour, now it's like Do we have to?) Secondly, I haven't supervised her art work as closely the past couple weeks partly, because she's developed this "I'm big enough to do it by myself." attitude. Lastly, because we're all getting spring fever and are ready to be done with school quickly. It gets really hard this time of year to get the kids to do their best work, because they're all daydreaming about summer.    

We have been working on subtraction in math. This week we practiced counting backward on a number line. We did an activity where we made a long number line on the floor, then I gave her a math problem like 5-3 and she had to hop 3 spaces on the number line to the 2 etc. We also did a story problem activity where we made up addition and subtraction stories and acted them out, plus a few subtraction sheets from our workbook.

Unit 25: Preparing

History: MEDIEVAL TIMES!!! We are still in the Middle ages, but this week we started learning about Medieval England. What an interesting time period, castles, monks, knights, nobility. Most people especially commoners were poor during this time period, food was hard to come by. The story of Robin hood comes right out of this time (stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.)

I wish so badly that we lived near a Medieval Times dinner show, because it would have made the perfect field trip this week. Steve and I went to one on our honeymoon and it was so much fun watching the jostling and eating with our fingers.

Our history project this week was the next best thing. It had two parts first we researched medieval trenchers. These were hard flat pieces of bread that the common folk used as plates because they didn't have real ones. These trenchers were sometimes eaten after the meal or were given as alms to the poor. The first part of the project was to make trenchers, well we ended up not having all the ingredients (poor planning) so we baked "Flat-Out bread" in the oven until they were hard and crispy. Since they are flat they made the perfect trenchers. Here's Sis with her trencher (I still couldn't bring myself to eat our meal with our trenchers directly on the table like a plate, so I put pieces of foil under them!) They still thought their "plates" were cool.

The second part was to plan a simple medieval feast that included any of the following a meat, a soup, beans or peas, cheeses, and fruit tossed with cinnamon. We wrote out our menu. Here's what it looked like : sliced cheeses, chicken, red beans (not a huge fan), and baked cinnamon apples. The food was eaten on our trenchers without silverware! We were allowed to have a spoon for the apples. this was suppose to be a meal that a commoner would have eaten. nobility had fancier food and utensils. After the meal we had to each taste our trenchers. It was actually good. For medieval entertainment the girls took turns juggling, singing songs, and reciting poems while we ate. It was probably one of the strangest meals we've had together, but they all agreed it was fun.

We learned about medieval castles. Here is a link to a fun interactive page for kids about medieval castles...http://www.dkfindout.com/uk/history/castles/  

At the end of the week we watched Disney's Robin hood for fun. There were actually details in this movie that we've never noticed before studying the time period.


Reading: This week we started reading "The Door in the Wall." A story that takes place in medieval England about a young boy who is suppose to learn to become a knight, but plans change when he falls ill and has to go stay at a monastery with a monk.

Sis is also read "A Little Princess" Junior classics on her own for her quiet reading time this week.





Science: Sis finished her model of the heart this week that we have been making out of painted cardboard and marshmallows. Along with our model we have learned all about blood flowing to and from the heart and the names of the different parts. We also looked at heart health, symptoms of heart attacks, and what causes them.

MFW 1st grade: Week 18

Reading: Boo is trucking along through her reading curriculum. This week she learned that "ph" makes the /f/ sound as in Joseph and the /u/ in "put."

Boo read the stories of Jacob's dream and Joseph in her Bible reader. Joseph is one of my favorite stories! On our timeline we added all 12 of Jacob's son's (who would become the 12 tribes of Israel) and a picture of Joseph wearing his colorful robe.

Boo added one illustration to her notebook. Some how we skipped the picture for Jacob's Dream! I don't really know why Joseph is standing on a huge green rock with a cane or what's up with the mountains! She's not lacking in creativity. This was the first notebook page though where Boo had to make up her own sentence about the story, rather than copy the title from her book. She thought it up and then I wrote it down for her on a sheet of paper and she copied it into her notebook.

Math: This week Boo started learning subtraction. We learned the minus symbol and words like "difference, minus, take away." One of the activities we did was "fish cracker math." Boo used fish crackers as counters to help her figure the answers. She had a worksheet where she subtracted by feeding fish to a whale. I think Boo ended up eating more goldfish than the whale though.

 

Boo's wrote her memory verse this week. I'm focusing more on learning the verses than handwriting right now. I bought Boo a great big handwriting workbook for next year and we're really going to work on improving her writing then. We also aren't following the MFW schedule for memory verses. I think learning a new verse every week is too much for her right now. I would rather her learn fewer verses and really learn them than just memorize them for a few days and move on. Sis did not retain hardly any of her verses from 1st grade because of this reason. I'm hoping the ones we have chosen to do this year stick! 

Unit 24: Preparing

Sorry I'm falling a little behind on my posts. I think it's getting harder to keep up with so much going on this time of year. I'm trying my best to keep my weekly posts up to date, but weeks that are extra busy they might show up a few days later than usual.

We spent a good amount of time this past week catching up on the things that we skipped the week before, after having some days off. We are now learning about the Middle Ages.

History: This weeks unit was called "World Religions Spread." We read about Christianity in the middle ages and learned about Roman Catholics, monks, nuns, and Popes. Then we learned about the early years of Islam and Muhammad. We ended the week by learning about Charlemagne and the "Dark Ages." I think that in all of history this is the time period that I am least familiar with. Just about everything we read this week was new to me, so I'm learning along with Sis. 

We learned about the books that the monks had to hand write on animal skins before the days of printed books. We researched "Illuminated manuscripts." Which were book pages that were decorated with gold, fancy letters, initials, pictures and borders. I found a really good website for kids that tells all about them and even teaches kids how to make illuminated letters. Here is the link if anyone wants it.... 

Illuminated Letters



Sis project was to make an illuminated manuscript with the words of Psalm 1:2 written in black ink. The illuminated letter "B" was painted with gold paint and then the rest colored with crayons.

We are also still reading our viking stories.

Reading: I gave Sis the Book "The year of Miss Agnes," for her reading. This falls in the realistic or historical fiction category, which we studied earlier this year. It's about a little girl named Fredrika and her classmates in a one room school house in Alaska in 1948. The smell of fish is so strong that none of her teachers ever stay, until the year Miss Agnes arrived that would change their lives forever. For now I'm still finding her books to read each week instead of moving on to studying new genres.



Science: This week Sis worked on her model of the heart for anatomy. We painted marshmallows on toothpicks!!! These small ones represented the pulmonary veins and then she painted large ones for the ascending aorta. We will have pictures of the finished product next week. 

 
Math: Sis has been getting frustrated with math as the problems get longer and harder. However we only have two weeks of long division left. That last week the problems look really hard, but the text says beyond that students will probably just need to use a calculator! She is going to be so happy when I tell her she's done though, because she's getting to the point where she hates math time lately.

Next week we move onto Medieval Times!! It looks like there will be some fun activities. 

Unit 23: Preparing

Yikes! I've been so busy this week that I totally forgot about posting. This was a busy week for us, so we decided to have a half week of school. We're getting a new baby cousin (nephew for me!) We took a couple days off of school to prepare a baby shower and do some shopping.

History: In history we learned about the fall of the Roman Empire and started learning about Barbarians!We learned about the Germanic tribes and Vikings. We read about Attila the Hun.

Sis researched Viking Brooches. We looked at pictures of them and learned facts like what they were used for. Women wore two brooches, while the men only wore one.

Sis' project was to make a Viking brooch out of cardboard and aluminum foil. We didn't really want to do the project because we just made a "denarius" out of aluminum foil a few weeks ago and it sounded like the same project.  I found a website for kids on how to make a clay viking brooch, so we did that instead. Sis used air-dry clay to form and design her brooch. It dried overnight and then she painted it gold on day two. Here is a link to the website with instructions...http://timetravellerkids.co.uk/news/make-a-viking-brooch/

We're still enjoying our viking chapter books. I ordered the next two and surprised Sis with them. We're already on book two. I love that Bree, the main character is a Christian! She doesn't understand why God would let her be kidnapped by vikings when she's prayed for protection for her family. She's learning to trust Jesus and let him use her even in unfortunate circumstances. These books are so suspenseful...loving them. 

Language & Math: Sis still does vocabulary every week. Her words to look up and write in her notebook this week were: "pomp, unity, and era." She got 100% on this week's spelling test. In English we are currently diagramming sentences with predicate adjectives. In math Sis took a big 3 page unit test over everything we've learned so far this year...she did pretty well.

Science: We're learning about the heart in science right now. This week Sis started making a model showing the different parts of the heart as we learned about them. The left and right atrium and ventricles were made out of cardboard. The right painted blue and left painted red. We will finish it next week and I'll post pics.


I will post Boo's school work next week since we had such a short week and I didn't take many pictures.

On a kind of sad note we were suppose to take a homeschool art class this week, but ended up being so busy that I forgot to register! Hopefully next month we will be able to go to that. This school year is passing by so quickly to me. I had so many things planned that we haven't got to and it's already March! There's a field trip to a nearby factory that I really wanted to take.  Right now though we have a new baby coming in our family, two vacations to plan for this year, a new puppy (who is taking much more of my time than I anticipated,) holidays and birthdays coming up (Sis turns 10 next month!) and just so much going on! Hopefully we can fit in our school trip and art class somewhere.  Dad definitely gets brownie points this week though for coming home with flowers saying, "sorry you're having such a stressful week."