MFW 1st grade: Week 23

This week Boo learned about the Battle of Jericho and Samuel. She now has the whole first line of her timeline filled, so we started line two! Boo did her usual oral narration, reading and then notebook drawings. For her Jericho page we wanted to do something a little different so she "built" the wall by gluing bricks cut out of construction paper. ( I didn't realize until later that she left out the word "of" in her sentence..opps!)

This week was Boos dream come true in math....We started learning how to tell time! Ever since she was in K she has been asking me when we will start time. Our week started out by going on a clock hunt. Boo went around the house finding all the clock she could. She found wall clocks, digital clocks, and a watch. Then we learned the parts of a clock and where the numbers go. Finally I introduced Boo to her very own new clock for school and we learned how to tell time to the hour. I'm using "Telling Time with the Judy Clock," in addition to the activities in the MFW books.

Unit 29 :Preparing

History: We made it to week 29 in Preparing Hearts for His Glory and we are finally in the 16th century of our overview of world history. We've come a long way since our study of the Ice Age! This week we learned about the Renaissance, the Reformation, spice routes and trade. A lot happened to change the world during this time period!

Our research this week was on Vasco Da Gamma and the Spice Route. Sis outlined the route of  Da Gamma's famous voyage on a map. He was the first to travel around the southern tip of Africa to get to India.

We read about Shakespeare, Martin Luther, Henry VIII, many artists and more.

Our history project called for a bunch of spices that we didn't have on hand so we did something else. One of Sis favorite parts of history was learning all about the art of the renaissance period. We learned about Michelangelo and the Sistine chapel; Rafael and his Madonna paintings; and Leonardo De Vinci painting the Last Supper and Mona Lisa. (Her first question was are we learning Ninja turtles? lol) In college I took an art course where we had to lay on the floor and paint a self portrait under a table to get a feel of what it was like for Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. It was so much fun, even for college students, so I immediately knew that's what we would do for our project. We have a tall table so it worked better to have the girls lay under chairs. I put a blanket down and some chairs in the living room. Then I just taped a piece of paper to the underside of the chair. perfect! They drew their self portraits like Michelangelo and then we painted them at the table (I decided doing the painting part upside down would be a little too messy, but they got the idea.

 

Here's Sis' portrait...

Reading: Sis started reading the book " The Wonderful Winter," aloud to me. This book takes place in 16 century London. It's about a 12 year old orphaned boy named Robin, who finds a dog and runs away from home when his mean aunt refuses to let him keep it. It ends up being the most wonderful winter full of adventures and people he meets like the William Shakespeare and the Queen herself! We've been enjoying reading about Robin's adventures with his new pet.



Math & More: We worked on figuring volume of an object this week in math. It was a nice break from all the division. Next week we move into an introduction of fractions that will prepare her for Epsilon (MUS) next year. A few weeks left and we will be done with math for the summer! We read more about the brain this week in science, but no photos to post.

It's finally starting to warm up a little here! We had a couple nice days this week, which was great considering we had a snow storm last week. On Friday we walked to the park and had a good time enjoying the fresh air. It made me anxious for summer though. I do get a bit jealous seeing all of the people south of us in shorts while we're here wearing coats. Looks like things are starting to turn for us though, so I'm hoping to have more "outside school days," coming soon.

 

Unit 28: Preparing

History: This week we moved from the middle ages to the age of exploration. We first learned about Gutenberg who invented the printing press and the invention of gunpowder. These two things changed the world. With the printing press people could now have books and learn about the world. Gunpowder put an end to castles, armor, arrows and changed the way wars were fought....the end of the middle ages. The rest of the week we learned about Christopher Columbus, Magellan, and the discovery of the new world!We also learned about the Aztec, Inca, Maya's, and the European explorers who conquered them. It was pretty sad that the Native Americans did not have modern day weapons and were no match to the cannons and guns of the Europeans. It was not a war, since the natives did not have a fair chance. 

Our time line is getting really long! We added 2 cards this week ( Columbus and Magellan) 

Sis researched Gutenberg and the printing press to find out as many facts as she could. Here's a cute short cartoon that we found for something extra...

For her history project Sis made a braided bookmark for her bible with 3 braids that can be placed in 3 different places. We talked about how after print was invented people finally had access to the bible. We used the bookmark the rest of the week to help Sis learn to find the books of the bible easily. This project related to our history because we learned that now that the world had printed books many people were able to have a bible and learn to read it's words for themselves.

Math: Sis took her final math test over long division and only missed 3 and none of those 3 were long division problems. She is doing MathUSee, Delta level this year and she will be doing Epsilon next year for 5th grade. She's so happy to be done with the division part of her curriculum though. Some of those problems were taking forever to do and then it would still come out wrong ( like 578,962 divided by 136) The one area in math that we need a  lot of work on yet is weights and measurements, like converting lbs to tons and oz to gallons etc. After we finish this years math curriculum completely. We're gonna go back and take a couple weeks to really learn all of those things that she always misses on her tests.

Reading: Sis read the book Pedro's Journal. This one she is reading aloud to me. This is a fictional book that is written as the journal of a young boy aboard the Santa Maria with Columbus as he travels to the new world. This book has done a good job of helping us to imagine what it was like to travel by ship in a time when it was really dangerous. Nobody really knew where they were going, if they would fall off the earth, or return home to tell of their journey.
We also finished reading Door in the Wall, thankfully!

  
 Science: In science ( Apologia anatomy) we moved on to a new chapter. We started learning about the brain! Sis made a tiny little brain out of clay and learned the 3 main parts: cerebrum, cerebellum, and brain stem.

MFW 1st grade: Week 22

This week Sis learned the ten commandments. She already knew most of them from her sunday school classes, but we practiced saying them all. We learned the story of God giving the commandments to Moses on top of the mountain. She got a little lazy in her writing this day and decided to just copy the title, even though it gives a ton of lines to write her summary. I sighed and didn't make her change it (bad mom move!) Her drawing cracked me up too. The commandments are as big as the mountain and it looks like Jesus standing out in the desert rather than Moses!Ha. I love all of these drawing this year though, They will be fun to look at in a few years.

We also learned about adding "ed" to the end of words. I thought that their way of explaining doubling consonants was interesting..."If a word end with a silent e already, just add a "d" and the e still works like a silent e making the vowel say it's name...but if a word does not end in a 'silent e' you have to build a wall that the 'e' can't jump over before adding the 'ed.' You do this by doubling the last consonant, then the 'e' can not get over the double  letters to change the vowel." I've never heard it explained that way, but Boo thought it was fun "blocking" the silent e's.

Her second bible story and journal entry this week was the story of the twelve spies.  I was so proud of Boo this day. She read three pages from her book better than I've ever heard her read! It only took us a few minutes to complete the whole reading assignment. She still has days when she struggles, but I feel like finally a light is beginning to come on and she's catching on to the reading a lot faster. She also did much better on her summary with this one, although she decided that she did not want to color her drawing.

In math Boo practiced measuring using centimeters. She's pretty good at measuring so we'll be moving on to something new next week.

Unit 27: Preparing

There's nothing that I hate more than being sick! This past week we've had our fair share of sickness. All 5 of us ended up coming down with a nasty bug. On days we were feeling better we managed to get some school work done.

This week's in history we studied the end of the Middle ages. We read about King John (brother of King Richard "the lionhearted") and the Magna Carta. Then we read about Joan of Arc, bubonic plague, Genghis Khan and the 100 year war. Finally,we learned about Marco Polo and the discovery of the compass.

Sis did a short written narration about the compass. We also added 3 new entries to our timeline. Next week we will begin studying modern times beginning with the discovery of the new world.

Last week we learned about Gothic churches and this week Sis history project was to make a stained glass window. She drew the window and then a picture inside. Then she divided the picture up into shapes like pieces of glass and colored each piece a different color using crayons.  We turned the picture over and rubbed vegetable oil on the back. When it was dry we hung it in a window so that the light could shine through. (yes that is snow on the ground in April...kind of depressing!)

 This was Sis last week to do long division in math, so she was happy about that, although she has to take a test on it next week. We skipped science this week and a lot of other things, so there's not a lot to post. I can gladly say that we are all feeling better now though. Hopefully next week we can get back on track and have full school days.

MFW 1st grade: Week 21

This week Boo learned about the parting of the Red Sea and the manna in the desert for her Bible stories and reading. She spent a lot of the week sick, so we didn't do a whole lot of work.

After learning how Miriam led the people in dancing and worship after crossing the Red Sea, Boo (and Baby Bear) made a tambourine to make there own music with. We just did a simple paper plate painted with watercolors. The next day we folded it in half, filled it with dry beans and taped up the edges.

In math we started learning about measurement. First we learned about non-standard measurement. Boo had to first look at objects and tell if they were longer or shorter.

Then we practiced measuring things with a toothpick. Dad explained to her that measurements like inches and feet actually came from body parts because people use to use real feet to measure. He told her a lot of times he uses his finger to measure at work.

We did a workbook page for nonstandard measurement, where we had to measure an object (Dad's Bible) using different tools to measure it (crayon, paperclip, etc.)

On day 2 we learned about rulers and measuring inches. We went around measuring a bunch of things with our ruler. Then, we played this inchworm game. On your turn, you had to draw a card with a picture of an object. Then measure that object with a ruler. However many inches the object was long is how many spaces you moved forward on the board. Boo had fun with it. I'm so glad we decided to switch to MFW's suggested math. It has been so much better for her, to do hands on activities like this.