RTR: Week 1

We made it through the first week of school! So far we're liking My Father's World Rome to Reformation. The girl's are excited to be doing most of their school work together again. In the morning we do Bible first. Right now we are using a book called "How the Bible came to us." We're learning about the writers of the books of the Bible and how the books are divided up into different categories. One project we did this week from our book was to make this cute mini Bible library that shows those different categories. When we finished we were so excited to discover that it fit perfectly on our chalk board shelf!


Spelling, Math, and Science will start next week. I'm so excited about the new math curriculum that Boo is going to try out this year. I'll show it to you next week after we've given it a try.

For English Sis is using Rod and Staff again, book 5 called "Following the Plan" of the Building Christian English Series. Boo is using First Language Lessons for the Well Trained Mind. We split up for English everyday which is working out great, because it gives whichever girl I'm not working with, some quiet time for "Book Basket."

Book Basket time is a My Father's World idea. This is a basket of books (related to things we're learning or other education material) that I have chosen for the girls to look through and explore on their own during quiet time. Each child spends 15 mins a day on Book Basket. Right now we have some picture books on Rome and also our "World Kids" magazines, which we get a free subscription to with our curriculum. The kids are loving these magazines so far.
This is what our version of Book Basket looks like, just a big white basket full of reading material. At book basket time they take the basket with them to a quiet place and read whatever they want.


The first week of school usually starts off with a review of neat handwriting, so right now we are quickly going through the alphabet practicing our writing. Boo is doing manuscript, Sis is practicing neat cursive (she does have a tenancy to get sloppy with it esp as the school year goes on.) After this first couple weeks we will have more exciting writing assignments.

After our first day intro to Ancient Rome, we actually covered quite a bit of history this week. We learned about the Roman Republic, the Punic war, and Hannibal with his famous elephants that crossed the Alps.The girls made several maps and I think they're starting to get a good understanding of the areas around the Mediterranean that we are learning about. The first map we made was labeling all the seas and countries we will be learning. The second map showed the places involved int he Punic war and Hannibal's route. One of the books we are reading this year is "Augustus Caesars World." It is written in story form to make it interesting and covers the events of the life of Augustus Caesar beginning when he was a boy. He was the first Roman Emperor and was in power when Jesus walked the earth.

 Our History project at the end of this week was to make a Roman clay writing tablet like the children of Ancient Rome used for their studies. Baby Bear wanted in on the fun of this project too.

Baby Bear will be starting My Father's World K next week. This week we practiced her alphabet letters and sounds and each day read a story book together. We learned the "a-a-apple" song, practiced counting and did her number board each morning. This is a project Boo did in K too. It's place value cups. Each morning she placed a toothpick in the ones cup, we count all the sticks in the cup and hang up the number card above the cup. When we get 10 in our cup we bundle it and move it to the tens cup and place a "1" in the 10's place. we'll keep bundling all year until we get 10 bundles making 100, then we'll celebrate the 100th day of school!
She has also enjoyed playing "Teach Your Monster to Read" on the computer while her sisters do school work. This is a really fun free website with games that teach phonics. Kids get to design their own monster and then teach their monster how to read by learning letters and sounds. So cute and she's loving it!

Finally, We went on our first field trip this week. We went to see a Laura Ingalls Wilder exhibit at a local museum. We got in on the last day of the exhibit!We love Little House on the Prairie, it's kind of a dream of mine to visit Laura's real home in Desmet, SD and I'm hoping to be able to do that some time soon, for now this was a really neat alternative. We got to see a lot of the things that are talked about in the books, such as a lot of the farming equipment, a corn husk doll, actual knitting done by Ma, Pa's fiddle, Laura's rag doll and Nellie's china doll. There were real pictures of Laura, Almonzo and many other famous family members. It was a really fun experience.