CHRISTEPHI

We made it to Week 5! This is significant because our whole year is blocked off in five week chunks with a break between each one.  So after this week, we have a whole week off.  A much needed week off, I might add.  And not because we aren't liking the curriculum.  Just the opposite!  We are having so much fun in school that the housework is suffering.  Not the worst problem to have, but I'm still glad to have a whole week to catch up on things. (And maybe even sew something!) Miss M worked all week on finding equivalent fractions, adding like and related fractions, and reducing fractions to their simplest form.  She couldn't understand why she had to express each answer in its simplest form, so I turned to the helpful ladies in My Father's World Facebook group for some good reasons to satisfy her questioning.  The main reasons given had to do with preparing for higher level math, practicality in real-life situations (especially in the ...

Minecraft. It's everywhere. You've seen it advertised. You've heard of people playing it. But what exactly is Minecraft and how can it be used in your homeschool?  Is there violence?  What age is it appropriate for?  In what way is it educational? At its most basic Minecraft is an open world of unlimited building blocks, essentially an unlimited supply of digital LEGO.  You play the game as Steve in a world consisting entirely of blocks: block trees, block mountains, block clouds, even a brilliant block sun.  You interact with your world by breaking (mining) blocks and placing them in any way you wish.  If you mine a tree, you get wood. If you mine the ground, you get different dirt or sand or stone, etc.  If you keep going you may find some more desirable items such as coal, iron, or even diamonds and emeralds.  These raw materials can be used to build or combined and crafted into new items such as iron ore being smelted into iron ingots ...

Monday morning came and none of us wanted to get up. It was cold outside. And the blankets were so warm and cozy.  So we started off our day with some reading in bed! Once we finally moseyed on downstairs, Miss M built a couple pyramids -- a triangular-base pyramid and this square-base pyramid. Not to be left out, Mister E also built a pyramid, only his was done in Minecraft.  The thing I love best about this is that even though we talked about the Great Pyramids of Egypt being built on a square base, Mister E didn't really get that until he tried building one of his own. He figured out through trial and error that you can't build a "perfect pyramid" with a rectangular base. It must be square. We read about Menes uniting Upper and Lower Egypt into one kingdom and the kids put on a little reenactment.  I made the red and white crowns, but the rest of their ensembles were entirely their own doing! First grade math always looks like fun and g...