CHRISTEPHI

Spring has come to our parts early this year and that means it's been really hard to discipline ourselves to stay indoors with our books. It also means I've been terrible about taking pictures, posting on Facebook, and blogging!  There's nothing quite like getting outside in the fresh air and sunshine after the dreary chill of winter. My last update on our school year was at the end of Week 5, looking forward to a week off. And what a week it was! I took the entire week to sew up a storm and ignored all the piling up housework.  It was wonderful therapy! The following week, we spent our time deep cleaning and catching up on all those pesky little house chores that tend to accumulate over time. After two whole weeks off, it was tough stuff coming back to routine on Monday morning.  I gave plenty of extra time to Mister E to get moving in the morning. And Miss M brought her feathered friend down to school with us. On hard mornings, sometimes the best th...

The past several days post-Christmas have been spent prepping for our upcoming school year. We school year-round from January to December. This year our schedule is blocked off in 5-week chunks.  We will have five weeks of school followed by a week or two (or sometimes three) break. There are many, many reasons we keep this sort of schedule, but I'll save all that for another day. Since I am doing both Creation to the Greeks and First Grade from My Father's World this year, I had a little more work than usual to get ready. I Printed or Copied grid pages from both the CTG and First Teacher's Manuals to make my planner pages listed in the Teacher's Manual from Drawing with Children Science in the Beginning Notebook ( get it under Downloads from Berean Builders ) Proverbs cursive copywork for my girl to tagalong with her little brother English from the Roots Up worksheets ( download here ) 100 chart from back of Singapore Math 4A Home Instructor's Guide ...

What is Ooka Island? Ooka Island is an adventurous computer game that teaches early literacy to kids from Pre-K to 2nd grade.  It's fun and engaging without making any sacrifices on the academic side of things. "Upon arrival on Ooka Island, children customize their own online avatar and embark on a compelling 3D hero-mission to save the Ooka Elves! As young learners follow the Ooka Island Adventure, they travel on their own unique path created by Ooka Island's READirect learning algorithm.  This ensures that they are on the fastest track to reading success!" A Bit of Backstory Ooka Island is based on the work of Dr. Kay MacPhee who developed a successful program for struggling and reluctant readers in the 1990s.  Her program, then known as SpellRead, was the subject of many intensive studies because of its effectiveness, but it was quite expensive.  It became an exclusive product for either the poorest of the poor (by way of government sub...

We are nearing the end of Calvert 1st grade, so we decided to knock out the last two chapters in our science book with a dedicated Science Week!  So far we have explored  position and force  and  simple machines and magnets .  Then we started investigating the different types of energy: first heat and then sound . It's the last day of Science Week!  Just as heat and sound are types of energy, so is light!   Light is the form of energy that allows us to see. Some materials let a lot of light pass through them. Other materials block out light completely.  Miss M tried a few materials to see what lets light through and what doesn't. Plastic wrap, waxed paper, aluminum foil, an empty paper towel tube, and a rubber band. First she covered one end of the tube with plastic wrap and tried looking through it. She could see light!  Then she removed the plastic and covered the end of the tube with waxed paper.  She could se...

We are nearing the end of Calvert 1st grade, so we decided to knock out the last two chapters in our science book with a dedicated Science Week!  So far we have explored  position and force  and  simple machines and magnets .  Then we started investigating the different types of energy, beginning with heat . See also  Day 5 . Welcome to day four of Science Week!  Yesterday we learned about heat, one of the forms of energy.  Today we investigated another type of energy: sound.   Sound is a form of energy that is made when an object vibrates.  The bigger the vibrations, the louder the sound: like a thunder clap!  The smaller the vibrations, the softer the sound: like the sound of a marker swiping across a piece of paper. To experience sound, we made a simple musical instrument with a plastic bowl and some rubber bands. Carefully stretch a rubber band around a bowl or box. Miss M strummed the rubber bands and listened to t...

We are nearing the end of Calvert 1st grade, so we decided to knock out the last two chapters in our science book with a dedicated Science Week!  So far we have explored  position and force  and simple machines and magnets .  See also  Day 4  and  Day 5 . Welcome to Science Week day three!  The rest of the week we will be learning about different types of energy.  Our activity today involves energy and heat . Energy is the force makes things work or change.  Heat is energy that makes things warm.  Today we filled a mug with steaming hot water.  We filled another mug with ice-cold water.  Heat can be measured with a thermometer.  It was fun putting the thermometer in the hot water and watching the red line shoot up!  Our water was very, very hot!  It was over 140 degrees Fahrenheit!  If you do this experiment, please be careful not to get burned. Once we recorded the temperature of th...