CHRISTEPHI

We are now a little over halfway through Creation to the Greeks and MFW First Grade. As you may have noticed, I dropped off blogging every week as I expected I would. It's easier to blog when the days are short and cold, but much harder to find time for it once spring arrives and we're out gardening and such in our spare time.  I wouldn't have it any other way!  If you wish to keep up with our weekly doings, you'll have to follow my Facebook page which is updated almost every day that we do school! So, now that we're on the downhill side of the year, I thought I would write a little about what has worked well for us this year and what hasn't. Our planners Back in January I copied the grid pages from my CTG and First Grade teacher's manuals and assembled them into a lesson planner for the year. (Remember: MFW allows for photocopying of the grid pages for planning and record keeping as long as you agree to never loan, give, or sell the teacher's ma...

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...

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 ...

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...

We had another wonderful week learning about what happened to Noah and his family after the Flood, and about Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent. On Monday we learned how to make a quick sketch of the Bible Lands using the silly sentence, "E.T. purrs in the red nile med."  The kids thought this was hilarious and really enjoyed their newfound map drawing abilities.  I even found tiny Bible Lands drawn on some math pages this week. We worked together to craft a summary of Noah for their notebooks. I wrote it for Mister E's and Miss M typed hers on the computer, printed it out, and pasted it on. I think I own every reproducible Bible times coloring book out there. The kids love picking out a picture to color while I read to them. Mister E said Noah got really dirty while building the ark, that's why he colored so much dirt on him. And his skin was brown because he worked outside in the sun so much that he got "toasted. We added an...