CHRISTEPHI

When you use My Father's World, you really don't have to do any prepwork to get ready for your year. Things are all planned out for you and you can easily just open and go . However, I am a bit particular and like to have things just so. I find that putting in just a little effort before getting started helps eliminate small frustrations as we go along. Since I had the time and wanted to, I decided to do a few things to get ready for our year .  This post will make more sense if you read our curriculum picks first . The first thing I did was open our packs of student sheets and separate out the State Sheets and President Sheets. I used my brand new binding machine -- a Christmas gift from Hubby that delights my nerdy heart -- to bind each child's pages into a separate notebook.  Since you receive some of the sheets this year and the rest of them next year in 1850 to Modern Times, it made sense to me to separate them out so at the end of the year it's easy to se...

What better way to celebrate fall than with some delicious apples? Did you know there are over 7,500 varieties of apples worldwide? I’m sure you can find many cultivars in your local grocery store. We took a trip to our local market and came home with one each of nine different varieties of apples. With our hands on some apples, we decided to do a taste test, gather some data, and graph that information. Supplies needed: several varieties of apples, be sure to make a note of their names! data collection sheet colored pencils paper plates paring knife cutting board Pass around each variety of apple. Observe its color, size and shape. Make predictions about how you think it will taste. Slice each apple. Be sure to keep track of which is which! We put the sticker from each apple onto a paper plate so we could identify each type. Taste a slice of each apple. Rate the flavor and crunchiness of each one. Use a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the best and 1 b...

Shortly after moving to our new home this past winter, the kids and I noticed a squirrel that was different than the others because he had no tail! Or rather, just a stub of a tail left from some trauma he must have suffered. We have spent quite a lot of time speculating about what could have happened to him. Was he caught by a cat only to escape with his life? Did he get run over by a car? Perhaps he was caught in the crook of a tree? (This last theory proved more plausible after we found a different squirrel in January caught by its tail, dead, and frozen solid!) It wasn’t long before this unique squirrel was dubbed Dale No-Tail. During our bemused observations, we discovered which hole in which tree is Dale’s home and before long we noticed a female squirrel shares that habitation. When she came to the porch rail, we also observed that she is clearly pregnant (and has nursed kits before; nature reveals these things!). She, of course, has been named Mrs. Dale and we are eagerly...

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...

Here are ten reasons we school year round and what that looks like for us. 1. Enjoying the outdoors. We take longer breaks in the spring and fall when the weather is perfect .  Unless you live near the beach (in which case, pat yourself on the back and move on to number two), you are pretty much guaranteed to have miserably hot summers and possibly even bitter cold winters.  It’s generally a lot more pleasant to be indoors draped over the air conditioner hitting the books in July and August than it is to be out and about.  At least that’s the case here in Missouri! 2. Celebrate! We get to take the entire holiday season off!  That means more time for holiday gatherings, singing carols, and really focusing on the reason for the season.  This year we will break from the second week of November through the first or second week of January giving us plenty of time to prepare for and celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the New ...

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 ...

Konichiwa!  We have spent the last two weeks "in" Japan.  This has to have been one of our favorite countries to study so far!  The kids had a blast watching Godzilla with Daddy and obsessing about ninjas all day.  In addition to this, they... ...made koinobori ... ...created an entire menagerie of origami creatures... ...wrote original haiku poetry... ...drank ramune style soda pop... ...fell in love with mochi ice cream... ...turned up their noses at green tea mochi... ...learned about the beach... (Miss M made this image in PicCollage to illustrate her geography vocabulary word). ...and created a relaxing rock garden. We're heading to the Philippines next, Hubby's homeland.  We're closing in on our final push to the end of the school year (remember, we started back in January).  It's been fun, but all good things must come to an end.  Sayonara!