Let the "Adventures" Begin... And "K" (MFW)

Name Art

Pics first, and then you can read about it all...

Savannah, Caden, and Sierra making their Jello for dessert prep.

Sierra being silly with her Red, White, & Blue dessert.... She played with it, but wouldn't eat it even though she thoroughly enjoyed being silly with it and making it.

More of the sillies.... Sierra thought it was hilarious to give her dessert "the bunny ears".


... and more of the sillies... Sierra had band-aid stickers all over her face when her daddy came home from work. On the table you can see they are working on their forever long coloring of the U.S. map. Notice how silly their daddy is! I can't imagine why the kids are so silly, can you!!?

Seriously, I did not realize until this moment how silly they were being and that I uploaded all silly pics! They said this experiment was stinky. I thought they were referring to the eggs... and where just acting silly. They were saying the salt water was stinky... strange children!

And here we have a non-silly pic... because my kids are NOT in it! ;) This is our egg experiment on density. VERY interesting! I might just graduate from elementary school myself!!

This is Savannah's bracelet. Notice the little cross charm to remind them that God guided us in choosing their names.

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NOTE: I wrote this post at the end of last week & have not had time to add the pics to it. We are no longer sick... yippeeeee!! ;)

I'm not so sure about that last schedule just, yet. I am starting to think that that finding order may not happen for awhile with my sickly kiddos. And yes, they are sick, again. I say it that way because everyone was fever free as of Monday, so we are having some (Caden & Sahara) with a relapse or possibly a sinus infection... or a different virus. This week was supposed to be our first week using My Father's World Kindergarten and Adventures In My Father's World. I knew at the beginning of the week that we were fever free, but we still had some kiddos that were feeling pretty rough... and a Momma needing more time to prepare and needing rest. :) With all that in mind, I made the decision that we would just wait until next week to begin with My Father's World.

... That was until.... Monday and Tuesday came and went... and I realized how bored the kids were with "just being". I was letting them lay around and rest or move around playing as they felt up to it. They never said they were bored, but it was obvious they were feeling better and needing more to occupy their day. I decided that we would just jump in and start My Father's World K and Adventures and see what we could do. I already knew that next week will likely not be a full schooling week, so I was thinking that we might accomplish one week in that two week time period. So this is what we have done this week:

My Father's World Kindergarten
I found it very helpful to make my self a "daily cheat sheet" for the activities, so I would not need to look at what the book says to do next (nothing fancy... just a handwritten posty note):
1-->Read the days Creation verse
-- Child Retells
-- Briefly Discuss
2-->Cut / Color the Creation # & Glue Up
-- Play "I Spy" for the #
3-->ABC Chart & "ABC Song"
-- Point as you sing
4-->Teach the Letters of the Day using ABC Game Cards
--(We did the whole alphabet because she knows this with few errors)
5-->ABC Chart & Button Games
--(We did the whole alphabet because she knows this with few errors)
6-->ABC Chart & Shuffled ABC Cards for letter name recognition
--(We did the whole alphabet because she knows this with few errors)
7-->Creation Book Page (Art)
8-->Music
--"This Is My Father's World"
(Note: We have already done a similar study of Creation for K this year using A Beka, so I am thinking I will double time this portion as I see fit without losing the "lessons". Also, some of the Alphabet and Numbers learning games are just too simple for Sierra, so we are going add difficulty.)

9/30/09 Wed = Week 1, Day 1 & 2 (double lesson sessions)
We followed the 8 Step plan above and we did two lesson sessions. I read the verse and we discussed it. As they do the Creation # and the Creation Day art page we are continually discussing the verses further, so that works out well. We really do not do too much of the "I Spy the #" game because Sierra has known her numbers for a couple of years. The focus for her with the numbers is ordinal (1st, 2nd, 3rd....). We are doing Steps 3 through 6 to reinforce what Sierra already knows and to test the ABCs that she is still stumbling with (t, g, h, m, n). We add our own hand motions to the music, so they really focus on what they are singing about and not just memorizing the words. For snacks today we had Oreo cookies to represent that God divided the light from the darkness on day one. Thank you to all you MFW bloggers out there for that tip. We also had water to drink to represent that God divided the water above and below the sky on day two (and having water was easy).
10/1/09 Thu = Week 1, Day 3 & 4 (double lesson sessions)
It went pretty much the same as the previous day. Again, we doubled up and did two days sessions. We included fresh apples and oranges in our lunch to represent the fruit that God created for us to enjoy.
10/2/09 Fri = Week 1, Day 5 (one lesson session)

Pretty much the same, again. We slowed down to one session today, because this momma is tired from the two little ones having fever, again. I also thought the Day 5 lesson could stand to get a little more attention. We spent more time with the art portions.

Note: Caden participated in some of this with us, but the little guy was feeling yucky and has a very short attention span. He did enjoy some art, but was much happier to lay in bed mostly in the bedroom next to us.

<---- I will post some pics for this next week when we have finished the Creation Week lesson.--->

Adventures In My Father's World

I am really getting into my little posty note "cheat sheets"! I tend to re-read things over and over as if I am going to miss something, so making myself a little mini-outline on a posty note is working well for me.

9/30/09 Wed thru 10/2/09 Fri = Week 1

This week I am going to journal "Adventures" a little differently than I did "K". We were working with a 3 day time frame, but we did get most of it squeezed in. I rearranged some of the activities to suit our crazy week (i.e. staying up to write the kid's a letter happened later in the week rather than at the beginning).

We talked about Savannah and Sierra's names, but this is a discussion that we have had often in our home. There is no Biblical significance in our choosing our children's first names, so this was something I really had to think hard on how to adapt for my children. Also, I have written a lot to my children in their baby books and I write in a journal occassionally for each of my children. I did not really feel I need to repeat the same information in this letter. I do like the idea of presenting them with a letter from Momma, though. So, I started the letter like the book's example and adding to it:

"When you meet someone new, one of the first things you learn is their name. Everyone has a name and names are very special. Names have meanings. Some parents choose their child's name strictly for the meaning and some parrents choose a name for other reasons. Either way, I believe God leads us in naming our children and He guides us in choosing just the right name. This is what I wrote in your baby book about your name....."

I went on to write the reason we liked each of their names and the story about how God gave their names to us. I also included various meanings/origins and a little personal story of some nicknames from their baby days. We wrote their names using a name art tracing technique and we made the name bracelets. We added a tiny little cross charm to their bracelets to remind them that God guided us in choosing their names. These little charms can be purchased at Wal-Mart (dz. for approx $3). I made and colored the timeline pieces ahead of time and we added the figures each day as we did our history. We started placing all our papers in their notebooks, but we still need to cutesy up the notebooks... we can do that throughout the year. I have already explained the Pledge to the kids, but it was nice to break it down a little more and reinforce what they have already learned. They really enjoyed making jello parfaits for dessert for lunch. I choose this version of the red, white, and blue snack idea because it would be so easy for the kids to completely make. We made the jello around 10:am and had it for lunch at noon. We did a lot of map tracking when we talked about the Vikings and Leif Ericsson. And on that topic... Boy, does it take a lot of time to color those maps!! I think I would have liked to have just colored the water and our individual state and then have the kids color the other states as they are studied later on. I am really liking the idea of reading the history lesson and having the kids use narration and dictation (Sierra just listened in on this part). My kids L~O~V~E sceince, so the egg experiment was a big hit... and I was pretty happy that this experiment did not involve anything but floating the egg. The girls were totally understanding this and predicting what would happen. Savannah knows that I check eggs in a glass of water to make sure they are not spoiled, if they are past the date on the carton. They will float if they are bad, so that was her first thought when we started the experiment and when the one egg was floating. It was fun to show her that that was not why it was floating by switching the two eggs. The same egg that was floating was now sinking and vice versa. ... and then, we stuck those eggs in fresh water and boiled them on the stove for dinner. ;) For the name thing I had planned to write the letters of their names on Ritz crackers with "squeeze cheese" and for a dessert write their names in marshmallow creme on graham crackers, but we just ran out of time (and energy ...and concern). :) I'll try to be better next week!

With all our sicklies this week there were some things that got totally left out, but all in all I think it went well for what we had to work with. The things that got total skipped were: 1)handwriting practice, but they do that when they write for other things; 2)Book Basket because I was not going to give the librarians and others the flu and we read some other stuff; 3)Nature Walk and Art, but we did drive around to yard sales on Saturday... does that count? No, well... we got more learning games, etc... so it's not all bad and we did get OUT of the house and had a chance to breathe fresh air!!! Works for me!!