First Grade Fun with My Father's World

The last few weeks (MFW week 6 through 9) have been full of first grade fun, including several field trips:

Mercier Apple Farms

 LST 325 Memorial Ship

and our Chattanooga Warner Park Zoo

At home we have been doing A LOT of reading. For anyone that is worried about how slow My Father's World phonics moves in kindergarten, get ready, because it picks up a lot of speed in 1st grade! This is a good thing, as I believe all that work we did on learning short vowel sounds in kindergarten makes learning all the other rules in first grade so much easier. 

 He was not a fan of learning the words "girl", "her", and "sister":)

The boys discovered that the leftover paper from making the above world looked like a crown. I decided to make our reading review more fun by writing the words in different colors on the crown, so he read them all  before he put it on.

Of course there is math, but since I have a lot of unifix cubes, he has been having fun building the patterns that go with the math problems. I think he is a little genius, since he immediately discovered the color pattern it made when told to find all the ways to add blue and black together to make it add up to 6 (or 7, 8, or 9 the following days).

 The boys both LOVE doing the math with Sunshine Cafe and Rainbow Food Center. They constantly ask if they can play restaurant or grocery store now.

My favorite part is our beginning Bible time. We read stories from this precious book, that works towards character development with stories about animals:

We also learn a Proverbs each week, which doubles as the copy work.

Poor kiddo, week 6 was scary as the word "honeycomb" looked impossible to him. I covered up half the verse and put a tic-tac at the end to encourage him. It worked!

Here is week 9's verse, which came not a moment too late! We have been dealing with outbursts of anger, so I will review this scripture all year long!

We learned that the Bible is made up of 66 books by looking at 66 books together (they were in two piles for Old Testament and New Testament- just to give a visual)

It is not part of My Father's World, but we also keep up with a weekly journal. We did this last year too, and it a tradition I hope to always keep. Oh, and yes, he is wearing pajamas in all three of these pictures. Home-school does have some benefits:)

Our Second Week of Classical Conversations ( CC, cycle 3, week 2) and a Minecraft Art Lesson

Week #2 was SO much fun with our CC group and at home. 

Most of our review time is spent saying and singing, but we also like to do worksheets. I find if we use different methods (verbal, written, visual,etc.) it sticks in our memories better.The printables you will see all come from the wonderful ladies of CC Connected.

My 6 year old's journal entry about the CC review game time:

History:

 This is a homemade Mayflower my kids decided to make just for fun:

Math and Latin:

Science (yes, they gave the skeleton clothes):

The take home from our community for art (mirror image) 

and science experiment (water drop magnify glass):

And then we decided to have fun with Minecraft and mirror image art at home:

I drew one side:

 and then my kids drew the other side, 

teaching them how to draw shapes with symmetry:

 They didn't want to stop!

And that was our week 2!

How I Organize Classical Conversations, My Father's World 1st Grade , and Pre-K

Ready to go to our first day of CC (Classical Conversations)

The boys were so excited to get to go to school! My first grader even made a comment that it was so cool that he had two schools- homeschool and CC! 

Here is our take home art and science from week 1:

We started My Father's World first grade (and Jonah's Pre-k) curriculum a month earlier just so I could figure out how to manage everything at the same time. How on earth do mother's of more than two kids keep things straight? I decided my method for mischief managed would be the workbox system. Here is my organization set-up:

When we are ready to start school (usually 9am), I say "Get me box #1 and #2!" The boys race to get the boxes out and bring them to the kitchen table.

Box 1: MFW  Bible assignments (including Proverbs memory work) and my teacher's manual

Box 2:  MFW 1st grade workbook and phonics worksheet for the day. Sometimes I will add an easy reader in there for him to read. 

Box 3: Classical Conversations flip book (memory work put on 4x6 cards in a $1 photo album from Melody Stroud on CC Connected) and any project/library book to add for the day. We also review/listen to the songs and work on all memory work for the week. This week somehow became an obsession with ships (because we are learning about the ships the Nina, the Pinta , and the Santa Maria).

 This was actually part of our MFW curriculum to learn the blend "Sh"- we cut out a ship and wrote other words that began or ended in "sh".

 Little brother wanted a fold out ship too, so I wrote the names of Columbus's ships on it for him, and we reviewed the history sentence together.

Box 4: Has the number of the day laminated/reusable page with beans, coins, and other items needed

YELLOW Box 4 is for my yellow loving 4 year old. He can get this box whenever he is ready (usually when big brother is working through box 2). It has his coloring worksheet for the day along, with the teacher's manual for his Sing,Spell, Read and Write Pre-k curriculum. 

Box 5: Math workbook pages and manipulatives for the day. (Usually I place a few of the pattern blocks in there to remind me to get the box out)

Even pattern blocks were used to make the Nina, Pinta, and the Santa Maria. This was all my four year old's idea:

We worked more on the skip 2's (from CC AND MFW)

My Father's World had the great idea of matching up socks, then looking at the matches as you skip count by two. This is a great visual for kids!(and a great way to get the socks organized). I actually used this when I tutored at CC and the 5 and 6 year olds liked counting the socks.

  Here they are putting two stickers in each box before they skip count by two:

Here they are singing the CC skip count by 2's song:

YELLOW Box 5: Pre-k extras for four year old (aka: what he gets when he wants more school). Other worksheet and library books

Box 6: Science and science related library books OR Art Project

our Science seed/ sprouts project

Art fun from Ed Emberley Book

Box 7: Read -Aloud book (right now we are reading a book about Squanto to get a head start on CC week 2)

BOX 8: Future worksheets (they do not pull this box out)

As I am a very visual when it comes to organizing things, I am hoping all my pics/visuals will help a fellow home-school mom who just needs to SEE how to put it all together.