1st Grade/Tot School~ Week 2 and 3

Here is a peak at what Week #2 and #3 (Aug 13-24) looked like for us...

FIRST GRADE:

We started our My Father's World-1st Grade curriculum this week...so the first two weeks have been all about reviewing the alphabet and the sounds the letters make. This has been very helpful because I discovered a few letters that needed some help writing wise...and Little Britches STILL has problems designating between [b] and [d] so that alerted me to an area I need to address.

Our Activities have been...

*Making a Hebrew Calendar

I was looking forward to this since we keep God's Holy Days based on this calendar. I had him color it and then I laminated it to make sure it would last. Then we discussed how God's Spring and Fall Holy Day season revolve around the harvest months...and why He made them like that. Then we moved the arrow to our current month to see what month it corresponded to on the Hebrew Calendar.

*Making tiny scrolls and "clay" scroll pots for them

We LOVED making these pots! The recipe in the manual is super easy and it came out wonderfully! I think I have a knack for it though because I'm always working with bread doughs, so I get the whole consistency of the dough thing pretty well. We dyed our pots green of course...LOL!

Measuring the ingredients...

Forming the pots...

Our three little pots and lids all done and ready to dry...

Bible:

Our two scriptures for memorization...

 "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding." Proverbs 9:10

"He who gathers in summer is a wise son; He who sleeps in harvest is a son who causes shame." Proverbs 10:5

Little Britches had no problems understanding the second one...but then it's probably because we just got done with harvest season here on the farm!

Science (from the MFW curriculum)

* Close to the Ground

Learning about things that live on the ground in the dirt...we made a worm jar and are documenting what it looks like in the dirt as we go.

* The Seasons

Reviewing the seasons and learning why it's winter on one side of the world when it's summer on the other...and why summer days are longer. We did some worksheets and drawings on this...

Math (from the MFW Curriculum)

*Patterns/Sequences and Sorting/Classifying

Oh man, both boys were excited about getting to play with use our new toy manipulative wood pattern blocks. These are a HUGE hit in our classroom.

Little Britches "Turtle"

And making one for Baby Britches too...

Then morphing the Turtle into a caterpillar...

 

And Baby Britches made something...not sure what...but I HAD to take a picture before he was happy.

We did the worksheets laid out in the manual...

Social Studies

*Geography
We are continuing to work through our geography book (Beginning Geography by Evan Moor) and it continues to be very well received. He's really enjoying the activities in it and picking up the vocabulary. These week's were all about Map Symbols and the Map Keys.

*History
Wow. He LOVES doing our Story of the World work. He kept asking to keep going which is always a sign of interest! We covered the Introduction and Little Britches enjoyed working on his Family History book and calling up his grandparents to ask them the questions on the form. We just have to print off the pictures of each of them to add to their respective pages.

In week #3 we jumped back to a Creation review so that we are prepared timeline wise for moving into Chapter 1 (the Nomads) in week #4 (since the Nomads are believed to be ancestors of Cain). This ended up being a great idea since I discovered someone was a bit lacking in remembering the days of creation. I was able to use THIS LESSON GUIDE to help review the days. 

Art

I am soooo incredibly thankful that my mother-in-law is taking over teaching this subject! She's an art major so it's totally right up her alley and gives her a chance to have some one-on-one time with Little Britches without interruptions. They worked on the first lesson from the Drawing with Children book learning about the five element shapes of art.

TOT SCHOOL

We worked on some coloring by making birthday cards for relatives...

And he enjoyed playing with the wood pattern blocks too as you can see above. We read several books together and then he enjoyed me pulling back out his sensory box again. I will try to snap a picture of him playing with it next week. We also did the big plastic gems for sorting and colors like I mentioned in my previous post.

It was a good week and I really like the balance of subjects we have this year. It keeps us moving around and gives Little Britches a good chunk of time on the subjects he enjoys the most--Science and History.