A few months ago I mentioned that we’re using My Father’s World curriculum this year to cut back on my preparation time, and to make it easier for Daddy to oversee the older ones’ schoolwork.  Ariel (10th grade) and Sophia (5th grade) are working independently, for the most part, so I can spend my time (and energy) doing Kindergarten with Livia (6) and Caleb (4).

Livia was not quite ready for kindergarten last year, although she’s done a lot of catching up and is a pretty advanced kindergartner this year.  Caleb is not terribly far behind, in a lot of areas, so he tags along with most of our work, but when he peters out I generally just call him finished for the day.  (Unless he’s mid-project, in which case I usually make him finish whatever he’s in the middle of.)

Today’s post is simply a little bit of a recap to show some of the more “project-y” things we’ve done so far.

Creation

We made Days of Creation books, and a set of numbers.  (The numbers came pre-printed, so the kids only needed to color them.  The cross in Livia’s is something she made from the excess paper cut off of the number 4.  I forgot to leave room for it at the end when I cut out her strip, so she glued it between 1 and 2.)

Sun (S)

The program makes use of the Cuisenaire Alphabet Book for a lot of the math lessons.  I’m honestly not super-crazy about this book.  It’s okay, but not spectacular, and it’s kind of a hassle to copy the pages so we’ve only used it for a few of the weeks.  But Sun week is one of the weeks we did.

We also made sun tea and a sundial.  And we attempted sun-dried raisins, but they were kind of a bust.  As you can see, we left them for 2 weeks and, although they did shrivel somewhat, they never really reached true “raisin” status.  (Some suggested, after the fact, that piercing the grapes before placing them in the sun might help.  It also doesn’t help that our grapes were huge!)

Leaf

For Leaf week, we practiced graphing our leaves in the driveway (an add-on activity), then went inside and practiced creating more graphs with our Cuisenaire rods.

I guess our sun and moon studies stuck with them, because I found this on the driveway later in the week!

Apple

For Apple week, we sorted and graphed our apples, cut them into halves and quarters, predicted how many seeds each apple would have (and then counted), made applesauce and apple pie.

(We doubled the pie recipe and made a second pie at the same time, as an opportunity to meet our new neighbors.  It isn’t much more work to make two pies than just one.)  This is the recipe from the book we read during Apple week, but if I’d found it sooner than I did, we probably would have made this gluten-/grain-free one: Gluten-/Grain-Free Apple Pie.

Nest

I thought the Nest craft was a little too much like the Apple craft, so I swapped it out, replacing it with one we found online.  (I found a number of versions of this on Google images, and I have no idea which one was the original.)  This was a last-minute swap, hence the crazy-colored baby birds.  We just used what we already had around the house, thanks to the folks at CraftProjectIdeas.com.  (We’re also using our craft sticks from them for math right now.  For each of the first 100 days of school, we add a stick each day, bundling them as we reach each group of ten, and mark a 100 chart to correspond.)

What We Like & Dislike So Far

I think I might have mentioned in my previous MFW post that we have our own preferred phonics program.  My children also happen to know a lot of their letter sounds already.  With this in mind, our use of the phonics elements of the program have been kind of hit-or-miss.  We use the flashcards (although I teach all of the letter sounds, even though we’re really focusing just on the one), and both kids love the sound discrimination sheets.  We don’t use the picture cards and the blend ladder isn’t really a major element for us, although I may use it some for Caleb later in the year.  (Livia already understands the concept, so it’s just not necessary for her.)

As I noted a bit earlier, I’m not a huge fan of the Cuisenaire alphabet book.  Livia enjoys it when we do it, but pretty much every letter is done the same way, and I think a lot of the pictures are weird.  We do enjoy the math worksheets and the more hands-on math tasks (like graphing our apples).  The daily 100 chart activity is simple but brilliant!  I’m not sure Livia really needs it, but it only takes a couple minutes a day and she thinks it’s fun, and it’s been really good for Caleb.  Livia is, in addition, working through Life of Fred.  (She recently finished Apples and has started Butterflies, and she would like to be moving faster than the 2 lessons a week I’ve scheduled for her.)

Although we really like most of the “key” books for each week, there have been a couple so far that I’m not as big a fan of.  The Little Bear story for moon week is written for emergent readers.  That means it would be a great story for young readers to sound out on their own because it’s simple, but it’s really awful writing for a read-aloud.  It’s early enough in the year that my children aren’t reading independently yet, and if I’m going to read to them I prefer more excellent writing they can learn to model.  This week’s story is Love You Forever.  It’s cute, but it’s also kind of odd, so I enjoy it more as an occasional read than multiple times in the same week.

We love that this is rooted in biblical principles.  Each week has a “saying” for the kids to learn that goes with the “object” comprising the week’s theme.  These are simple and well-suited to the little ones, and they remember them well, even after just the first couple days of a week.  We’re now seven weeks in (not counting Creation, which is separate from the “regular” weeks), and even Caleb can still remember the first week’s saying.

I also really like that there’s a certain pattern or rhythm to the weeks.  Each day starts with some basic calendar work and the 100 chart.  Then there are certain types of activities that appear each Monday, certain types for each Tuesday, etc.  I’m having a little trouble keeping up with the speed of “turnover,” though.  There’s plenty of time in a week to finish all the lessons — not too much actual schooling in it at all.  I just struggle, personally, with “switching gears” to a new topic as frequently as every week.  I would guess that for households without chronically ill mamas, where errand day is more regular, this is probably not a big deal.

I’m glad we chose it, and I definitely still recommend it, but I’m also reminded of why, as a “tweaker,” I’ve never bought a prepackaged curriculum before!

My Father’s World (MFW) Kindergarten Update – Sep/Oct is a post from: Titus 2 Homemaker

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