MFW 1st Grade - Week #6

Welcome to Week #6!!!

I forgot I did have one photo to share with you on week #5, but rather than back-track and update that blog post, I decided to just include it here in week #6.  Maybe this way it won't be overlooked by anyone that cares!  LOL   

We have a new feature in our classroom - - an organizational attempt on my part.  Originally, I had worksheets and assignments in file folders, one for each school day.  I quickly learned that a file per day was overkill and we could easily have one file per week, use less space, and be more organized.  So, while on a shopping trip to Mardel's, (A Christian and Educational Supply Store), I found these items on sale.  They had CUTE sets of file folders and holders, just $5 each.  Since Caleb is a boy, I refrained from purchasing one of the cute, flowery types for me, and went with this faux wood look - and the file folders have "Silly Monkey's" on them.  

I separated his worksheets (reading, math, etc), from the individual daily folders and tucked them into these folders.  Instead of writing on them, I used a post-it note and hand wrote the week number.  That way, I can reuse them later if we decide to change things up yet again.  I am officially organized with all assignments, etc, in folders ready to go through WEEK 16!!!  Whoop!  Ye-haw!!  I'm sure that will be here BEFORE we know it, but for now I'm feeling pretty proud of myself.

Onto week #6.

BIBLE:  
Our bible verse for this week was (see photo below) ----------->

I found on Mama-Jenn's blog these proverb sheet printables, created to go specifically with MFW 1st grade.  So, we print them out and are creating a binder with them.  They are all placed in sheet protectors so they will easily last for our entire 1st grade year.  Every day we say the new verse and 2 or 3 times a week we go back over all the memory verses from the beginning of the year.  Here is a picture of Mama Jenn's picture for week #5.  Caleb laughs at this one every time!

To get all these verses memorized, repetition is a must.  I love that I can try to do that along with him.  I will emphasize the word "try" because I struggled to be able to memorize them.  But, together we are working on it and he seems to love it when we go over them together.  The sad part is, he has more of them memorized than I do!  LOL  Actually, he can say 3 out of the first 4, and about 1/2 of the new one without my help.  If I toss in a word, he can get the rest of the verse no problem.  ;o)

READING:

Caleb's reading lessons are getting undeniably more difficult.  This week we covered:

* LONG vowel "u" with a silent "e" at the end or "ue"

* LONG vowel "a" spelled "ay"

* LONG vowels in general which showed him that some words can have a long or short vowel sound like:  wind (for 'the wind is blowing hard' or 'let's wind up the toy'....

* and lastly he learned about "oo" like spoon.

Tough stuff, but he's doing great with it.  Each day he still has to read a large volume of new words, 24-28, as well as mark the vowel's using a red pencil.  It's definitely getting trickier, but he hasn't skipped a beat yet.  Here are a couple of pages from this weeks assignments.  

                                

                                       

Then he had to write the words from rows 1, 2, 3, in the picture on the top.  He was not very pleased about this, but as I will mention below, MFW is increasing his handwriting assignments and this is the beginning of it.

Matter-of-fact, as we go about our day, he's trying to sound out words he sees in other places....on t-shirts, etc.  It's fun to watch him as he realizes he CAN read.  ;o)

We read several good books this week, but sadly I took a chunk of them to the library before jotting down their names.    So, all I have currently on my shelf are those that go for next weeks material.  :(

MATH:

A new concept introduced to us in math this week was the < and > signs.  Caleb's first assignment was a breeze.  All the problems were all 5 > 3 or  2 < 8 type problems and he got every one of them right with only a little bit of explanation on my part.

Day two the problems looked like this:  58 > 28 - - all double digits compared to double digits.  He still got them right with hardly any effort at all.  I was EVER SO PROUD!!

Right now I think math is his favorite subject.  He seems to love working with numbers.  He told someone else recently that math and reading were his favorite.  I'm not certain he meant "reading" as in CALEB doing the reading worksheets, but MOM reading TO him!!

He had another round of pattern animals and this week he had to sort all the pattern animal names in his book into boy/girl categories.  Then he could choose his favorite animal and cover them up with blocks.  I made the executive decision to write all the animal names myself after he gave me the answer as to whether it was a boy or girl name.  If I had made him write all these, our day would not have been good. Our curriculum is working him up to additional writing assignments and I've decided to let that progress as MFW instructs.  Since Pattern Animals is a supplement to our curriculum, I can choose how much of it he has to actually write himself.

Ultimately, he was supposed to write a story about the animal he picked and how he thought it got it's name...But, he wrinkled his nose at that and so we counted and sorted the blocks instead like we've done before.  Besides, you and I both know that all the animals were named by Adam and I wasn't going to confuse what he's already learned by having him create something from his imagination.

His favorite this time?   The Jaguar.

He talked about the time we went to the Zoo and he saw the jaguar in real life.  I looked back through all our digital pictures, but unfortunately could not find a picture of the jaguar we saw.  So, we pulled up a picture from Google and couldn't resist adding this cutie here for you to see, too.

SCIENCE:

Science is always fun.  Even though we were still tired after daddy's surgery and trying to get back in the groove, we managed to get all our hands on activities done this week!!

This is Caleb holding his "Lake Model."  We filled a jar with water, put a piece of masking tape vertically, and every couple of days or so we check it and mark the water level.  Once we had a few markings and saw the water level going down we had a serious discussion on evaporation...

The specific science topic for this week is Rain.  I have to say, God is good.  We've been in a drought for I honestly am not sure HOW many months, but the dryness of our grass proves it has been a very long time.  Wouldn't you say so??

But, the week we're studying rain?  God sends the RAIN!!  Praising God and thanking Jesus!  Hallelujah!!  We received 11 tenths on Saturday and 1 tenth on Monday.  Not record numbers for sure, but we're grateful for every drop.

Anyway - side-tracked for a moment, sorry!!

For our "Cloud Model" we recreated the "rain" concept in our own kitchen.

We boiled some water.  Don't you love how my new camera even catches the steam rising from the pot?

Once the water came to a boil, we removed it from the heat.  We placed a small cookie sheet on top of the water still in the pot.  Then we put ice cubes on top of the cookie sheet and set the timer for one minute.

For those of you looking at this and wondering, what exactly is this?  Well, it's the bottom of the small cookie sheet.  I had to hold it up, try not to spill the melted ice, and attempt picture taking all at the same time, so it's definitely side-ways.  But you can see the accumulation of water under the cookie sheet.

This is to simulate what the water droplets do as they rise from earth, up into the sky, and collect in the clouds.   As they gather up there, they bump into one another and grow into bigger drops.  When the drops become too heavy, we have rain!!  Definitely simplified for a 1st grader!!  ;o)

He had fun doing this for sure!!

FIELD TRIP:

Several of us homeschool families in the Sinton area have started a small co-op.  We try to meet at least once a week so the kids can get together and hang out.  The older kids met the day of Johnny's surgery to do a science project together.   The rest of the kiddo's also had a field trip this month to Rockport to be a part of the annual Hummingbird release.  I was told they learned a lot about hummingbirds, but the best part was the catch and release part of the program.  I hope to remember that next year so Caleb can experience it.

This week the kids went to the Texas State Aquarium's Sea Lab.  They were divided into appropriate age groups and participated in different activities based on their ages.  

Here is Caleb at the end of his session.  You can tell by that big grin that he had a really good time.  He learned about the anatomy of a fish, water resource management, and even did a little fishing.  I was really surprised that he wasn't intimidated at all when I dropped him off.  He found a seat straight away and looked at me like, "see you later mom."  

Here's our little group....All great kids and fun to be around.  I'm excited to experience even more field trips with them as a group.  We have a lot planned for them this school year!

I do want to add that it was so encouraging to see all the homeschool families there dropping off kids.  It was really cool.

Our Second Field Trip this week was to attend the movie Dolphin Tales on opening day, September 23rd.  Our little group gathered at the theater in Portland which is the closest theater to us and usually less busy theater that the others.  The movie was awesome!  Such a good family movie.  I would encourage anyone to see it with popular actors and actresses like Morgan Friedman, Ashley Judd, Harry Conick Jr, and Chris Christopherson (spelling on some of these may not be correct.)  The best part?  I signed an agreement at the Homeschool Convention I went to last July that I would attend the movie on opening day.  The speaker, Sally Clarkeson, has a son working in Hollywood for Warner Bros.  And they agreed to make more family oriented movies if he could get 150,000 homeschoolers and Christians to attend on opening day.  I don't know what the numbers were, but I'm praying our little group helped reach that goal.   All that aside, if you have a spare Saturday afternoon, attend Dolphin Tales - - you will LOVE it!   We did!

MISCELLANEOUS:   No special art project this week.  We were really doing good just getting to all the actual school stuff we needed to do.  I'm not going to say Johnny's surgery set us back because we started early in August for that very reason and when you are a homeschooler, you are never behind.   It's just a little tricky for the teacher (aka Mom) to wrap her mind around a new MFW week starting on a day other than a Monday.  Realistically though, if we didn't have the surgery it would have been something else causing our days to change.  For example, the field trip we had this week.

I excitedly look forward to another homeschool week and the opportunity to share it with you!

Walking with the King,