A little late in getting this posted, but here it is....
BIBLE: We started our timeline this week. I'm sure there are many variations out there of how MFW users incorporate this. We really didn't have 6-8 ft of wall space in the school room and I hesitated to put this down our hall-way for the only reason that when ever we wanted to look at it we'd have to get up and leave the school room.
So, I decided to use the edge the beautiful shelves Johnny made us. I bought a roll of twine and used those cute little clothes pins I posted about some weeks back along with a few push pins. This way it is right over our heads and we can look at it at any moment and keep on going without the interruption of having to leave the room.
Our timeline goes the full length of the shelves, which is 8 ft. So, here are three photo's to show that.
From left to right the signs placed on our timeline are:
*Written in Hebrew - "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." We colored grass along the bottom, a blue sky, flowers, and a tree. Very hard to see in this picture...but it's there.
* 2000
* 1000
* B.C. - A.D.
* 1000
* 2000
* Photo of Caleb put on his birth year, 2005
* A "?" to show that Christ is returning for us some day, we just do not know when.
The memory verse this week was, "The Lord detest lying lips, but He delights in men who are truthful." Proverbs 12:22
I've decided that MFW is really focusing on our attitudes and how they are connected to the words we use and how we talk and treat people. I wish they were a bit more varying, but memorizing and learning scripture is a great thing.
My laminator came in recently and I can't wait til I have a moment to laminate all those little labels. That will keep them safe for the entire school year!
READING: This week MFW introduced the bible reader to Caleb and so started our stack of index cards with our words to remember/sight words on them. This weeks words are:
God, the, world, was, made, dark, life, water, only, no, it, had, but, there, said, let, be, and, saw, good, first, light, that, day. I've showed you pictures of lists of words that Caleb has had to read and sound out each day. These specific words correlate specifically with his Bible Reader. For example, the bible story he read using half these words I listed was as follows:
God Made the World
The world was dark.
It had no life.
It only had water.
But God was there.
And the other half of the words were used in this story:
God said, "Let there be light."
And there was light.
God saw the light.
It was good.
That was the first day.
Also this week we began to use our
Bible Notebook. On certain days of our bible time, he will do some writing and illustrating of the bible story that is told that day. As I looked through to get an idea on how this is supposed to go, I am told in more than one place to acquire and keep up with my own bible notebook. The idea here is that my notebook will be a guide for Caleb as he is encouraged to draw, color, and create his own pictures. I expect this to be somewhat of a challenge as those are some of Caleb's least favorite things to do. But maybe, if I have a notebook too, and he can look at mine, it will go ok. I'll have to look ahead and see if I can stock up on stickers and stuff, too, so that it's not ALL drawing for him.
He also finished up another student sheet activity called "More Animal Tales." Caleb has two sentences he reads every day at the bottom of his reading workbook. They usually have a few of the words that he was learning how to sound out that day. Over the course of the last two weeks he's been writing the sentence that talks about an animal into a hand made booklet. He then illustrates something to go along with that sentence. This is always something we do together because he is not going to
color or
draw unless I'm right there beside him, doing it with him.
Caleb has learned that the internet is a fabulous tool. When there is something we need to draw and need an idea of how it looks he'll tell me to look it up on the internet for a pattern. ;o) This idea works really well as long as I'm careful with my word choices on what we "search for." For example, when we were studying rivers and our little book mentioned a brooke, Caleb wanted to know what a brooke was. Well, don't just google brooke....You get ALL SORTS of Brookes, with a capital B....I had to quickly cover Caleb's eyes. He giggled and I entered a new search, "brookes with water." Then we found what we needed.
Nearly every day Caleb has words of dictation. I call out the word and he has to write it. It was rather cute when the other day his word was "we." I said, "we." He said, "I know that!" and hustled to write "Wii" on his worksheet! Too funny....I had to explain that I didn't mean his video game system.... ;o)
BOOKS: As always, we read lots of books...I took a few moments this week to make a list before sending them back to the library. This isn't all of them, but most of them.
Fun Books:
*Pirates Go To School
*Pickles, Please!
Math Books:
*Ready, Set, Hop had two frogs competing on who could jump the furthest - - including addition problems along the way
*Twenty is too Many - a fun story about guinea pigs counting backwards from 20-1
Science Books:
*At the Beach by Anne & Harlow Rockwell
*A Day at Seagull Beach
*Eyewitness Explorers Seashore
*Lottie's New Beach Towel
*The Seashore Book
*At the Beach by Melanie Hope Greenberg
*Star of the Sea, A Day in the Life of a Starfish
*Is this a house for hermit crab?
*When the Tide is Low
*What Makes an Ocean Wave?
MATH: We're hitting addition pretty hard. What I've noticed with Caleb is that he sorta toodles along, learning something new, and then suddenly when he "gets" it - we both know it and he starts breezing through. We're still in the toodling stage of addition, but I don't expect it to take long before he's breezing through. ;o)
He's counting by 5's and 10's completely by himself, is recognizing odd and even numbers in the single digits (I haven't tried any doubles yet), and does pretty well with counting by 2's. He seems to be getting the "place value" concept - - I think our daily bean jar, money jar, and other place value tasks are starting to make sense.
SCIENCE: This week we studied "The Beach" and "Waves" from our Things Outdoors book. Our hands-on activity was to use a rope and a stationary object and simulate waves. Not very complicated, but fun for a 6 year old!!
I have to admit I was a bit excited to find in my garage last week a small box. This is a box that came with a photo album inside it from one of the Hallmark stores. A very OLD box from a very long time ago. ;o) Inside I have kept a collection of shells from the beach. I have carted this box around, never quite sure why I couldn't part with the shells. They are just shells after all. But, they are so unique that I would tuck them away every time I came across the box. I was certain some day I would need them for something. I'm please that the reason may be so that I could share them with Caleb for our study this week...
These shells were found right there in the sand, along the shore of Mustang Island, Access Road #3. ;-) I'm convinced that someone must have gone snorkeling or scuba diving to find them because in all my days at the beach I've never found any this unique before. I don't know the names of them, but you can see in the picture there was quite a variety - even coral.
This is the old box, filled with shells.
The last few weeks of science have been somewhat light. I don't know if it's good or not to wish for something a little more involved for Caleb as that would definitely add more to our school week. We'll see how it goes and what comes next. I'm trying to decide if he's getting enough science with the curriculum we're using or if a supplement needs to be incorporated some how. My sweet sister-in-law, Kathy, told me to check out the TEA website and see what recommendations are there and use that as a guide. I'm going to do just that!
Week #9 took longer to finish. All last week Caleb was ill. His doctor appointment came complete with blood work, strep test, and flu test. All were negative except the blood test showed he had a bacterial injection. So, he had to have an antibiotic injection and was put on antibiotics and med's for congestion. Rough day for my little guy.
On to week #10 - unbelievable that we are already this far into the school year!!
Walking with the King,
