Delaney has been hard at work now that she's an official 1st grader. I had originally intended to lump her into Adventures with Sydney, but after lengthy discussion and prayers, we've decided to use My Father's World's 1st grade program with her. We have only done the first 8 days, but so far she seems to enjoy it. I must also confess that the one on one time we are getting by doing school this way has also been good for our mother/daughter relationship...which just can't be a bad thing.
So for the first 8 days, we have been following a very similar routine. We start our day with a Bible lesson. Right now she is learning some verses from the book of Proverbs. We started with Proverbs 9:10 "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding." We spent quite a bit of time talking about what fear of the Lord means and how God wants us to revere Him - not to actually be afraid. That was a toughie to explain! Our newest verse is Proverbs 10:5 "He who gathers crops in summer is a wise son, but he who sleeps during harvest is a disgraceful son." You know, it can be hard to explain Proverbs to a city kid!
After Bible study, we move on to math. I am trying to combine MFW math with Math U See so it ought to be an interesting year. Right now D is studying patterns and learning about place value. I haven't been overly thrilled with the directions given in the math section of MFW, but I'm trying to be open-minded about it. D fills out a "Number of the Day" sheet each school day on which she practices writing the number and does a few math equations (0+___ = ____, ___-1=____, etc).
The best part of their math, in my opinon, is the hands on approach to learning place value and money. She gets a new bean to put in a cup each day and when she amasses 10 of them, she'll glue them to a popsicle stick to make a base 10 stick. We did something similar with the MUS blocks last year, but I think this will be even more concrete for her. For money, she gets a penny every day and when she has 5 she can exchange them for a nickel and 2 nickels can be exchanged for a dime. We won't be using quarters this year, but I'm sure we'll trade up for a dollar when the time comes. D loves doing the worksheets from The Complete Book of Math. I think that's been her favorite part of school.
So far her language arts studies have all been review. We are starting with practicing all the letter sounds and working on handwriting. I'm not sure how we missed it, but last year we didn't spend much time learning how to write lower case letters, so this exercise has been very good for her. Each day she practices writing 3 letters and then practices blending the new consonants with the vowels. When she's done with the alphabet, we'll turn all her papers into a scroll. We talked about how the Bible was first written on a scroll and only available to very rich people, so she's decided that she's making her scroll for the king (Dad).
So far her language arts studies have all been review. We are starting with practicing all the letter sounds and working on handwriting. I'm not sure how we missed it, but last year we didn't spend much time learning how to write lower case letters, so this exercise has been very good for her. Each day she practices writing 3 letters and then practices blending the new consonants with the vowels. When she's done with the alphabet, we'll turn all her papers into a scroll. We talked about how the Bible was first written on a scroll and only available to very rich people, so she's decided that she's making her scroll for the king (Dad).
She really seems to like all the hands-on activities that come with this program, but I'm not surprised since she's a hands-on kinda' girl :) One of her first projects was a pottery jar. I read that the recipe printed in the 1st grade manual was a bit of a flop, so we decided to make the jar with Crayola air drying clay instead.
She did a great job!
She also made a Jewish calendar and we talked a bit about the differences between our calendar and the one she made. She was very interested to learn about the Jewish names for the months.
In science we learned about bugs and creepy crawlies and then got to go outside and pick up all sorts of boards and leaves and sticks to see if there was anything living under there. She still does this every time she goes outside *eek* We also had a lesson on the seasons. I think her favorite part of that was when we acted out the earth and sun and I orbited around her to demonstrate the change of seasons. She was a bit disappointed that I didn't rotate on my axis as I orbited her - but there's only so much spinning a mom can take!
No comments:
Post a Comment