MFW Homeschool Highlights

28 Sunday Oct 2012

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Homeschool, MFW Homeschool Highlights, My Father's World, My Father's World 1st Grade, My Father's World Kindergarten, Saxon Math 1

Here are pictures of our homeschool this week!

We are in week 11 (day 49-52 approximately) of My Father’s World 1st Grade. For some reason, this week we also were highly infected with a case of the sillies. So, in order to keep us focused we resorted to a lot more physical activities than even normal.

Our normal jumping/marching while repeating our Bible verse turned into running around the room/dancing and finally “acting it out.”

Our Bible verse this week was:

“A heart at peace . . .”

“gives life to the body,. . .”

(here we are crazy dancing because we are full of life)

“but envy . . .”

“rots the bones. Proverbs 14:30”

(We fell to the floor because our bones are all rotted.)

And here we are, playing what is now a “required” game with our Bible verse. Each page has a word on it, and they must step on the “stepping-stones” as they say each word. My youngest (age 4) has taken over laying the papers out, as long as I have them in order. On this particular day, she made the path quite easy, but normally she tries to “trick” her big sister by making it hard.

Our youngest is working through My Father’s World Kindergarten program, and is really doing fabulous. This week we have been working on the letter A for Apple. She enjoys using the dry erase boards for “practice” before we do some of her worksheets (and this also occupies her while I’m trying to do math with the older).

We have done tons of apple activities this week, especially cooking. (We went apple picking in September and ended up with 40 pounds of apples. So I have TONS of apples to use up!) Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of most of them. We had friends over to make caramel apples – which only the adults actually liked. And when we finish up the unit next week, I have several craft projects related to the unit.

But, I DID get a picture of the apple pie we made together. YUMMY. Only now that I’ve figured out how to make a pie, I’ve got to learn how to cut one without totally ruining it.

Back in our classroom, here is our oldest working on her math lesson (Saxon Math 1), practicing making congruent shapes.

We didn’t completely finish this week’s work because I had to stop and take time to prep for Hurricane Sandy. (And there are just too many fun things to do with this week with both programs!) But since we’ll be housebound most of next week, I know we’ll make it up easily.

Be sure to check out what others are doing in MFW by heading on over to 2 ladybugs and a lizard.

MFW Homeschool Highlights

12 Friday Oct 2012

Posted by MP31W! in Uncategorized

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Homeschool, MFW Homeschool Highlights, My Father's World, My Father's World 1st Grade, My Father's World Kindergarten, Saxon Math 1

I obviously have gotten out of the habit of taking pictures of our homeschool work!

Our oldest (MFW 1st and Saxon Math 1) is currently learning about the fraction 1/4. So for lunch last week, we cut our sandwiches into fourths – three different ways!

We are also FINALLY at the point in the MFW 1st grade curriculum were we have gotten to timeline and Bible reader, and past the worst of the phonics stuff. The phonics portion at the beginning was about to make me poke my eyeballs out. I don’t know why, other than all of the sudden she seemed to start going SOOOO SLOOOOOOOWWWWW and we could never get anything done. But, just in the past week, it’s changed, and I now realize she was just in the brain drain of processing it all, and now that we’re past that hump, she’s off to the races again. Sometimes, I forget that she’s just six and still learning, because she seems to absorb most things so easily.

And since she went to a math camp this summer, she has mastered the dreaded addition and subtraction math facts with ease! Praise the Lord on that one, because I am terribly math challenged, and was struggling on how to help her. Nothing I tried seemed to work. But now, I can hardly keep up. Again.

Our youngest is now four, but we have decided to go ahead and start her on MFW K curriculum, knowing we’d most likely have to really take our time and not push it. Amazingly, she is doing FABULOUS. Her handwriting is terrible, but that is the only thing really she struggles with. I know that that is mostly because of her fine motor skills needing to catch up with her brain, though.

We just finished up the M (Moon) unit with her. This past week, I got into one of my crazy cooking moods, and we made Manicotti for dinner, muffins for breakfast, and surprised the girls with “moon cookies” for dessert. Mommy got to eat all the “oops.”

That’s all I have for this week! I will try to get more on the ball for next week!

Be sure to check out what others are doing in MFW by heading on over to

Getting Involved With a Messianic Congregation

20 Wednesday Jun 2012

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Field Trip, God's Word, Homeschool, Messianic Congregation, MFW Homeschool Highlights, My Father's World, My Father's World 1st Grade, Washington DC

One of the best things about homeschooling is how you can utilize the resources around you in your community. I’m a huge fan of this, even before my homeschooling days.

So, when we arrived in DC and began My Father’s World’s 1st grade curriculum. I noticed the first project was to talk about the history of the Bible, specifically about how it began by being written on scrolls. I thought, hmmmm, we’re in Washington, DC, and I just bet one of the Smithsonian museums has a scroll we can go see for real!

And would you believe it? There is not one scroll (available to the public. Only for scholarly study, and it turns out that one isn’t a “Jewish” scroll anyway.) So back this homeschooling mama goes to the Internet. I start looking at local Jewish synagogues, but I don’t want to offend anyone, and I’m not quite sure of the rules. Would we even be allowed to see one?

Then I remembered, back eons ago, when I used to babysit and I once babysat for the rabbi of a Messianic congregation in New York. (Messianic refers to Jews who believe that Jesus is the Messiah, but worship with their Jewish customs and traditions. Somebody correct me if I’ve explained that incorrectly.) And I thought, these folks might be less likely to be offended by a former-Southern Baptist gal bringing her kids in to see a scroll as part of a home school project.

Luckily, I found a wonderful congregation not too far away, that has a fabulously welcoming atmosphere (and actually had homeschoolers in their group, so they “got” that whole bizness.)

And it was amazing. The rabbi spoke so eloquently and both the hubby and I were spellbound by his “preaching.” (Question – is “preach” or “sermon” the proper terms here? Probably not, but remember I grew up Southern Baptist. I don’t know any better, LOL.) He brought out these tiny points of Hebrew (grammar and conjugations) that don’t translate well into the English Bible, explained them, and frankly we both felt like we were truly understanding the real meaning behind a very well-known verse for the very first time. It was awesome.

The service was also VERY child-friendly, and very open, with lots of audience participation! (Which might not mean much to you, unless you come from a “stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down” tradition and you have two very active young children with you.)

Plus, my oldest was able to see a REAL scroll. This particular one was over 400 years old, and was one of the ones that were smuggled out of Poland before WWII. It was beautiful. And I lot bigger than I expected!

We loved our experience there. We have attended a few times, and since we are now living here for a while, we plan to get involved whenever we have a chance. (Just a FYI, the service we attended was long. At least two hours. So if you have small children, bring snacks and drink, perhaps some crayons to keep them occupied if they get restless.)

A few pictures from a service:

If you are using My Father’s World 1st grade curriculum, or any Christian-based curriculum (that specifically studies the history of the Bible), then I would strongly encourage you to investigate your area and see if there is a Messianic congregation or perhaps a regular Jewish synagogue nearby that might be open to visitors. I personally loved the experience of worshiping very similar to how Jesus might have when He was on the earth.

Here are a few links that can give you more information:

What is Messianic Judaism? – very good, detailed explanation

Kehilat Sar Shalom Congregation – this is the Messianic congregation we visited.

Heart of Wisdom’s Biblical Holidays Page – Awesome, awesome resource for helping kids understand Biblical holidays. Lapbooks, coloring pages, games, etc.

Chosen People Ministries – umbrella organization, with lots of good information on their website

MFW Homeschool Highlights

18 Monday Jun 2012

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Homeschool, MFW Homeschool Highlights, My Father's World, My Father's World 1st Grade

I have these cute pictures of our “science class” from when we were staying in the hotel that I just had to share.

That week’s lesson was on flowers – how a flower grows and the parts of a flower. So, after reading our “lesson” we walked across the street to a nursery, bought a flower and brought it back to dissect it!

After pulling the plant out of the soil and knocking all the dirt off, we used our magnifying glasses to identify the different parts of the plant:

And well, we played with the magnifying glass quite a bit too!

Be sure to check out what others are doing in MFW by heading on over to 2 Ladybugs and a Lizard.

MFW Homeschool Highlights

29 Thursday Mar 2012

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God's Word, Homeschool, MFW Homeschool Highlights, My Father's World, My Father's World 1st Grade

Since we just recently started My Father’s World 1st grade curriculum, I thought it might be fun to share a couple things we’re doing to help making memorizing Bible verses easier and fun!

My oldest is a kynesthetic, “active” learner. Which means she learns best when her body is in motion! So, I’m trying incorporate more “motion” in our learning, especially since the 1st grade curriculum get pretty writing intensive later on.

One “game” I’ve created is called Stepping Stones. Each piece of paper contains one word, and the girls must step from “stone” to “stone” in order, while saying the Bible verse. The first day I make it easy, with them all in a line, and the second day I will spread the “stones” further apart, mix them up so they have to really look for the correct word, etc. (Our preschooler tags along behind.)

The last day of learning our Bible verse, I cut the words into small word cards, and then mix them up in a pile. The oldest is required to put them in order, and then we tape them together and make a “train.” Once we have the train, we use it to measure different things, like each other!

And this week, since oldest is begining to do copywork with the Bible verse, this is an activity I created to keep the preschooler occupied during this time. I hand her our bag of refrigerator magnets, and tell her to find the first letter of each word and then put them on the Bible verse hanging on the refrigerator.

If you’d like, you can also check out posts on other things related to our homeschool work in the past few weeks: Celebrating Purim, and our recent field trips to the DC Cherry Blossom Festival, Ballet Magnificat! and to the US Capitol Building.

Be sure to check out what others are doing in MFW by heading on over to 2 Ladybugs and a Lizard.

First Things First – Update

12 Monday Mar 2012

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Devotional Time, First Things First, Girls, Homeschool, My Father's World 1st Grade, Organization, Prayer, Priorities

I wanted to follow-up on last week’s “First Things First” post.

I’ve created some templates to help me get organized with my blog writing. Of course, I have yet to use them, so I’ve got to play around with them a bit and tweak them until I get everything “perfect.” Once I get them the way that I want them, I’m going to print them out and take them over to Staples or Office Max and get them bound together, like a “real” organizer. Heck, maybe I will even put a pretty cover on it, LOL!

I also thought quite a bit about how to get my days “in priority.” And I had a bit of a lightbulb moment: If I want to start “living in priority,” shouldn’t I start teaching the girls and modeling that for them, too? And if we’re going to do that, shouldn’t our homeschool work reflect how we want them to live their life? Heck, isn’t that why we started homeschooling in the first place?

It was such forehead, slapping, “Duh!” moment. Sometimes I wonder why God doesn’t ever despair of our dimwitted-ness, you know?

So, I have decided to rearrange our school routines. Instead of our Bible work getting pushed to the side and shuffled through at the end, we are now going to spend Monday morning on Bible-related activities. Only after all of this “work” is done will we move on to regular school work.

This morning went a bit long, as I finally finished up a few straggling ideas that I had run out of time for in the past. I added in several practice activities to start learning our new Bible verse for the week, and we started learning our new Bible song for the week. We did several related craft projects, which helped keep the girls’ interests (and I will post about them soon, I hope). We created our prayer basket, our study of Esther to finish up our celebration of Purim last week along with stick puppets to help us tell the story, and finished decorating our lapbooks all the way from Valentine’s, so I could declare those done. Little things that had been lagging and lagging and I feel so much better I don’t have to think about them any more.

In between and any time I could catch a few minutes while the girls were coloring or doing worksheets, I sat over at the table and tried to work on my own devotional study, that I had tried to get through all last week. I snuck two minutes here and five minutes there, but I’ve finally gotten some really productive progress made and will be able to blog about that this afternoon.

So, this style I think will work well for us. I need to re-tweak my school organizing grid a little bit more, and some of the normal “Monday” work like science might have to get pushed to Tuesdays on days where our Bible time goes too long. But that flexibility is why homeschool is so great, right? And I feel much more comfortable pushing science back because Bible went too long instead of the other way around.

New Firsts I’m Focusing On This Week:

1. First of Our School Day

I’m also going to push Bible time to first in our routine. I usually do math first while my daughter’s focus and patience was the best, but again, that’s not giving God our “best,” but “leftovers.” So, hoping to model “living in priority” for our girls will hopefully teach them by osmosis about putting first things first,andwill give me a chance to put devotional time first as well, even if it’s “child-focused” devotional time and not always “personal” devotional time. Plus, I’m hoping that making devotional time my focus on Mondays, that I will be able to set it up so that I can snatch time during the day each day to do my own devotional time. We’ll have to see how it works out this week.

2. First of the Morning

I am NOT a morning person. Just not. In fact, I have a running joke that there is no point in me going to the early service at Church, because God doesn’t speak to me before 10am. He knows I’m not really awake, so He doesn’t even waste His time!

I don’t know about you guys, but my first new moments each morning feel like they are begin with blearily peering through half-open eyes while trying to break up girly squabble and getting my turn in the bathroom. It takes no time at all to start my day in a cranky, stressed-out, frazzled mom-mood, wondering where the coffee is and why does morning come so fast? It is not the way I want to start my day each day, because it colors my day with those colors the rest of the day.

So, I’m going to attempt to implement a new habit this week – by giving God my first few moments of each day before the insanity starts. At the very least, I can review a quick verse and say a short prayer, even if it is just, “Lord, please help me make it through the day.”

So, that’s my update.