My Father's World--The Letter M (Moon)

This last week we studied the moon.  I wasn't sure if I'd have enough project ideas but ended up with more than enough to do.  I wasn't sure if I'd enjoy this week because it didn't sound as appealing as the Sun stuff had been but I actually REALLY enjoyed the week and learned a lot about the moon myself!

We played with Moon Sand!  I love this stuff!  It's like a squishy, but powdery kind of lightweight clay.  I got it at a yard sale from a homeschooling mom friend for $3 a year ago and they play with it often!

They learned to make craters by pressing a marble into the Moon Sand.

We did another Letter Treasure Hunt and they searched around the house for "M" words.  Ali wrote half of them out and I told the kids if they found more than 20 they could pick a piece of candy out of our candy box.  They found 21.

We made "Moon Biscuits."  We used our regular baking powder biscuit recipe and formed them into moon shapes and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar.

We worked daily on the Phases of the Moon.  There was a kid's rap song on Youtube we listened to each day that was about the phases of the moon.  But beware!  It's really annoying.  The kids complained that they couldn't get it out of their head and it got stuck in mine too!  Making the phases of the moon out of Oreos was a big hit with my kids who LOVE to eat!  I kept getting confused about whether or not the moon is waxing or waning so I came up with this saying to remind myself:  Wayne is a Leftie and it is Right to Wax your car.  So, if the yellowish part of the moon is on the left, I know the moon is waning.  If it is the right side that is lit up, it's waxing. 

Baby Katri, who has to eat everything we are eating, loved that lesson!!!

M&Ms are a great thing to have on hand for the letter M so we made a graph to chart out how many of each color there were.  Then we divided them up to eat for snack!

I made "Full Moon Toast" for lunch one day. 

Tin foil on a bike helmet makes a nice space helmet for blasting up to the moon in one's rocket ship.

Jeremiah spent a lot of time this week putting a cardboard box on his head as well to play astronaut.

We watched videos of the first landing on the moon (on Youtube), read some science reports about it, and talked a lot about astronauts.

Justy was playing with blocks at recess and found some quarter moon shapes that made a full moon together.  He was so excited to show me!

I made a Phases of the Moon memory game which we played together.

M is for MATH!  We did lots of Math this week, especially since our Math-U-See manipulatives, which had been backordered, finally arrived!  We are loving Math-U-See so far!

When we first started talking about the phases of the moon Ali said, "Let's make paper plate masks to do the faces of the moon!"  She thought I said faces instead of phases!  I thought it was a great idea since mask begins with the letter M as well as moon!  So, we made moon masks with our phrase of the week on them.  My Father's World gives the theme "I am the light of the world" as the key words for the moon lessons, but I didn't like that.  Last week's was "Jesus is the light of the world" and I wondered if the kids would be confused by hearing one week that Jesus was the light and then the next week that they are the light.  Since we studied a lot about reflection this week, I made our key words, "Reflect the Son."  We talked about how the moon reflects the sun (and used a flashlight in a dark room on a globe to show this) and how we should be like the moon and reflect the Son of God.  My hubby even has a t-shirt with this phrase on it!

My mom loaned me some books from her classroom and I had a couple of my own and got a couple from the library!

 

It was a busy week again as we had homeschool swimming every afternoon.  Thankfully my friend Lori and I took turns taking the older kids and babysitting the younger ones (we each have 4) so that we didn't have the daily nightmare of dragging 4 kids to the pool at naptime.  Her baby boy napped at my house and Katri napped at her house well so it worked out wonderfully and was a lot less stressful than it could have been.  However, we are both relieved swimming is over as it really throws a cramp in the day.  But it was soooo worth it as Ali loves to swim and had so much fun seeing her buddy Ansley every day.  They just so happened to have the same swim suit and were so excited to wear them together!

In addition to the activites above we did our weekly page for their Letter Binders, which you can get free here, and traced the letter M and practiced writing it on white boards, colored an M picture and did our other school routine stuff like chore charts, weather chart, songs, Bible reading, prayer, review of last week, poem of the week (my mom gave me a great children's poem book with cute little poems on science and nature), etc.

I ran out of time and didn't get to do any activities with marshmallows, make a moon and star mobile, or make bagel moons (with cream cheese and bagels). 

Last week I left you with this disclaimer:

In sharing these photos I am not saying that everyone should homeschool, that every homeschooler should blog their lessons, that every My Father's World Homeschooler should do things my way. I am not trying to make those of you who are not into crafts or projects feel guilty--there are probably a thousand things you do better than me! Here are the reasons I'm going to try to blog our school lessons:

*It's a hobby! 

*To inspire others.

*To cherish these days with my kids.

*To have a homeschooling record.

I'd love to hear about what you did with MFW or the different letters of the alphabet or if you have any blog links that you would like to pass on to me that would be wonderful!!!