I've decided to share on my blog what we do each week for My Father's World Kindergarten (which I am using for Jer and Justus' preschool). My Father's World 1st Grade is a bit less exciting than kindergarten so I may not feature many pics of that, but the K stuff is just so much fun! I was greatly inspired by my friend Kristin's blog and wanted to share these ideas with any of you who may be able to use them. This post does not include everything we do for school (Bible verses, singing, prayer, pledge, weather chart, Family rules, chore chart, Math-U-See, computer games, etc.) but gives you a taste of the fun stuff!
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! I relax by taking pics and blogging
*To inspire my friends as I have been inspired
*To cherish the memories of these fleeting days with my little ones
*To have a homeschooling record
*So that my husband (who sometimes, much to my great annoyance, has the audacity to ask "Do you guys EVER do school?" because he is gone during our school hours and only hears about the fun stuff/playdates/activities we did during the day and not necessarily the worksheets) has an idea of what we do.
I don't know why My Father's World starts with S necessarily, but it does, so after a small unit on creation the week before, we jumped into the alphabet with the letter S. It's quite appropriate for our family, since our last name begins with S!
Painting with spaghetti noodles--We made the letter S and also a sunshine and a snake
We did a few worksheets on the letter S each day from online printables. One was on shadows, one on seasons, one on practicing writing the S, etc.
We cut out these sun designs and taped them to yellow paper and put them up in the window for a week to see how the sun fades paper
We went on a hunt around the house and yard looking for objects that start with S
We put some grapes in between the dining room windows and observed their change into raisins!
What lesson on the sun would be complete without Sun Tea?
Sunshine pancakes! We didn't have oranges or peaches or strawberries on hand, but bananas worked!
The kids and I often take an evening bike ride. We look for shadows, play at the nearby school playground or park, or ride to my folks' home 4 blocks away. We loved how the sunshine lit up this field of weeds.
I couldn't find the main book MFW suggested for this lesson at my library so I went with one of their secondary suggestions, "What the Moon Saw." We read it and discussed the theme of opposites, which is prevalent in the book. We read many other books on the sun throughout the week.
A handprint sun
A crude sundial, which still needs to be marked according to the hour. The days we tried to chart the time, it was cloudy or too windy.
We learned a lot about shadows this week!
The kids are making binders full of these papers, which I got free from this site. At the end of the year they will have a "book" reminding them of all their letters and the lessons that go along with each letter.
This is an idea Ali came up with, thanks to her Clubhouse Jr. magazine. We "painted" bread with new paintbrushes dipped in colored milk. Just squeeze a few drops of food coloring into 2 T. milk!
My kids love quesadillas! One day I was fixing them and realized that they could easily be made into suns!
I traced each of the kids' silhouettes on some posterboard against the wall. They didn't turn out wonderful, so if I ever want to make some to frame I will try it again and get some better ones.
We made sunshine badges that say, "Jesus is the Light of the World" our theme for the week!
