My Father's World--The Letter Y (Yellow and colors)

I didn't realize 10 months ago how big of a challenge it would be to keep up with blogging our MFW lessons!  It seems that I procrastinate more and more as the year goes on.  I'm finally finishing up here...a month behind when we actually finished!  Alathia finished her MFW work a couple of weeks after the boys.  In a future post I'll talk about our summer learning schedule.

The kids and I put together our colors puzzle

Ali read the story "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" to the kids.  I love this book!

We colored a rainbow printable picture for our binder pages.  Our key words for this week were, "Thank you God for this beautiful world." 

Each of the kids made a "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" book using printables I found online that go with the book.

I love how in the original story it is a MOM and not a teacher at the end of the book that the kids see.

Ali drew a pic of me for one of the pages in the book.

What does the mom see?  Kids looking at her!  This is Ali's quick rendition of the kids in our family.

Katri's new book was perfect for color week.  We enjoyed reading it a few times and also read other books from the library and our own bookshelves on colors.

Every Wed. morning we head over to the park a couple of blocks away for Pray and Play, my mom's group.  Ali and Jer are old enough to ride there by themselves (and also to Grammy's, which is 4 blocks away) and I push the little kids, and the drinks, snacks, blanket, etc. etc.)  Truth be told, we are probably at this park 5 times a week for various playdates, church picnics, softball practices, family bike rides, etc.

We saw a beautiful rainbow in the sky, rare indeed in these dry parts!

Just as my friend Kristin did, I had the kids gather toys into color piles.  Since we have very few toys in the house (due to de-cluttering rampages and Toy Jail and rotating toys from the shed) I had them do it with the outside toys.  Above is their pink and orange pile.

The red pile

The green pile

The blue pile (Arrggghh!  What is Jer's blanket doing outside????  Sigh....)

The white pile

The brown pile

Grammy had given us a bag of jelly beans and a jelly bean chart around Easter (leftovers from her class) and I saved them for color week.  I told the kids the jelly beans were dirty, and were not to be eaten, as the kids at Grammy's school had handled them and used them for math counting, charting, etc.  Nevertheless I decided to conduct an experiment of my own and count them as I threw them away afterward and 5 were mysteriously missing.....

I had the boys sort these colored sticks into color groups and practice making the letters of their name with them

Using colored ice cubes and yellow water I demonstrated how we make purple, green, and orange with the primary colors.

I apologize for the blurry pic.  I hate blurry pics, but for some reason none of my pics of our rainbow crayons turned out well.  The lens I had on the camera didn't want to focus on the paper plate for some reason.  We made 10 rainbow crayons using old crayon stubs from the crayon box.  I lined my muffin tin with foil and heated them in the oven.  The kids enjoyed coloring pictures with them when they were cool and we wrapped up a few in a pretty baggie for a friend of theirs who had a birthday party the following weekend.  My kids are something else!  You'd think that I starve them, the way they continually kept asking if they could eat these crayons!!!  I was so frustrated I almost gave in and told them to eat them after the 7th time!!!

To celebrate completing a year of school, I ordered each of the kids a new book from Grammy's scholastic catalog.  They came in time for the last day of school. 

 While I was at my Friday cleaning job, Daddy snapped this pic on his camera of the kids enjoying their new books.

The Gospel Fuzzies--one of my favorite CEF props, was a hit with the kids. 

Each color has a verse of the song and I use different verses for each one.  Each color stands for a page of the Wordless Book and tells part of the Gospel message.  You can easily make this Gospel tool by hot-gluing pom-poms onto a glove and then gluing eyes onto the pom-poms.  Check out this video on youtube to hear the song:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy6zTKRo0Zw

This week, we attended a Barn Dance with a bunch of folks from church.  A few times a year, some country folks with a large garage open it up to everyone for a good, clean night of fun.  It was precious to see Josiah dancing with his little girls.

Uncle Colter and Auntie Anna, and their baby Jed, attended with us, which was nice!

Katri just wouldn't stop dancing with Sis and was so dizzy she fell down when she tried to walk.

Several of the teens in our church go to The Ball in Billings, MT twice a year.  The Ball is a huge, formal dance put on by the Presbyterian church up there for homeschoolers.  Many fathers and daughters attend and it is so much fun!  Josiah and I attended it once 6 years ago.  You spend Saturday afternoon learning several dances, such as Posties, Waltzes, The Virginia Reel, etc. and then on Saturday night everyone gets dressed up in regal, beautiful dresses and fancy suits and has a wonderful time dancing as a group.  Because of The Ball, the teens in our church taught some of these dances at the Barn Dance and so everyone who wanted to dance was included.  I love that the teens in our church are not exclusive, and every girl, no matter how shy, gets asked to dance by the young gentlemen.  I hope that our church folk are still having Barn Dances when my kids are teens.  It's a wonderful way to have fun together as a family, and with friends in a supervised environment.

I have enjoyed dancing with my reluctant-to-dance husband at the Barn Dances, as well as my dad and my brother too!  And also my little sons are some of my favorite partners!

On the last day of school we went to the park for a homeschool curriculum swap.  It was raining buckets so instead of eating our picnic lunch there we brought it home and had a picnic in the living room.  Then I let the kids watch Charlotte's Web, as we had just finished the book as a read-aloud the day before.

What a wonderful year it was and how I enjoyed the My Father's World Kindergarten curriculum.  I did the "lite" version of it this year, with less Math and few worksheets because I was using it for a Pre-K program for Jer and preschool for Justus.  This next year we have the student sheets, and the re-vamped, new edition of the MFW K curriculum and I'm greatly looking forward to doing it again!  This is definitely the perfect curriculum fit for my nature-loving Jeremiah!  And Justus loves doing all of the activities with him!

My Father's World--The Letter Q (Quail)

A little over a month ago we did our second-to-last week of school and the focus was the letter Q.

We enjoyed learning all about birds, but it was difficult to find any books on quail at the library.  Even our animal encyclopedia, which is a favorite resource for us and contains almost every animal, bird, and fish under the sun did not contain a single reference to quail! 

I found a coloring printable and the kids colored, cut, and pasted the pictures for their binder pages.

Our key words were: I do not grumble or complain; I am thankful.  I had Ali read aloud from her Bible the story of the Israelites grumbling about the manna and how the Lord sent quail.  We talked a lot about gratitude/thankfulness this week.

The key words for Q are definitely among my top 5 "MFW key words" that get frequently quoted to the kids!

We walked to a friends' home who has ducks, geese, robins, etc. to talk to her about birds and observe them in their pond.  We listened to different bird calls on this nature website and tried to learn to identify the birds we commonly hear.  We went fourwheeling with my parents as a pre-Mother's-Day excursion (something my mom enjoys doing) and saw beautiful scenery, and heard our state bird, the Western Meadolark, singing.

In other events of the week, our kids performed in the kids' musical, "Sermon on the Mound" which a lady from our church organized and helped them put on.  It was very well done and I was so proud of Ali and Jer!  Justus, on the other hand, wasn't quite old enough to be in it.  Through most of the program he was sitting when he was supposed to stand, standing when he was supposed to sit, exposing his belly button, hugging his neighbor, rocking back and forth, staring off into space, etc.

Ali and her friend Marlee had a speaking part together about the armor of God.

Jeremiah and his friend Creighton had to read a part about the spiritual armor too.

Ali was THRILLED to get to be a Dandelion in the show.  At first, it looked like only the little girls would be able to do it and she was so disappointed.  But then the director was mentioning that she didn't have enough and I told her Ali would love to be one.  She quickly made her the "leader" and so Ali was in charge of helping the littler ones do what they needed to do during the show.  A sweet lady from our church made the THIRTEEN dandelion costumes all by herself!  One little boy, Justus' best friend, insisted on being a dandelion, along with the 12 girls.  No, he didn't wear a tutu, just a green leotard!

This was after the show--a few of the dandelions that remained on the church playground decided to dance around together and I just so happened to have my camera on my arm...ready to capture the sunset glow falling on them!

The night before Mother's Day I gave Ali a lesson in how to make chocolate-dipped strawberries for her Mom.  Selfish?  Maybe.  Brilliant?  Absolutely!  If I get nothing else on future mother's days I will be happy!

Fourwheeling through the canyon was so much fun.  We had a picnic and hiked around. 

Ali took this pic of us on my old snapshot camera that is now Josiah's.

We saw all kinds of neat things, including butterflies, a white snake, and our state flower, the Indian Paintbrush.

This is Wyoming Rush Hour Traffic =)

My Father's World--The Letter V (Vegetables)

For V week we studied vegetables and our key words were "God gives me all that I need."

Though we haven't had a garden of our own yet, we are thankful to be able to participate in Bountiful Baskets food co-op.  In a state with a very short growing season and very limited produce options, this co-op has made an ENORMOUS difference in our eating habits.  Every other Saturday when I get my baskets, the kids help me wash and sort the fruits and veggies.

Justus is a cheerful produce-washer.  He especially loves cherry tomatoes and can eat a whole container in one sitting if we let him!

We tried painting with various fruits and veggies while listening to Mozart.

Sometimes a homeschooling mom has to treat herself on a rough day!  Melted Ghiradelli chocolate and fruit kabobs are a luscious snack!

It's high time Katri learns to clean up messes, since she is so good at making them!  I gave Ali the responsibility of helping to train Katri and they had lots of fun together while cleaning up our living room!

A while back I purchased 4 visors on clearance for about a quarter each.  I whipped them out and gave the kids lots of stickers and jewels to decorate them with.  They wore them around all week and called themselves the Adventure Scouts and formed a little club together.

Proud of his veggie painting

I've made my life and workload simpler by serving lunch (and snacks too) outside and using paper plates more often!

One day I did some bulk cooking and was completely overwhelmed by the enormous load of dishes covering my counters and filling my sink.  I knew I could either throw in the towel and not do them at all or enlist some help!  The kids were bickering anyhow so by asking them to help with dishes I killed two birds with one stone!  They happily washed dishes outside for an hour while I shuttled them in and out and rinsed and dried them.  After an hour, the 3-4 dishwasher-loads-worth of dishes were done!  Hurray!

Alathia, always crafting, made this paper chain one day.  I took this pic before she finished it.  It ended up being twice as long as it is shown here!  The first 50 loops were made from hand-made construction paper.  She forgot we had colored paper in the homeschool closet so she colored her own from computer paper!  What a girl!

We babysat Jed and a few other friends while their mamas had dentist appointments one day.  We drew the alphabet with sidewalk chalk and played games on it.  I had Ali spell words by hopping from letter to letter and had the boys do an alphabet hop.  My nephew Jed thought it was hysterical to see Auntie hopping around on letters and he couldn't stop laughing!

One huge excitement we had during V week was Box Day.  If you are a homeschooler, you know how exciting it is to receive your new curriculum!  We got the My Father's World basic Kindergarten pack with a couple of extras (the ant farm and butterfly garden) and the MFW 2nd Grade Deluxe set.  I'm excited to look through it this summer and prepare for the next school year!