MFW ECC & 1st, Week 3 & 4, United States

We've finished weeks 3 & 4, and we're finally getting used to doing school again! It always takes a couple weeks for the kids to realize that mommy is the teacher, and yes, they do have to do work. You know, like write words! I think I will be doing my updates every two weeks this year instead of every week. Our curriculum is set up so that we "visit" a new country every two weeks, and I can't always find the time to get a long blog post up!

Our Bible time has been focused on the beginning of the book of Matthew. Caleb did some copywork and dictation of Matthew 1:23 and we also make bookmarks. Sorry, no pictures...  We've also been reading this book, and I LOVE it! There are short stories about real people that did amazing things, like Harriet Tubman. There are 3 short devotionals with character traits about each character. Caleb is supposed to copy the character traits for extra handwriting practice, but I decided to let him type them instead, which he loves.  But this is a great book!

These last two weeks we've been learning about the United States! We spent all of last year learning about the United States, so this was a good review, and map practice before moving on to other countries. Here are a few of Caleb's pages in his geography notebook: 

Our science topic was forests. These pages compare coniferous and deciduous forests. We spent some time at a park looking at trees as well!  (Below is Rebekah's.)

One of the books that was included in our curriculum was Exploring World Geography. It's a more advanced book, that focuses of research skills, like using an Encyclopedia at the library. Most of the pages are too hard for Caleb and Rebekah, but I wanted them to learn how to find things at the library. Kevin watched the little boys one evening so I could take them to the library. We did two pages, and I let them just write the first initial. My goal was to teach them how to find things in an encyclopedia, and we also found the other reference books in our library. I will try to take them once every two weeks, I enjoyed time with just the big kids too! 

Vocabulary words come from Geography from A to Z. Surprisingly, the kids LOVE making these cards! The bottom card is Caleb's tiny writing!

Art projects came from this book:

We made Navajo Coup Sticks, and Sand Paintings.  Our "sand" was actually salt colored with chalk.

This game is fun for reviewing the states. We play it a bit easier for Rebekah since she can't read yet.

Caleb's other subjects have been going well. He's been learning the 2 multiplication facts. He actually did a practice page with no crying or complaining, and he got them all right! He earned a sticker on his paper!

He read and copied this poem in our Language Lessons for Today.

I bought this spelling power workbook for Caleb and I really like it! Caleb loves doing the 10-step spelling worksheet to study his words, which makes me happy. However, he's having a hard time with daily spelling tests. He does not like to get ANYTHING wrong, and usually beats the table with his pencil in anger...  working on that! We do the spelling test first, and then he studies only the words he gets wrong. 

Rebekah LOVES learning to read, and she's doing a great job! Below are a few activities that weren't in the 1st edition of 1st grade. She had a lot of fun reading and doing the silly things on the paper strips. I had to give her a sticker too!

She's been doing her number of the day pages almost all by herself. She counts out the number of unifix cubes to help her write the equations. And she love doing her math workbook too. She's much different than Caleb was!

Joshua's done a bit of unofficial preschool too.  Here he is gluing beans. The first picture at the top shows him using one of the toys in the MFW preschool package.

That was our trip around the United States.  Next stop, Mexico!