MFW Creation to the Greeks - Week 1

It's that time again! Here are the kids first day of school pictures. It was a little bright for Caleb.

Our first week went surprisingly well. Caleb and Rebekah still had swimming lessons every morning, so I wasn't expecting to get through everything, but we did! This year we are using My Father's World, Creation to the Greeks. To see everything we'll be using, click here.

Something new that I started this year was using a simple notebook to assign the kids their independent work. I came across this idea at amongst lovely things. Every day after school is done, I take a few minutes to write the next days assignments in their notebooks. This has worked REALLY well this year. When it's time for school, I just tell them to start working on their notebooks, and they usually do without whining. They get to choose what they want to do, and they know they can't play until it's done. I even add "Brush Teeth" to the top of every days list! I only assign what they can do by themselves without my help. While they are working on their notebooks, I am cleaning up, getting the rest of school ready, or doing preschool with my little ones.

A page of cursive is always included in their notebooks. Caleb's is the one on top. I tried to have them learn cursive over the summer, but it never happened...

I love this picture! Caleb is learning his memory verse for bible quizzing, Rebekah is working on cursive, and I'm helping Joshua and Matthew color.

My Father's World, Creation to the Greeks, begins with creation. We'll be using the bible as our main history text this year, so we started in Genesis.

Creation also brings a study of dinosaurs. I had the kids draw pictures for their notebooks, which they enjoyed doing. They have also enjoyed this activity book that I purchased through My Father's World as an enrichment activity. I assign these pages in their notebooks.

After creation, comes Adam and Eve. Here are their first notebooking pages.  Caleb's is above, Rebekah's is below. I will be working with Caleb to increase the amount of sentences he writes this year.

We are using Science in the Beginning this year, which takes a closer look at each day of creation. On day 1, God created light, so the first science topic is light. A fellow user of MFW created these notebooking pages to go along with Science in the Beginning, and I LOVE them! You can find them on the facebook page for Creation to Greeks. The kids like that it tells you what to draw or write, instead of me just saying "draw a picture about something you learned today". A big thank you to the creators of these sheets!

 

For art, we will be using God and the History of Art. The first lesson was about frustration, and we learned about a girl that was paralyzed, but created beautiful art using her mouth to hold her pencils and brushes. Of course, we had to try and draw a butterfly with our mouths. It was very hard to do!

The finished pictures don't look too much like butterflies! Rebekah's is on the left, Caleb's on the right.

Writing was the one subject that did not go well this week, notice the crinkled paper. I'm not sure how I'm going to like Writing Strands, but we will keep trying for a couple more weeks before giving up. Caleb really does not like to write!

One thing I'm excited about this year is celebrating some of the biblical feasts. This week we celebrated the Sabbath on Friday night. I will be writing a more detailed post later in the week.

The kids made covers for our Challah bread.

It was a very fun, special night!

Lastly, just a couple pictures of Joshua and Matthew doing preschool.