Days 26 - 35, MFW 1st Grade

 
I have been very happy with how school has been going.  Rebekah has been doing a great job on her Rod and Staff workbooks.  She finished the A book and is more than half way through the C book (I call it her math book), which she does along with the others.  She was excited to start the next book, so she's already a quarter of the way through the D one!  (For reference they go A through I).

Bible: We've learned Proverbs 16:24, 29:11, and 12:18.  We learned about the clothes that they wore back in bible times, but they didn't want to dress up that day.  We also made a bible lands map and talked about the languages that the bible was written in, Hebrew and Greek.  I found an app for my iPod that translates for you, so we were able to hear our bible verses is Greek.  We also played around with other languages and made up silly sentences to hear in the different languages, it was fun!

Science:  Our topics were Thunder and Lightening, Rain, and Rivers.  Above is our "lake".  We learned about the water cycle, how water evaporates, turns into a cloud, and then rains.  Below is our rain gauge.  Unfortunately, it's only rained once in the last couple weeks, and that was barely 1/4 inch.

Later, our "lake" turned into a sediment pond.  When learning about rivers, we talked about how sand, rocks, and dirt get carried along with the water.  We learned how that water can be cleaned so we can drink it.  First, we made a filter in a bottle, using rocks and sand.  We poured muddy water through it, and ended up with less muddy water, with no chunks!  Then we let it sit in the sediment pond over night, and were able to pour almost clear water off the top.  (We didn't drink it...)

Reading and writing has been going fairly well too.  I have seen the importance of playing reading games for practice.  One day when we didn't have as much time to do school, I just did reading games and we skipped the curriculum.  The favorite game in our house is hide and seek.  I hide the words (or letter for my daughter) all over the living room and kitchen, and then they come and find them.  They have to read the word before going to find the next one. 

Some of the sounds have been difficult for Caleb to master, especially oo like in book, and all the vowels when they sound like a short u, like in was or come.  But we'll keep playing reading games to help make practice more fun.  I think I'll let him play on starfall.com this week too.

This was a game we played too.  Caleb had to find the word and erase it after he read it.  Then he wrote a few words for me to read and erase too!

And look who's standing!!!  He is getting so big!  He just loves this toy, especially when we put Cheerios in the bowl!  I'm thankful that he's been taking a nap during part of our school time every day.  If he's not sleeping, he's playing and eating Cheerios, his favorite thing!