2010-2011 Year-End Video Review

Adventures in Review - Week 34 - Final Week of MFW

This is both a happy and sad week for us. Although we are excited to be lightening our load a bit in school as the year winds down, we are also sad to see our Adventures in My Father's World come to an end. {Week 34 actually took us 2 weeks to complete. We figured, with this being our last, we could take our time and stretch it out a bit.} 

Our focus verse was Revelation 21:6 - "...I am the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End...". 

Fun Fact! - I had never really thought about how we got our word 'alphabet' from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, 'Alpha' and 'Beta'.

Our Bible verse poster is finally complete!

We finished up our final 2 states - Alaska and Hawaii. The kids had fun with a little guessing game and our state map place mats to try and figure out which state was the smallest and which state was the largest. Aleeya very quickly said Alaska for the largest and Jase was right behind with the smallest, Rhode Island. Of course, with us living in Texas, they just HAD to add in that Texas was the 2nd largest state. Yeehaw!!!

The boys really had a lot of fun writing a letter to the president. They said, "You can actually DO that?" Now, we did not vote for our current president and we do not agree with many of the things he does and supports, but we do tell our children, that no matter what, God tells us to pray for the rulers and leaders of our country. So, the kiddos wrote letters saying they were praying for him and that he would make wise decisions.

We also finished up the parachutes from my previous post. You can check that post out here. They turned out really great and I still have the criss-cross glue stain patterns all over my tile floors. I'll steam mop those up...one day. 

It was also our last co-op week and yet another missions project. This time, we packed large vacuum-seal bags with various items to be sent off to Iran, Pakistan, and Sudan as care packages. VOM will add full color gospel story books to each bag. To read more about this or participate in it yourself, click here.

Can you believe all the items this little group of 13 kiddos and their parents helped to collect?!? It was amazing! 

As far as math and language are concerned, we still have several more weeks to go...about 5 or 6 to be exact. This is the part I am not really looking forward to.

Want to see what curriculum we plan on using next year? Check out this post. I'll give you a hint, we will be traveling around the world exploring other countries and cultures ;) I am sooo excited for the upcoming school year!!! I have also compiled a long list of associated field trips. To go straight to that post to see if any of these ideas will work for you, click here. 

Be sure to check back soon for our *video* 'year in review' :)  

2011-2012 Curriculum for Kingdom Academy

My dabbling into next year's curriculum has come in spurts. Now that these 'spurts' are finally tallied up and various thoughts have been gathered together...I think we have a plan for my 2nd grader and (2) 4th graders. They are growing up so fast!

A fun rainy spring day :)

We are going to continue with My Father's World (MFW). This year, we move into Exploring Countries and Cultures (ECC). This will be year 1 of a 5 year multi-age family cycle. I am really excited about ECC. It looks like so much fun and the kiddos are really hyped up about it!!!

MFW ECC covers Bible, literature, history/geography, science, music appreciation, art, and character development. Check out their link here. 

Abeka has been working well for us, so we are also going to roll with it.

We use Abeka for math, language arts, reading, and spelling. Check out their link here.

Even though My Father's World ECC covers science during the school year, my kiddos love it so much that we are going to continue with "summer science" using Apologia's Exploring Creation with Botany. This year, we are going to forego purchasing the Notebooking Journal though. Last year, we purchased the notebook that went with astronomy and never got to do much in it. The book itself has waay more projects and activities than we can ever get to, so we'll just stick with the book/manual this year.

Did you miss my last post?....field trip ideas for My Father's World Exploring Countries and Cultures....if so, check it out here.

Adventures in Review - Week 33

Week 33 in Adventures in My Father's World was all about words...words written, words spoken, words signed. Where would we be without words? 

The main focus this week was about how important God's Word is and about getting His Word out into the nations and to all people. There are 6,912 languages in the world and only 438 have a Bible in their language. Only 438!!! We tried to imagine what it would be like if we did not have a Bible in our language or if we had never heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

Interestingly enough, we had co-op that week and our project was to make parachutes. The parachutes will ultimately be sent to the Voice of the Martyrs who will attach a Bible or radio pre-tuned to a Christian station and then load them on a plane to be dropped into Columbia. Columbia is a hostile nation...namely hostile against anything or anyone having to do with Christianity. 

How awesome is it that during the same week we discussed the importance of getting God's Word out to the nations that we do this project?!? It was totally not planned this way, but I love it when God brings things together like this :) 

If you would like to read more about the parachute project or even put some together with friends or family, click here.

Next week, I will post pictures of the completed parachutes.

We continued in our state studies with Utah, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona. 

The kiddos tried their hand at making Navajo fry bread. They thought it was pretty tasty...except for A, who never wants to try new things, and even if she really likes them, says she doesn't.

We also learned about Thomas Edison and the light bulb, Ford and the first "horseless carriage", and the Wright Brothers and their amazing flying machine.

Well, one more week to go in MFW Adventures. Can we fit just 1 more picture on our poster?!? I think i see a spot :)

To end the week, we watched Inspiring Animated Heroes: Helen Keller. To my surprise, my kids really enjoyed this show. They asked so many questions throughout the entire movie.

Update on Granny - She is out of the hospital and back home. Still very weak and has a lot more testing to do to figure out what is going on. She loves the Lord with all her heart and will be fine...no matter what :)






This post has been linked up with Weekly Homeschool Highlights
and
Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Adventures in Review - Week 32

{If you haven't noticed yet, I post my weekly wrap-ups a week after they have already taken place. This gives me a little more time to blog about our adventures. I used to do them the Friday or Saturday of...but that drove me crazy and I always felt rushed.}


Yay! Resurrection Sunday is right around the corner!


This entire week has been somewhat of a blur for me. The kids' Great-Granny went into the hospital on Tuesday. Diagnosis? Pneumonia....NOT good. They also think there is more going on than just the pneumonia, so she'll remain there until they get it all figured out. Granny is a funny, Godly lady. She makes friends with everyone who walks into her room. She jokes about them 'holding her hostage', but she also likes to talk ;) She really likes all the pictures the kids have been hanging up on her walls.

On Tuesday, we volunteered at the Hope Center and on Wednesday, we did our Meals on Wheels route. We brought flowers to each elderly person on our list. We also took some time to wish each of them a very happy Easter, or as we like to call it...Resurrection Day :) I can't tell you how much these elderly people *love* to see kids. Makes me so sad when I hear them say, 'My kids/grandkids just don't come to visit anymore'.

In Adventures in My Father's World, the kids have begun learning that Jesus is the Word. Our poster is just about full.

We are still trucking along in our state studies. We've now added Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming. Because Idaho is known for potatoes, we had baked potatoes for dinner one evening. The kids do not really care for the baked variety, so I turned theirs into a huge plate of mashed potatoes :)

We also learned about another invention - the telephone... and looked at various pictures of older telephones and switchboards. J is geared up and ready to read Bell's Breakthrough from the Blast to the Past Series now.




We also watched a quick 1 minute video on YouTube depicting the geyser "Old Faithful" which is found in Wyoming.

The Resurrection weekend was filled with lots of love, family fun, and an overwhelming thankfulness for what our Savior has done for us.

Me, my Dad, and 8 (out of 9) of my siblings.
Ages 8 to 33 and my dad somewhere in his 50's.

This is a picture of me, my father, and all of my 9 siblings. Well, one brother is MIA because he is currently stationed on the Mexico border. BUT he was there in spirit (and we stuck his picture inside his shirt and tacked it to the tree).  LOL!


 As a wonderful ending to Resurrection Week, we walked through The Last Days of Christ, an outdoor passion drama.

It was awesome!!!


How about you guys? How was your Easter/Resurrection weekend?

Adventures in Review - Week 31

MFW - Adventures Week 31 is full of Bible Scripture :) The kids took turns reading out of the Bible each day. The kiddos recently helped me plant corn in our garden, so, on Tuesday, instead of talking about a kernel of wheat, we changed it to a kernel of corn. ...Fit rather nicely and made more sense to the kids than the wheat would have.

We also covered North and South Dakota. Didn't have time to make the honey peanut butter balls b/c we went out of town, but we love the chocolate covered peanut butter balls Aunt Rinda makes. We will definitely have to try to honey version of them. The kids also took a liking to the Armed Services Medley...after all, the tune is rather catchy.

Because we were one the road traveling during the week, some school was done in the car. The kids didn't seem to mind ;) {I had a really cute picture to put here, but technology was not my friend this week. The SD card had a fatal error and most of my pictures were corrupted :( }

In language, one of the things the boys learned about were pronouns. So, of course, another CATegorical book was in order :)

I'll close with a few of the pictures that survived from our trip. *sniff, sniff*

Lego Land

Lego Land Discovery Center

Grapevine Egg Hunt

Grapevine

I promise, no Guinea pigs were harmed in the taking of these pictures ;)

Adventures in Review - Week 29 (+Fire's Funeral, Sisterly Love, and Creative Writing)

J's pet hermit crab, Fire, died this weekend. He's had that hermit crab for almost a year. J was extremely upset...a little too upset over a hermit crab that he rarely messed with. Long story short,  it dying brought back memories and feelings of his 'MawMaw P' dying over the Christmas holidays.

So, the kids decorated a 'coffin' for the crab and we had a funeral for it. J wrote a little note and drew a picture to remember not only his crab, Fire, but a previous crab from last summer named 'Hide and Seek'. 

Rock tombstone and paper grave marker

Then A did something that just made my heart smile. She wanted to help her brother feel better, so (all on her own - I might add)  she drew him a picture of them playing together and wrote him a very sweet card. Now these are the kind of "mommy moments" I like having :) 

Now, on to our Adventures in Review - Week 28...

On Missionary Monday, we talked about and prayed for our missionary friends, The Johnson's in Canada.

We thanked God for allowing them to have several successful sports camps where they were able to spread the gospel of Jesus with the First Nations People and plant seeds. We prayed for all those who heard the message and prayed for those little seeds to grow. If you would like to read more about the Johnson's and their Canadian Mission Field, please check out their blog, Go and Be.

In our state studies, we travelled to Kansas (and yes, we enjoyed our sunflower seed snack), West Virginia, (where we enjoyed their state fruit, the golden delicious apple), Nevada, and Nebraska (where we tried out their state soft-drink, Kool-aid). Now, I do not picture kool-aid as a soft drink. When I think of a soft drink, I think of fizzy, carbonated things like Coke and Dr. Pepper. And, believe it or not, my kids are not big kool-aid fans ;)  But they sure do like sweet tea :)

In language this week, the boys had to write a creative story pretending about a day when they were 2 inches tall. Their super-short videos are below.

A wanted to get in on the video action as well, so she picked out something to read too. She ended up choosing to read the letter her Dad and I wrote her at the beginning of our Adventures in My Father's World. Sadly though, try as I might, I could NOT get this stinkin' video to upload. I think my computer is just too old. *This will be remedied very soon***WooHoo!

To check out what other homeschoolers are doing in My Father's Word

or in general,

click on the links above.

Adventures in Review - Week 28

On Missionary Monday, we learned of and prayed for a young woman named Somchi. She and her mother were the only Christians in their Khmu village in Laos and they faced many hardships because they refused to back down from their faith on God. To learn more about Somchi, please visit the Kids of Courage on-line newsletter. It is free.  It is through the Voice of the Martyrs.  

Tuesday was our day to volunteer at our local crisis pregnancy center. The kids love to help sort, straighten, and fold the baby clothes. They even help bag up the items for the ladies.

On Writing Around the World Wednesday, we each wrote a letter to Debabrata (our Compassion sponsor child) in India. His birthday is coming up in May (he'll be 8 years old) and in order for the cards to get to him in time, we had to send them out in March. 

In our Adventures in My Father's World, we finished up Parts 3 and 4 of 'Honest Abe'. The kids were amazed at all the things he had accomplished and they especially liked the muddy pig story. Their notebook pages are below.


Jase's



Aleeya's



During Bible time, the kids are also learning that Jesus is the Good Shepherd. (John 10:14)

Other than that, we've caught up on a few episodes of Liberty's Kids via Netflix (The Midnight Ride and Washington Takes Command). *Thanks, Jennifer*



And we liked the Blast to the Past books Mrs. Jennifer let us borrow so much, we decided to purchase a set for ourselves. One of which includes, Lincoln's Legacy. Jase will read books over and over and Aleeya can read them when she is older. Thanks again, Jennifer!

To check out what others are doing in My Father's World, click the link below.

To check out what other homeschoolers have done this week in general, click the link below.