MFW-ECC - Week 2 - I got a dollar, hey, hey, hey, hey!

Week 2 is under our belts! We made it through 5 full days of school. WHEW! Our school days are longer than last year and it feels non-stop busy from start to finish each day, but I guess that's what happens as the kids get older and the school work gets tougher. I'm hoping, once we get a good routine in place, we'll have time for longer breaks in between activities.  

In ECC, the kids have really enjoyed track #1 from Wee Sing Around the World..."Hello to All the Children of the World".

You can't tell this was "staged" can you? Noooo, of course not ;)


Some highlights from our week were...


 The Nature Walk


We thought it would be fun to complete this activity while visiting Granny at her house. She has a huge pin oak and cedar tree in her front yard.  

The Paper Dolls

As a little girl, Granny used to cut out paper dolls...so this was a perfect activity for she and A to do together and take a little stroll down memory lane. 

Granny *hates* getting her picture taken, but for her great-grandbabies - she'll do anything :) ...thank you, thank you, thank you Granny for being such a good sport and creating such precious memories with the kiddos :)


The Free Clothing Giveaway


Let me just say, I am super-dee-dooper excited about all the things God is doing through our church and its people. Our church is opening a clothing closet and possibly a food pantry. Wednesday night, our family had an opportunity to get out with other church members and have a free garage sale. We went to a community near our church and passed out free children's school clothes, as well as a few adult clothes, to those who needed it. It is one thing to go away and do this type of thing on a mission trip somewhere for total strangers, but a completely different thing to do it right in your own community with people you may know...what a blessing to be a part of something like that!!!

The kids had a GREAT time following their maps to find their hidden treasures.

And what did they find? A dollar, of course :)




We opted to make world cookies instead of a world cake. It takes us FOOORREVVVER to eat up an entire cake, but cookies?...just a day or two :)

A few of the books we have enjoyed reading this week to go along with our ECC studies have been...

Aleeya really liked this one!

This was not the exact book ECC suggested (our library didn't have the other), but it was a cute read and happened to fit 

If there has been one thing my kids have just not gotten into, it has been the Kingdom Tales stories. 

They just really have not liked them. While the stories have great meaning and symbolism, they are also long and drawn out. I don't know if it is the time it takes to read them or my kids ages, but they lose interest in them very quickly. We made it through the first story, struggled through the 2nd, gave up part way through the 3rd and that is where it ended. We may try later on in the year or over the summer, but for now, the book is sitting on our shelf. Other than this one thing, ECC has been great so far!  






We also took some time out to go to 2 of our good friends joint skating party :)

I hope you all have had a great week as well :)

And in case you missed our review of week 1, you can check it out here :)

MFW-ECC - Week 1 - YAY!!!

Well, this week didn't go exactly as planned, but all in all, it was still a great week!

It was pretty apparent on Monday that we would not be doing a full day of school every day. So, plan B went into play and we were able to accomplish half days of school.

We started with Exploring Countries and Cultures in My Father's World, which will be phrased as ECC from here on out :) 

This week, the kids filled out and sent off their passport applications. We really hammed it up for them too!  My husband, Jason, even added in background checks. LOL! 

As far as the pre-test...I was super excited at how well they did. 

The kids had fun drawing a miniature model of the earth on their mandarin oranges. Even though we used permanent markers, when they were peeling them, the juice from the oranges mixed with the ink and it came right off all over their hands, but it did seem to wash off a lot easier than just permanent marker alone.

The kids tried to keep their peelings from falling apart, but that didn't work out so well. So glad we had a back-up...for once in my life...I actually planned ahead ;)

I really do think this activity helped the kids understand the distortions between flat maps and globes.

The kiddos did a great job on their John 3:16 poster.

For the pictures, we just made photo color copies of the first couple of pages of the People book by Peter Spier. There were some really great pictures of children from around the world. Under each picture was that child's name and the place he/she is from. 

When exploring the small area of our backyard habitat, the kids discovered...

we have been invaded by CraZy ants!!!

I think some people call them rasberry ants because of the Houston, Texas exterminator who discovered them, Tom Rasberry. Whatever their name, these ants really are crazy! They are faster and lighter in color. They don't really follow in a line with other ants, instead they swarm the ground much like bees do in the air. Odd, very odd!  They are invasive to this area and supposedly attracted to electrical equipment. Let's hope ours choose to stay in the yard!?!

We also managed to get in an extra day of delivering some meals to the elderly and shut-ins for Meals on Wheels. With the start of school and other activities, we have to drop down to just once a month. On one hand, some of the older folks were a little saddened with that news, but on the other hand, still glad they'd still get to see the kiddos every month :)

 

All in all, it was a great week! Next week, we continue with ECC and attempt to add in everything else. So, how was YOUR first week back?

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.