Saturday, September 1, 2012

MFW K Creation Unit (part 3)

{CLICK HERE} to view the rest of our MFW K unit posts.
{CLICK HERE} to view our post explaining WHY we chose MFW K for our family.


Since I hadn’t taken this picture before posting last week, here’s our snack for Day 4 of Creation.  It’s a wheat bread circle spread with yellow cream cheese.  The smiley face is made of raisins and the sunbeams are made from baby carrots.
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Day 5
We started with our calendar time, adding straws to our hundreds-tens-ones chart, singing “My Father’s World”, “ABC Song”, and “A-A-Apple”.
Max
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Then we reviewed Days 1 – 4 of Creation & read about Day 5 from “God Made It For You”.  We learned that God made birds of the air and fish of the sea.
Alex
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We took a few minutes to “Fish For Letters” using the MFW K letter cards.   I separated the uppercase/lowercase cards.  I attached a paperclip to each uppercase letter and spread them on the floor.  We stacked the lowercase cards into a draw pile.
Alex drew a lowercase card from the pile, named the letter, and used our magnetic fishing pole (Melissa & Doug puzzle) to fish for the matching uppercase letter.
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The boys have been SOOOO excited for the craft page each day.  Today we made sky & seas and the animals that live in them.  We had sea creature stickers, but no bird stickers.
I showed Alex how to draw a simple v-shaped bird, but he wasn’t interested.  Instead, on scratch paper, he drew this picture.  Hee hee…too cute!
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When he did it on his paper, he first drew the bird on the left.  He declared, “It looks like Larry The Cucumber!”  Then he decided he needed a Bob The Tomato bird, too.  Can you find it? ;)
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Here’s Max’s page, with the most interesting birds I’ve ever seen.  (He’s 3.)
 August2012 306We finished praying & having blue jello water with gummy fish floating inside & on top as our snack of the day.  (We reuse baby food containers for just about everything, so this was a nice small-portion way to serve the jello.)
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Day 6

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God made people and animals.  Since we didn’t want to eat PEOPLE, we ate yummy frosted animal crackers for our special snack today!
August2012 321We skipped Thursday because I babysit in the mornings, and Alex was SOOOOO antsy to do school that afternoon.  He begged me all afternoon to PLEASE do school with him while the little ones were napping.  Instead, we did a free kindergarten workbook sample that came in the mail.  That tided him over until Friday…

Day 7

You wanna know the truth?  I never previewed the book God Made It For You.  I trusted the judgement of the moms who recommended it, and I took it page by page with Alex.  I was not prepared for how this book ends…and it made me teary-eyed.  It’s SOOOO GOOD!
We read the book from cover to cover today as a review of all that God created.  When you get to Day 7, it doesn’t end there.   It goes on to share how God not only created this world for YOU, he sent his only Son for YOU.  Amazing ending…simple enough for a four year old, but oh-so-true.August2012 317
From there, we did the last calendar card for the month of August.  Today is the 31st, and Alex was sweet enough to let Max turn over the very last number.
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After calendar and adding a straw to our hundreds chart, we sang our YouTube songs.  I created a playlist so we can easily find our songs of praise & learning songs.  We sang This Is My Father’s World, A-A-Apple, and the Days of the Week song.  Max can now correctly sing the days of the week.  What a different a few days makes! 
We then went on to do the A-A-Apple song on our own.  Alex already had it all figured out!  Here we are flipping through the alphabet cards while we sing.
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They were a little disappointed to find out they had a blank #7 and a blank paper on which to glue their “God rested” words.  I explained that they didn’t have to do any work because God rested, and they could rest too.  Alex did cut out his own #7, though ;)
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Max went to play with alphabet magnets for a while, and he kept repeating the alphabet song as he put magnets on the board.
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On the 7th Day, God rested…
since we celebrate the day of rest on SUNDAY,
we had SUNDAES! 
Talk about two excited little boys – ice cream in the middle of a weekday?! 
Yippee!
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We missed a day this week due to a pediatrician visit, so we did one final review of creation today as well…
The activity is to make a poster of things created by God and things created by people.  Since we don’t have many magazines or catalogs around our house, I made a grid of 30 random pictures to cut and sort.
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This page is available for download on the Facebook MFW K group in the file section.  When I get a chance, I’ll make it available here too.
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The last thing I did is explain to Alex that our workload increases just a little bit next week.  He is a big fan of routine, so I wanted to prepare him that things will be a little different the next time we do school.  We looked through the folder of papers for Unit 1 – Sun.

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We practice his name with dry erase crayons on a laminated paper, looked through the folder of MFW papers for next week, and tried out a tactile letter activity.
Alex had the most fun when I introduced wikki stix.  While the letter page is my own creation, we’ve only done these with playdoh.  Leslie, from the MFW K Facebook group, had the idea to use the page with Wikki Stix.  It’s FUN!
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Soooo, there you have it – our introduction to classroom routines and our lessons on creation.  Next week, we’ll begin our “real” lessons.  Again, they start out slowly and build as the weeks go on.  I have a feeling that Alex will feel overwhelmed next week simply because he doesn’t like change…but that’s okay!  He’ll get the hang of it in time :)

4 comments:

Alicia said...

Thanks for the reference for the FB group. I have been looking for a K group on there! Also, thanks for the math pages, I did get them downloaded. I'm going to make my you tube list now. Thanks for the idea. Also, I don't have that creation book, but the Jesus Story Book Bible has a great creation story giving the big picture as well.

MamaDuck76 said...

Isn't the Jesus Story Book Bible is a GREAT resource?! I wanted something new & special for my son, but that is what we would have used if we weren't purchasing something new. It's such a beautiful book!

So you were able to find the Facebook group without any trouble? Good! I probably should have posted a direct link...might just do that on my resource page.

Alicia said...

It is great! I found the group no problem. A link would be great for future reader though.

Kattie said...

Hi! I am stopping by from the MFW Blogroll and co-hosting the My Father's World Homeschool Highlights this school year with Monica @ DiscoverTheirGifts. This is where MFW families connect weekly, or as often as you like, to share what we are doing in our schools. The first one is September 8, the info is on my blog. I hope you join us!

Kattie
http://2ladybugsandalizard.blogspot.com/

ps: It looks like you have a lot of fun!