MFW K Unit 10–Ww Water

{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.

Alex is 5 years old.

We are using My Father’s World Kindergarten as our base,
adding in some of my own printables.

This week, we are learning the letter WW for water.
Our Bible words are: Jesus gives my spirit living water to drink.

Why yes, it HAS been quite some time since our last MFW K post.  We took a nice break for Christmas and did a few of our preschool packs for some themed learning.  Then, when we started back up in January, this unit got seriously stretched out due to life…things like the stomach flu really slowed us down, and it took 3 weeks to complete this unit!  Yikes!

Alex’s favorite was “No More Water In The Tub!”
Mama was partial to “Make Way For Ducklings”.

(We’re using a calendar from Confessions of a Homeschooler with traceable numbers.)

He’s beginning to write all of his numbers on his own, and he’s doing pretty well!

Bible stories included the woman at the well & the Israelites in the desert. 

I intentionally keep this short because I don’t like to ‘give away’ this part of the program…please buy the manual

      

This boy can sound out CVC words SO quickly now!  He is reaching a point where he’s gaining confidence.  He doesn’t have to think about it much; he just looks a a word and READS it. 

I had a goal of going all the way through MFW K without supplementing the phonics, but we had an amazing opportunity present itself recently…and since Alex is more than ready, we’re going to be changing up our phonics/reading time starting in February.  (More on that later.)

WHY did I have that goal?  I think that this series of MFW K posts will be well-read, found by Google searches, etc…and I wanted to provide a fair review of MFW K without leading anyone to believe that you need to supplement.  Let me just state that MFW K combined with MFW 1st will provide your child with a complete phonics curriculum…K moves very slowly to help a child gain skills and speed in consonant-vowel-consonant words.  1st begins with a review and then moves at a steady pace through all the phonics your child will need.   Since Alex has the confidence and ability to move on, since I don’t intend to move directly on to MFW 1st because he’s young & deserves a little more K-level work in other areas, and since I really want to encourage his desire to read, we’re taking a different path for phonics instruction.

 

It’s still quite wobbly, but I see a great improvement in his DESIRE and ability to write in the lines.  (But I will admit that handwriting is one MAJOR reason that I wouldn’t move him up to MFW 1st too soon!)

 

We learned what coins/coin combinations equal 10 cents.

Alex practice writing 10s.

Cuisenaire Rods – we haven’t done this for a few units because Alex was tired of it.

I can’t even begin to explain how much I love the hands-on science in MFW K.  It may not be incredibly in-depth, and it may not be the most amazing science curriculum out there, but it is just PERFECT for a late 4/early 5 year old’s introduction to science!

We explored how salt mixes with water, but oil rises to the surface.  You can’t get oil to mix with water no matter how hard you try.

We learned that duck feathers don’t get wet, and we experimented with paper feathers and cooking oil to see how the water rolls right off.

We poured water into different shapes of container to see that water has no shape; it molds to whatever container it is in.  (We also tried it with a glue stick, and we discovered that a glue stick does NOT change shape when you pour it into a different container. )

We froze 3 small cups of water, and Alex was SO excited to find they had turned to ice by the following day.  We placed each ice chunk in a bowl, and then placed one on the counter, one on a heat vent, and one just inside the patio door.  We predicted which would melt first, and we checked on them as we did our school work that day.

When little brother woke from his nap, the boys had fun using their hands to finish melting the cubes!

We explored how water turns into a gas.  We also talked about how evaporation forms clouds, which get heavy and drip back down as rain.  We used the pot lid to prove that this works.

We made a chart of liquids, solids, and gases.
Alex was so cute, and he wanted to write a few things on his own on SOLID day.
If you can’t read it, he wrote PIZZA and FIEN MC MISSILE (his own spelling).

I love his new-found desire to write words.  It’s so cute!  He was addressing his birthday party invitations a few days ago, and he was so determined to write the names of each of his friends.  Thank goodness we were hand-delivering the invitations, as his writing of a first name took up most of the envelope!  

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