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Today was Alex’s first day with My Father’s World Kindergarten. It starts off so gently, and it took us less than an hour to complete. Before we got started, I had the kids pose with signs of what they are working on this year. Jensyn’s just says “I’m Cute”…perhaps it should have said “I’m Trouble”, but I was nice ;)
Max – age 3 Alex – 4.5 Jensyn – 16 months
Mama’s First Lesson: NEVER plan your first day of something new on a Monday after a extra busy weekend. We had a family reunion and Max’s birthday party…so today we had overtired kids who really just wanted to play with the new toys. It worked out to be a good morning, but these “outtakes” of Alex should give you a good idea of how our morning started!
pouting crying smiling through tears
Keith had the idea to rearrange the playroom (bonus room over the garage) a bit to make a school area. We had the calendar wall , but there was no good work space upstairs. We divided the room into two separate areas; We’ll try this & see how it works for us.
Now there’s a family room side and a school side.
Here’s the wall along the left side, where we keep all the toys:
Here’s the school table & our (messy) shelves.
Here’s the calendar wall…the calendar is inside the closet door so the baby isn’t always pulling off all the numbers.
We wisely waited until Jensyn was sleeping before getting started. The mailman brought a package FIVE MINUTES before we got started (phew!), and Alex was excited to rip into it! He discovered “God Made It For You!”, a neat book that details each day of creation that was highly recommended by several people. We read about the first day of creation from this book.
We did a calendar time, turning over today’s number, finding out what day it is, finding out what month it is, and pointing & counting from 1 – 20 (today’s date number). Then Alex added a straw to our hundreds/tens/ones chart for our first day. (He’s been waiting to do this since we bought the straws a few weeks ago!)
We watched a YouTube video of the song “This Is My Father’s World” on the Kindle.
(To be honest, Alex was bored by it…he prefers the Go Fish version…but we’ll probably watch it once a week because this version of the song & the photos shown in the video are so pretty!)
(To be honest, Alex was bored by it…he prefers the Go Fish version…but we’ll probably watch it once a week because this version of the song & the photos shown in the video are so pretty!)
Max wandered over when we sang the ABC song, and then the boys took turns pointing to A or B…which are the only two letters to be worked on for the first day.
After that, I gave each boy a small block, and they took turns placing their block on the letter that I named. WAY too easy for Alex, but still hard for Max.
I gave Max the option of joining us at the table to make the first page of the Creation Book. I did the cutting for him, but he had fun gluing.
Alex did his own cutting…although he purposely cut in the wrong place so that he could have the special privilege of using tape to fix his “mistake” ;)
Before heading downstairs for a surprise snack (I’d set it up when they were already upstairs…), I asked Alex to do one last thing: write his name on the August line. We’ll have him write his name once a month to record how his writing changes throughout this year.
Edited to add: lots of people have e-mailed me about this page. It’s not an original idea, but the page was my creation. If you’d like a copy, you can download it here: https://www.yousendit.com/download/TEhXb3BPZDVubVZMWE1UQw
We prayed to thank God for creating light and dark and for giving us a nice first day of school, then we headed downstairs for the much-anticipated snack.
Alex caught on REALLY quickly to WHY we were having oreos & milk. He took one look at his plate and said, “OREOS! Just like LIGHT and DARK! And MILK – it’s like the LIGHT!”
I certainly won’t document every day with such detail, but I thought it would be fun to record his very first day. I’ll save the rest until we’ve completed Days 1 – 10 of creation!
Psst…if you’re using MFW K or following along because you’re thinking about using MFW K, I’d love to hear from you! Please leave a comment, share your blog link in the comments, or send me an e-mail ~ I’d enjoy keeping in touch!
