MFW K Unit 4 – Apple

{CLICK HERE} to view the rest of our MFW K unit posts.
{CLICK HERE} to read our 2012 Apple Unit post with our older son.



In this unit, we learned the letter Aa for sun.
Our Bible words were:
If I stay in Jesus, I will have much fruit!

These are the books we enjoyed throughout the week – click on any book image below to read the book description on Amazon.  (We love to buy used copies; they’re usually in good shape, and the price is right!)

Max loved How To Make An Apple Pie and See The World, and we all enjoyed the rest of the books as well.  Down The Road is a neat story that I’d recommend.  We made our apple pie using the recipe found in the back of the Amelia Bedelia book.

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Once or twice a week, we start our school day with a YouTube playlist of 4-6 songs/videos that go along with our current school lessons. 

During this unit, we watched Johnny Appleseed.

We don’t exactly do calendar time the MFW K way.  We print a calendar page from HERE (preK and K options available), and Max fills in the numbers.  (Sometimes I do, too, depending on the day.)  I wrote November at the bottom, and he traced it.

For the rest of our calendar time, we’re using a foam board that we can bring out during school time (and put away later, as our kitchen table is our school room).  Right now, we’re:

• adding a straw for each school day to our place value pocket chart
• writing that school day’s number on the MFW K 100 Chart (not pictured…on the left side of the board)
• singing a Days Of The Week and Months Of The Year song while Max points to the day/month on the board.

During this unit, we learned about the Fruits of the Spirit.  We read Bible verses, had short discussions, and made a mini book and did a coloring page. (You’ll see those below in the art section, although they are nothing fancy!)

Learning about A and it’s /a/ sound


writing the correct beginning sound by the pictures

Max opted to color and write the correct letter
rather than cutting/pasting the correct letter in the box.

sorting picture cards by beginning sound

letter A, number 4

(my own page…available HERE for MFW K users only)


 

MFW K recommends using real apples to do a graph, but we did it a little differently using a page I created.  It’s available here on the blog if you’d like to use it.  Just look under the MFW K tab.



MFW K attributes graph, cuisenaire rods A page


Max LOVES math, so I made the page below for him based on one on that I found (for free) HERE.  I prefer a different tracing font than what she used, so I designed my own.  I don’t plan to share it, due to copyright, so I’ll just direct you to the original author’s site.  (Site has been removed…I’m not sure how to share it with you, sorry!)

We’re using raisins, chocolate chips, and other fun items as manipulatives to fill in the ‘ten frame’, and we’re then using the food to work on ‘even/odd’, ‘1 more’ and ‘1 less’.  He may eat the snacks when he’s finished with the page. 

We read about apples and apple orchards, visited an apple orchard (in September),
and we did a fun apple taste test using the printables from 1Plus1Plus1Equals1.



Max absolutely LOVED this taste test, and he declared that every apple was delicious!

I know it’s not as cutesy as what we did with Alex a few years ago, but it’s what we had time to do…fruit of the spirit coloring page & mini book.  With co-op preparation and a big brother with schoolwork, as well, it’s hard to fit it all in.  Since we did so much baking, something had to give!

 

Max absolutely loves to help me in the kitchen.  He was SO excited to purchase apples and help me make applesauce and apple pie.  He was SUPER proud of his own little apple pie, just like Amelia Bedelia’s little apple pie!

our baking projects in progress…

We went on a field trip to the apple orchard with our co-op friends!

 

 
(Jensyn is 3.5 years old.)

I don’t insist on participation from Jensyn.  She is free to join us or to wander away, but so far, she almost always wants to be a part of MFW K!  She sits with us as we read picture books, does the art or science projects, and completes papers or puzzles at the table.  She loves the Lauri alphabet puzzle included in MFW K!

My only goal for her this year is to learn the uppercase alphabet letters, and you may notice that in many of the activities that she’s working on…

I’ve designed lots of pages that can be used to keep a preschool sibling busy while you’re working with your kindergartener.  You can find most of these pages HERE and even more in the photo albums of the MFW-Kindergarten Facebook group.

cutting apples (with butter knives) to make applesauce & apple pie

using pattern blocks to build letter A (pattern block alphabet pages from Confessions of a Homeschooler) and playing with the cuisenaire rods

gluing pictures on top of their shadow (my apple preschool pack) and tracing letter A

alphabet tracer

hard at work

Beyond Unit 1 (Alex)

 

I’m pretty sure I’m posting this too soon.  I still haven’t posted the last few units of Little Hearts, have I?  It’s just that we are SO excited to now be using Heart of Dakota’s Beyond Little Hearts For His Glory program for Alex!  We started in November 2014, and my tentative plan is to finish by December 2015.  This program is adaptable for children ages 6 – 8.  To read more about our choices for this homeschool year, please CLICK HERE.

I want to start by saying that we are THRILLED with this new program.  We loved Little Hearts For His Glory, but Beyond is EVEN BETTER!  At the end of our first week, Alex HUGGED his history book and told me how much he loved it.  Seriously – what child HUGS his history book?! Many days, all three kids crowd in to listen because they all enjoy it!  I think this is going to be a wonderful year with Beyond!

Here’s a picture of Alex adding the first few pictures to his timeline.  (This timeline is printed from the files of the Beyond Facebook group.)  He is THOROUGHLY enjoying the history in Beyond so far, and so am I!
The book “American Pioneers and Patriots” tells the history in story format, and each day leaves you hanging just enough that you truly look forward to the next day’s reading.

In unit 1, we read about pioneers from Spain settling in to St. Augustine, FL.  The stories are told through the eyes of a boy named Pedro and his sister Catalina as they journey to America on a ship from Spain.

In this unit, Alex learned Psalm 4:8, and we talked about how it related to US and how it related to the history stories we read throughout this unit.  I cannot tell you how impressed I am with how Beyond gently introduces the concept of relating Bible verses to your own life.  I’m really enjoying this with Alex!

We’re printing all of the Bible verses on 3x5 cards and laminating them, keeping the verses on a ring to flip through and review.

Beyond has a lot of fun, hands-on ways to practice reciting the verses – jumping jacks, running in place, and other energy-releasers to break up the seatwork of other areas and get some wiggles out!

One thing that I’m loving so far about Beyond is that there is a Bible passage (separate from the unit memory verse) each week on Day 5.  WE read this verse together, discuss it, and related it to our lives and the history stories we’ve read during the current unit.  So neat!!!  This week even had an art projecr relating to the Bible verse.

Each unit has two spelling lists, an easier list and a slightly more challenging list.  Because we’ve been using Spelling You See, the easy lists in the early units of Beyond are too simple for Alex.  We’re doing List #2 for now, until/unless it becomes too challenging for him. He was super excited for this spelling format, so we’re going to stick with this for a while rather than starting on All About Spelling.  (This isn’t a staged picture – it’s Alex’s page when he got up to grab a quick drink.)
For each unit, the spelling words are written on index cards.  On the first day, Alex looks at each word on the card and then writes it down.  We’re using the sheet below on day #1.  Throughout the week, he continues to copy the words or write them from memory.  Some days, we use our white board.  Later in the week, he only has to write the words he’s had trouble spelling.  Those words are written in a fun way, such as rainbow words.

 

Days 1 – 4 are spent working on spelling and copywork.  Day 5 of each unit is devoted to a grammar concept.  This unit’s topic was sentences/sentence fragments.  It’s all oral, and Alex enjoyed it!  At the end, he had to dictate one sentence about himself, and then he rewrote the sentence as copywork.

 
We’re still pluggin’ away at Singapore 1A, approaching the first set of review lessons.  Alex does very well as long as he’s not distracted.  He’s beginning to learn how to choose an operation (+ or –) when looking at the pictures and number sentences.

For our first geography lesson, we made the earth out of masking tape and then labeled the continents.  Alex hopped, jumped, and did other actions to move from continent to continent.

Storytime in Beyond covers each genre of literature, beginning with biography.  The appendix of the guide lists several suggested books, and I chose Gladys Aylward.  It’s the largest book I’ve ever read with Alex, and this has been an adjustment for him.  I really wanted to give it a try to see what he could handle, and also because I love the idea of reading missionary books with him.  It’s definitely a stretch, but I feel like it’s been good so far.

To introduce the genre of biography, Alex had to fill a bag with 5 items that helped him explain who Alex is.  Here he is showing me his items…

I look forward to renting this video on Amazon once we’ve completed the Gladys Aylward book.  It’s a 37 minute cartoon Torchlighters story of Gladys Aylward.  Alex saw me looking it up, and now he’s very anxious to watch it as well.  The book has 20 chapters, so we’ll have a few more weeks before it’s time to watch the video.

Little Hearts had a weekly rhyme, and Alex usually didn’t care much for it.  Beyond has a weekly poem, and Alex really enjoyed this first poem.  We read it together each day, and he had this poem (“The Storm”) memorized the by end of the week.

The poem is read every day.  You add your own motions to the poem, color a picture to go along with it, use it as copywork for handwriting practice, etc.  We printed and bound all of the poems for the year so that Alex will have a poetry book as a keepsake.

So I should say that Alex loves reading, reciting, and coloring the poem.  He does NOT enjoy the copywork. It’s his least favorite part of Beyond so far.  It takes him FOREVER to copy two sentences per day.  It could be finished in 10 minutes if he tried, but it usually takes him close to 30 minutes because he procrastinates, looks around the room, asks questions, and stares off into space. 

He absolutely loved illustrating the poem.  Now, drawing isn’t a great talent for him, but he enjoys it!  I love the thought he put into illustrating this poem.  It not only matches the poem, but also the history stories we’ve read this week.

See?  It’s certainly not the most beautiful drawing I’ve ever seen.  It’s not going to win any awards.  It’s so special to me, though, because Alex is SO excited and proud of his poetry book! (We’ve finished Beyond Unit 2 already, and he’s still just as excited.) When he’s excited about schoolwork, it makes me a happy mama!  I hope he’ll continue to be proud of his work and that this book will be a great keepsake for him.

The Day 5 Bible study was to read an discuss Psalm 18:1 – 6.  These verses talk about the Lord being our stronghold and our shield.  We all made shields from cardboard.  Alex’s had to represent what is written in the Bible verse.  Max made a Captain America shield, and Jensyn made a heart-shaped shield.  Fun for the whole family!

We learned about the names of the oceans, read about the oceans, and we made ocean currents by squirting water under a toy boat to watch how the boat moved from the current we made.

We read about sea creatures that the pioneers from Spain may have encountered on their journey to America.  After this, we learned about how blubber keeps some sea creatures warm in the cold water.  We experimented with Crisco, a plastic bag,  and a big bowl of ice water.  See Alex’s smile?  He likes this slimy activity!

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