First Day of First Grade-MFW Day 1

Today we started the first day of first grade!  We will be using the First Grade curriculum from My Father's World.  I had first ordered the 2nd-3rd grade level, called "Adventures in My Father's World", but decided it was best to "enhance rather than advance"- a wise piece of advice I read on the MFW message boards.  The phonics, reading, and math will be easy for my son, but that means we get to spend more time with fun read-alouds and library books to go along with math and science.  Also, we can spend more time on things like music, poetry, art, nature study, etc.  So, I am very happy with my decision to stick with first grade already after our first day!  I got the library books to go along with our math and science topics this week and I just know this will be so much fun!

Here's what we did today:

• Bible: Talked about how the Bible is a special book and how it was originally written onto scrolls.  We looked up the article on "scrolls" in our World Book Encyclopedia (that my awesome brother gave us as a gift since he works at World Book!).  We also read pages 108-115 in The Jesus Storybook Bible.


• Reading: Reviewed sounds and handwriting for "A-B-C".  I asked Davin for words that started with the /a/ sound and he said "atom" and "anaconda".  For /b/ he said "barracuda" and "bishop", and for /k/ he said "crank" and "collapse".  It's a good thing we're supplementing the Reading part of this curriculum with First Language Lessons, since he is definitely ready for some grammar lessons.


• Math: Calendar activity, # of the Day, 100s Chart, and pages in Saxon 1: 34B, 44B, and 45B.


• Art: Discussed with him the importance of a good work environment for drawing, as talked about on pages 23-25 of Drawing with Children.  We also read pages 8-9 of Come Look With Me: Enjoying Art with Children and discussed our painting of the week: Hans Holebein the Younger's Edward the VI as a Child.


• Read-Aloud: Read for about 20 minutes from The Chronicles of Narnia-pages 18-24.


• Hymn Study: Read pages 15-17 in Hymns for a Kids Heart Volume 1 and sung "Holy, Holy, Holy" together.  Hearing my little boy sing that hymn almost brought tears to my eyes.  I'm sure God was pleased and the angels were smiling to hear a little boy offering up praise to God by singing.  It was my favorite moment of the day!


• Poetry: Reviewed poems already memorized from level one of Linguistic Devleopment through Poetry Memorization. Worked on "The Vulture" by Hilaire Belloc.


• Nature: Played outside!

This morning, Dori got into our homeschool closet and found his Tot Tray supplies.  I got an activity for him to do: transferring the glass beads using a little spoon from one cup to three small tea light candle holders.  This occupied him for a few minutes, but he wasn't that thrilled about it!

Here's Davin filling out the date card on our Calendar Board.  I laminated the page so he can do it every day using a dry erase marker.

My firstborn, growing up way too fast!  6 years old and starting first grade!

Working diligently on his handwriting worksheet that will soon become  a scroll when all the pages are complete.  Handwriting is still a struggle for him, but when he works slowly and carefully he does really well!

Here's our little Quinny, sitting up by holding onto the toys of her play gym.  She fell over about 2 seconds after I snapped this picture, but she kept smiling, not even bothered :)

Dorian using the Bingo daubers for painting for the first time.  He loves it!

Daddy taught Davin how to fold paper up and cut it to make neat designs and he is very intrigued by the process and results.

It was such a beautiful day for playing outside!  Perfect, indeed.

"How do you like to go up in a swing, up in the air so blue?  Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing ever a child can do!"

Seeing Davin swing brought that poem by Robert Louis Stevenson to mind.

Dori showing off a big stick he found:

The boys hanging out on the front steps.  Love this picture:

Dori trying to smell the hostas:

Davin being a good helper to Dada by picking up sticks, since we knew he needed to mow the lawn after work:

Little swinger:

Helping shuck some sweet corn for dinner:

Batter up!

I'd say we had a great day!  Initially I had added several more things to our school day, but found out quickly that a separate handwriting program isn't necessary, I'm not going to start spelling yet, I'm not adding Story of the World (what was I thinking that we could fit that in our day?!), and we'll do our Proverbs People Bible study once a week on Sundays (not a page every day).