MFWK Unit 2- Moon

It has taken us a while to get through this unit. We got started on it over a month ago, but the weather got nice, so we took a long break. Since we got about halfway thorough it before we took a break, we reviewed. Lily is really good at remembering what she has learned, though, so it didn't take much review-wise. This was a really fun unit. Lily did lots of fun things.

We went over the phases of the moon. Then we demonstrated on Oreos. This was a favorite activity this unit!

We read the story "The Moon Might Be Milk."  In the story, there is a recipe for sugar cookies, so we decided to try to make those. They turned out pretty good.

We discussed the surface of the moon, and how it is made of craters. We discussed how asteroids and comets hit the surface of the moon, and make these big craters. To give a good visual demonstration, we put flour in a pan, and dropped coins from above. This caused the once-smooth surface to be full of holes and "craters."

We purchased a Waldorf play stand. I love that this can be anything that the child wants. It's very open ended. Kids don't get a lot of toys like that anymore. This was what it looked like when it first got put together, but it wasn't long before we turned it into a spaceship. Lily spent lots of time in the spaceship playing and reading books on her Kindle.

We are supplementing math this year. Lily loves math, and I don't feel like My Father's World has enough to keep her satisfied in that area. We are using Singapore Earlybird math. She loves it! She will do a week's worth of math in one sitting.

Lily has been a little behind with her fine motor skills, so I have been working on some cutting and pasting activities to help her out. She is getting much better. She was able to complete the activities in MFWK this unit without me helping her at all.

I love to add little extra activities in whenever I can. Another MFWK user posts some fabulous printables on her blog at  http://mamasmonkeys.blogspot.com/   She has so many cute extra activities, and we do a lot of them.

 Bingo dauber painting:

 Mini number puzzles:

Handwriting worksheets:

 

 Cutting and pasting upper and lowercase letters:

 Mini flip book:

We made a moon cake. This was fun-we put some baking soda, and added a little vinegar to it to make a volcano on the moon's surface.

We started a Flat Traveler exchange. This is Flat Sarah-she is on her way to Scotland right now for some adventures. The host family will take her wherever they go, and take pictures and keep a journal of their activities while they have her. We are taking their flat into our home while Sarah is overseas. 

Lily finished up her unit with a lapbook about the moon. I really like the lapbooks, because they wrap up the unit nicely with the highlights and tidbits of information based on what she learned during the whole unit.

That's it! Our moon unit is officially wrapped up. Next up-Ll-Leaf!

Beaches and Berry Picking

I totally lost my motivation to continue with our home school units once the weather got nice. The great thing about homeschooling is that we can continue whenever we want. We have been doing lots of fun things this Summer, and Lily is learning lots, anyway. :)

I actually took a REAL vacation this year. I rarely take a whole week off, but I decided that I needed it, even if we just stayed close to home.

We went to the beach this week, and Lily found some friends. She was SO excited to watch these sand crabs that we bought her a hermit crab to observe at home.

My oldest daughter actually joined us at the beach. She is 17 now, so she doesn't want to hang out with the family so much anymore. We managed to get her to the beach. Gia loves to surf, so she tried to teach Lily how to use her little kick board in the waves. I actually got a couple of "normal" pictures of Gia. Lily enjoyed her special "Sissy time."

We went berry picking yesterday. I was so excited to find a U-pick blueberry patch! We got lots of yummy blueberries and blackberries. I love blueberries-I can eat a pint in one sitting. I need to find some recipes to use some of the berries in. Blueberry/blackberry cobbler sounds really good. I'll have to get on Pinterest later and find some new recipes. I have to do that later when I have LOTS of time. I lose myself in Pinterest for hours sometimes. I have an addiction.

 We managed to get Gia out of the house with us for this outing, too! She wasn't thrilled to have her picture taken this time. :) 

I've been getting things organized to continue with our MFWK units soon. We just need to get on a schedule and stick to it. That is so much easier than it sounds. Our next unit is MOON. Lily will enjoy that-she is really into playing spaceships and space right now. :) We got a Waldorf Playstand and right now, it is decorated to go with the Moon theme. I'll post pics of that with the post on that unit. It's really cute! Hopefully we will get going on the Moon unit next week, so I'll have more to post then...

MFWK Unit 1-Sun

We just finished our first "official" unit with My Father's World. The unit was SUN. Lily had so much fun. We had to postpone it for a week. The weather was not cooperating, and a lot of our activities actually required the sun to be shining.

The first part of the lesson was learning the letter sound, and practicing writing the letter "S".

Lily already knows her letter sounds, but she needs handwriting practice. She gets frustrated when it comes times to write, so we only do a few tries, and put it away. She is only 4. She has plenty of time to practice handwriting, and I don't want her frustration to affect her love of learning.

Lily doesn't like to take time to actually COLOR. She will scribble a few lines and say she is done. I found a color by number, and this seemed to encourage her to take her time. Because she was supposed to color the numbers a specific color, she took time and did it the right way. I need to remember this and find more of these.

We made sun tea. I knew Lily would enjoy this activity. She LOVES tea! She put the water and tea bags in the jar.

 We set the jar outside in the sun and left it for a few hours.

When she came out to check it, she said "It turned ORANGE!"

 We went outside and observed our shadows. I traced Lily's shadow, and she traced mine. This unit really helped a lot with her fears at night. She has been afraid of shadows for a while, and after we studied shadows, she has not been afraid at night anymore. :)

We made sun catchers. We had a giant tub of craft beads, so we put them in bowls and dishes and melted them in the oven. They popped right out when they were cool, and made beautiful sun catchers. We have them on display in our flower bed.

Another fun activity was to make a sun dial. Very simple-just a pen and a glob of playdough. We set the sun dial out in the sun, and I set the alarm on my phone for every hour, on the hour.

She went to check it after one hour, and said "It totally DID move!"  We kept up with it until the sun moved away from the sun dial.

We did a few artistic crafts. Painting a sun, and making a torn paper sun were fun. 

 

 The Cusinaire rods were not her favorite part of the week. Again, she gets frustrated. She just needs some work on her fine motor skills. We worked on this activity a little at a time.

We finished the unit with a lap book that highlighted some of the facts about the sun she had learned. On the back, I glued a few pictures of Lily enjoying her week. All in all. I think it was a successful week, and Lily had a lot of fun. Next week is M-Moon. We have lots of fun activities planned for that unit.