A Look At Our Weeks: October 10-14 and October 17-21

Well, after a week's break at the beginning of the month, we finally started in with My Father's World ECC (Exploring Countries and Cultures). We will be "visiting" many countries this year, learning about geography, focusing our science on different biomes, and hopefully making at least one traditional dish every couple of weeks. We will spend two weeks at each country, if I am not mistaken. These first two weeks, however, were introductory weeks where we learned about maps and ecosystems, and such. These next two weeks we will take a look at America, before heading to Mexico. Then we will stop back in America for a week's vacation while we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving.

So, let's take a look at what we have been up to.

We learned a lot about maps and globes these past two weeks. This was one of our books that we learned about maps and globes from. We focused on such things as directions, the equator, distance and scale, latitude and longitude, elevation and depth, and different kinds of maps.

The girls had to use these maps to take a pretest, to see which countries they could place. No, they didn't do very well. This is not a surprise. The idea of the pretests is to show how much they learn this year. At the end of the year they will be filling out another set of maps. I am so curious to see how they will do.

They also needed to label and color the continents. Then they were to work on ecozones. We are also supposed to have worked on one for biomes, but we didn't get to it, so we will fill it in this coming week (I hope). 

And there are always fun hands-on activities from My Father's World. Here we are drawing continents onto an orange to show how difficult it is to flatten a spherical globe into a flat map.

One thing we were supposed to do is fill out pretend passport applications, so they can get passports to go to these different countries. We actually had a passport application to fill out, along with a pretend check. I decided I wanted the children to understand that you can't just write out a check without money already in the bank. So, we created the "Waide Children's Bank" where they could put pretend money they earned. Tabitha made the safe:

I had them each fill out an application for a bank account. And they had to earn their first ten dollars by doing some cleaning. I used the money from our currency kit. Then I set them up an account, and wrote their info into a Bank Log Book, then they brought me the money and I wrote deposit slips for them to keep in their pencil boxes.

Here are the core books for our year:

I read the assigned pages from these books to the older girls during our ECC time. This is the time where the younger two will alternate using the old computer and doing manipulative activities.

Once a week the girls will fill out vocabulary cards using the Geography from A to Z book.

For science, we read from The Properties of Ecosystems and Living World Encyclopedia. We were talking about habitats and headed outside to check out two different areas of our backyard habitat. Amelia and Harold worked together, while Tabitha and Amelia worked together.

Of course, when we have a doctor appointment, we just take our work with us...

Here are the other books we read to go with our ECC lessons these past two weeks.

They are also working on Language Arts, Spelling, Cursive Handwriting, and Math from various sources outside of MFW. 

The Language Smarts Level E book is a complete language arts curriculum from Critical Thinking Co. This is a book we are reviewing for the Homeschool Review Crew. This review will be posting the second week of November. I have Tabitha work in different sections each day. 

Amelia is using the book she was supposed to finish last year, before I move her to the one Tabitha was supposed to use last year. Here she was doing a picture study.

She wrote a story telling what was happening in the picture.

Here is a sample of her handwriting.

They are both using CTCMath. Amelia is using Middlebury Interactive Languages to learn Spanish. That review will be posting this coming week. 

 Hannah and Harold are sort of included in our ECC work, especially the hands-on activities, and the reading of some of the books. However, Hannah then works on her phonics and math at a first grade level, and Harold is finishing up MFW Kindergarten.

The beginning of the book was a bit basic for her, but she definitely needs the handwriting practice. She had to listen for beginning sounds of words as well.

We finally arrived at the slightly more difficult lesson 

They weren't quite challenging enough. She desperately wanted to use the Bible Reader, but I didn't think she was ready. Boy was I wrong.

She worked on addition and shapes with Math Mammoth.

Harold is up to the K: Kangaroo unit. He loves taking the page with pictures that start with K and gluing them into a construction paper book.

I have some extra worksheets from Super Teacher Worksheets, though I can't get anymore because our subscription is expired.

These also came from SuperTeacher Worksheets. He LOVES these word wheels.

Then we got into our MFW K worksheets. 

He had to identify which pictures started with /k/.

And here he got to practice his handwriting. Not bad for 4 years old in my opinion.

We also have a math review item, though it isn't for the Crew really.

He loves pulling out this book to do math.

The book starts out by teaching same and different, and teaching about sets.

He enjoyed those pages, but was thrilled to get to the "real" math that uses numbers.

Here are the Kangaroo and Zoo books we read these past two weeks. We include zoo books because the animals we have been learning about are wild and can be found in the zoo.

We also took several days to read Koko's Kitten. The children have been quite interested in Koko, the gorilla who can communicate with sign language. We actually started reading about her because of one of our last units in MFW Adventures, where we learned about Jesus being the Word. We learned about the importance of communication. Harold was so interested in Koko, actually sitting through the story, that I found a movie and two more books about her.

We have also been learning about how Christmas came to America with a Once-a-Week Unit Study from Homeschool Legacy. The first week we learned about the Dutch, and Sinterklass. We read about St. Nicholas. This past week we learned about the English traditions. We are still reading A Christmas Carol, as it is a bit long for these guys. 

Had to share the picture of Harold pretending to be the person he made. See the straight mouth? This is one of the activities he can do while the older girls and I are having ECC time. They have also used the pattern blocks and Cuissenaire rods.

It has been a busy couple of weeks, and I am sure the next two will be as well. What have you been up to?

I'm linking up here: