MFW Homeschool Week 5 Review

This week we learned about the Pilgrims who came over on the Mayflower, Jesus being the Bread of Life, and Johnny Appleseed. Here is a picture of my school bookshelf. The top row is our Pilgrim/Mayflower books, second row is our bread books, third row is our Johnny Appleseed and apple books, and the fourth row will be new baby books for the next number of weeks.

The children love the story of Johnny Appleseed and are looking forward to the Johnny Appleseed Festival this month. We'll celebrate his birthday on September 26th and Kyler is hoping the baby is born on his birthday....ha! Instead of doing some separate topic with Angelica Pickle's Preschool, since all the kids participate anyway, I decided to do Johnny Appleseed with all of them. I didn't have too many projects, but we read about apple trees, read The Giving Tree by Silverstein, colored a picture of Johnny Appleseed, ate apples for snack, and made homemade applesauce. I'd like to take them back to an apple orchard this fall like we did last year. We'll see if we get there...

Well, the kids seemed to be a little bored with the Pilgrims this week, but still had fun with the projects and remember many of the details. They just weren't as interested in the way they dressed and lived as they have the other people we've studied. We made little Pilgrim paper dolls (like our Indian paper dolls here), I showed them how oiled paper makes a great waterproof window, we made butter and we still need to plant our corn and make our Mayflower boat. We got a little behind with appointments this week, but have a long weekend to make it up! We also made our own "Kellogg Compact" like the Mayflower Compact. The kids came up with some agreeable behaviors and signed the document saying they would try their best to adhere to the compact.

Here is what the Kellogg Compact said:
We will obey our parents happily.
We will be nice to each other and play nicely.
We will share.
We will clean up our toys.
We will avoid fighting.
We will put away our dishes at meals.
We will do our Helping Habits happily.
We will keep our rooms clean.
We will not say bad words. (like poop, naked and crap)
We will speak kindly to each other.
We will ask nicely for things and say please and thank you.
We will ask Jesus for help.
We will try our best to be like Jesus.

We talked about Jesus being the Bread of Life this week and discussed stories like God sending manna to the Israelites in the desert and the feeding of the 5000. We read many bread books about how bread is made, did some yeast science experiments, and then made some bread of our own. I didn't have time to made bread from scratch with yeast and all, so we decided to make some monkey bread and I explained that the biscuit dough we used already had the yeast in it. I think they still got the idea of it. And the monkey bread was good! Everyone got involved, even Boo Boo!


I got Princess Pea's Explode the Code books in this week and we started right in on them. She loves these books and I can understand why so many homeschoolers rave about them! She did probably six pages by herself one day and then just showed me later! We are going to put our Bob Books aside for now (she flew through sets 1 and 2 but I think set 3 is significantly harder and requires more knowledge of "rules") and we are going to do All About Spelling and our Explode the Code books everyday. We'll pick up the Bob Books again when I think she's got down some of the new rules, so she isn't frustrated trying to read them. I'm really liking the All About Spelling program so far, too. We are taking our time learning the sounds of the vowels (since each one has 3-4 sounds) because I want her to know them well. So far she knows all the phonograms she's supposed to know for the first Level except e, i, o, and u. She should have them down in the next two weeks, though. She is really excited about all her school stuff.

We went to town on projects for the house this weekend. My friend Cherry came over and helped me clean out my mudroom, add a new dresser upstairs and move Boo Boo's stuff into the boys' room, organize and put away many totes of kids clothes in the attic, clean out my changing table drawer, and clean out my front foyer closet. Paul moved my "hobby table" downstairs into our already-crammed office, but we will get good use out of it there by me and Kyler. I have since reorganized my whole computer desk area, the drawers of my "hobby table," and all of my fabric and sewing collection and also collected all my homebirth supplies in one place. It was a busy day! It was nice because Pop Pop and Grandma had us over for dinner, and we didn't have to cook after all that work either! I'm exhausted! And my list is growing shorter everyday...

Here is a photo of Sid the Science Kid reading in the office because it is a quiet place. Boo Boo found the door cracked open and brought in his own book to join Sid. Boo Boo loves to sit on the floor in my office and read his board books and show me pictures he recognizes while I'm on the computer or planning school stuff. He has his own little bookshelf in there.




Here is a video of Boo Boo saying some of the famous things he's known for. My personal favorite is when he signs and says "giraffe." It's usually super clear, too. He says more than this, but it's what I could think of in the moment. I really should video tape him more, but my video camera has not been working properly for a while now and all I have is the video on my camera.