We are using the wonderful My Father’s World as a base for our learning at home. I wanted to share just a glimpse of what we do in a typical week with this curriculum. I don’t always do what is instructed in the manual — I maneuver around as my children have an interest or need. We vary a lot with what we do each day, I shared all of our Kindergarten Curriculum Plans here, but I try to do three days with My Father’s World because I love the lessons so much. I won’t be sharing each week but wanted to share a bit of what My Father’s World means :)
I do love that each week there is a Biblical theme related to the letter being reinforced. The first week’s letter is S. S is for Sun. And Jesus is the light of the world! Each week’s theme is Biblically based as well as nature based; you are learning God’s Creation from A to Z.
Here is just a glimpse of some of what we do together, combined with my three year old daughter, who tags along using 1plus1plus1equals1’s wonderful free curriculum, Animal ABCs! This works perfectly, as it focuses on an animal for each letter, so it continues to be nature based as we all have fun together!
I write our theme and letter on our chalk board — this usually gets erased as the kids get excited about writing on the chalkboard when I use it at the beginning of each letter :)
We discuss the letter and feel our textured sandpaper letter cards.
May gets the uppercase sandpaper card and her Animal ABC flashcard. She really enjoys sitting together at the table, more so than my five year old John, so sometimes it is just her and me coloring or painting some pictures together and talking about the letters and sounds.
John has a difficult time with handwriting, so we try to practice just a bit, without frustrations, every morning. I try to make this our first activity before he gets bored or riled up :) These wonderful handwriting sheets are provided for free to those who have already purchased MFW by Mamas Monkeys.
Mamas Monkeys also made preschool worksheets, so I give May hers to trace and color too!
Here are the children sitting together, cutting and pasting some of their sheets with letter S sounds and S is for Squirrel. We love these toddler scissors and simple Elmer glue. I bought a big gallon of glue and refill the smaller bottles.
Here is John’s creation.
And May’s shapes and squirrel :)
Tracing S in salt trays for both children. To be honest, salt and sugar trays are rare in our house. They get thrown about 15 seconds after they are set out. John will usually trace one or two letters and then start throwing the material. It is hard to be motivated to continue to try this because he does not respect the activity! I got a quick picture before clean up ensued….
Sweet May enjoyed tracing too, but learned to throw the salt from her brother, so I do this with her only when John is having quiet, independent time.
Another day, we worked on our sound discrimination sheet. This works on phonetic beginning sounds as well as writing circles and Xs! John really love this page, so we go through it quickly :)
May goes through several of her various notebooks while we are doing some of the (few) My Father’s World sheets (like the one above). This one is from Memoria Press.
I always get out our Montessori Alphabet Boxes to feel and play with. May gets another box to discover with that letter’s sandpaper card.
More cutting. Cutting and pasting creations has been big every day. This is wonderful for fine motor skills.
We did an experiment with the sun’s heat. We put a marshmallow in a “greenhouse” (cellophane) to see if it would melt. It did! It took several days.
More cutting work….
Making a Sun Badge. I wrote “Jesus is the Light of the World” on the back. The idea is the put a hole through this and wear it, but John just wanted to save it. He traced and cut the circle himself.
We love the simplicity of My Father’s World. It takes very little time, reinforces Biblical concepts, always has a science experiment, and is just a fun time together. I hope this gave a nice glimpse of some of what we have been doing in our home kindergarten with My Father’s World. (The rest of our plans can be found here including: more phonics work, language & grammar, handwriting, math, and American History.)
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