Hi Jennifer! First, I wanted to speak to this quote from near the end of your post: His brother is in MFW 1st so I could have him sit in, but I a little worried I will hurt his feelings/self esteem in doing so. Yes, I have a 3rd grader who is working extra hard on his reading and a 1st grader who is...

My dd turned 7 in December during her first grade year, this year. Reading really clicked with her last spring and summer, where she just took off and started reading everything - even sounds I knew we had not "studied" in school. She is doing the 1st gr. phonics/reading/language arts and it's been ...

We will be "finishing" our 180 required days of school - and our ECC materials - earlier this May than we ever have before. Partly because we have traveled less than in past years. Anyway, even last year, when we finished up around the same time as the other local schools we did a few more weeks of ...

Hello Shawna! Yes, the CBoM jumps in topics. I know what you mean. My son could do some of it in 1st and more in 2nd. My dd did some things in K, but can do more now in 1st. I think some of the topics like shapes or patterns are easier to do with younger kids, so you might try some of those and the ...

I have made certificates at the end of the year to promote each child to the next grade level. Last year we had some family members over and had a meal. Then, we had a short "program" where the kids read or recited a Bible memory verse, sang some songs we had learned, and showed their grandparents t...

Hi! We used Adv. last year when my oldest was in 2nd gr. and my dd was in K. It went great! They both really enjoyed a lot of the activities, stories, library books, songs, and learning about the basics of our country's history and geography. My younger one was able to participate a lot and my older...

We are doing ECC this year and my children are in 1st and 3rd grades. We do the John 3:16, flag sheets, Around the World fun pages, color in our country on the map and use stickers to identify it's location on another map. We have included some sheets about currency exchange rates or unique things t...

We also had fun with The Story of Little Babji! We also found an audio version of stories from The Jungle Book by Jim Weiss of Great Hall Productions. He has many other recordings of all kinds of tales. The kids enjoyed hearing about Amy Carmichael in Hero Tales and in the Heroes for Young Readers s...

We have had fun "visiting" China over the last couple of weeks! We really enjoyed these books from the book list: Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat, The Magic School Bus on the Ocean Floor , and The Warlord's Puzzle and Grandfather Tang's Story , which are both about tangrams. We have Tangoes Jr. which...

I like what Trish replied! :-) My dd is in 1st gr. and we just got to the New Testament portion on Day 126 or so. She is a great writer compared to how my son was at that age, but some days she still just comes up with one good sentence and works more on the picture. Other days she writes and it alm...

Hi Alison! My son is a bit younger, he just turned 9. You said that your son has a writing disability and I'm wondering which one because it might be part of the equation. My son is dyslexic and dysgraphic. So his dyslexia makes it very difficult for him to spell words that he wants to write and his...

I wanted to add to this post because I was just able to look at Writing Strands 2 at our state convention. The Writing Strands website says that Book 1 is all oral, in preparation for writing. Writing Strands 3 looks like it moves to writing a descriptive paragraph very quickly, but Writing Strands ...

Hi! My ds is in 3rd gr. and my dd is in 1st and she does the unit study lessons with us. We are not worrying about any "Advanced" lessons because we will come back to ECC the year that they are in 8th and 6th grades. ECC has been really neat!

Rachel

Hello! I remember teaching K and 1st as our "core" program a few years ago and it did feel different. Everything went with the unit study and that could be frustrating if one part was not moving along at the same pace as everything else. However, I think that it really changed in 2nd gr. and now 3rd...

Hi! I pretty much followed the plan that Lucy posted above the year my oldest was in 1st gr. We had just gone through MFWK and I didn't want to repeat all of it with his younger sister, but did the K worksheets, flashcard and alphabet song, etc. (I LOVE the K A-Z cards and the song!) She was able to...

DS doesn't like to color - at all. So all the picture cards and other things that are "supposed" to be colored, aren't. A note about coloring - my ds hated coloring anything at that age and still doesn't like it, but can do it when necessary. At that age I found some "Dot to Dot" markers (like Bing...

Hi! Last Friday we watched a good part of the Opening Ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics. My kids are 7 and 9 so they really don't remember watching them a few years ago. We have been working through ECC since August and it was REALLY neat when we watched the parade of athletes and they started ...

Hello! My dd turned 7 just before Christmas. I could have had her do MFW 1st a year prior (school year 2008-9) instead of this year because I had her do MFWK early, but I felt that she needed more time to be a Kindergartener so we did some other things last year and began MFW 1st this fall. She is r...

Hi! I don't know much about your autistic son's needs, but I'm coming at this from the angle of different learning styles and my own son's special reading and writing needs. My son also knew all of the basic consonant and short vowel sounds and some of the blends, but that's when reading and especia...

Hi! My kids are 2 years apart, so our situation was similar to yours. It is nice that Marie has some great posts on how to specifically work it all out. We didn't exactly follow her pattern, but we were close. We did MFWK with 5 and 3 yr old chiming in, then we did 1st gr when ds was 6 and dd was 4 ...

Thank you for the responses! We did a couple of lessons and gave it away actually. Seemed a bit silly at the time. That has been awhile though, and I don't feel the same about Levels 3 & 4 which we use. Seems that the Level 2 subjects are better covered elsewhere in the curriculum. Tiffany, it is go...

I think it would be fun for the 4 year old! My 1st grader enjoys this even more than my 3rd grader! Every day 1 of the "new" country, we look at our world map and see if we will be traveling over land, water, or both and then we get in our "plane" or other type of traveling vehicle (submarine, boat,...

This year we have handwritten several thank you notes and made birthday cards for cousins, grandparents, friends, etc. I just had both children try typing a short note today for the girl we sponsor who live in Haiti because friends are going to her village again soon. We might do more of that now th...

Hi! We have really enjoyed our African journey! Here are some favorites. Books: We are still reading through the David Livingstone book because these YWAM books just take us longer than scheduled, but the kids really look forward to hearing more of it. We like the book "Honey, Honey, Lion!" by Jan B...

We have enjoyed using MFW for a few years. We are beginning week 20 of ECC today and my son was saying that he wants to go on a mission to Haiti or be a pilot so he can fly people there! ECC has really begun a shift in our thinking about the whole world, not just our little world, and how many peopl...