My Father’s World – with a 6th grader, 7-year-old, and 5-year-old

We’ve been working, this year, through My Father’s World Exploration to 1850.

We started out with the 7-year-old and 5-year-old in the 1st grade program, but decided just a few days in that it was better for us to just put all three of the younger kids in Exploration to 1850 (“EXPO,” as it’s often abbreviated).

Last year, I had both the then-6-year-old and then-4-year-old in Kindergarten (which we loved).  I was expecting the 6-year-old to do all of it, and the 4-year-old to “tag along” so far as he was comfortable, knowing he was still pretty young.  Somewhat to my surprise, he kept up with his sister almost 100%.  He was a little slower-moving with his reading (although he’s been catching up rapidly this autumn) and was lagging a little in math during the first half of the year, but had largely caught up with her by this summer.  The plan was to have them both in the 1st grade curriculum this year.

The thing is, 1st grade focuses very heavily on reading, and the kids were already moving quite rapidly through that process.  And everything they were doing was separate from big sister, so it not only meant I was having to do two completely separate programs (which, for us and our current needs, was not offering enough benefit in return), but big sister — who’s very social — was lonely having to work more on her own than with her siblings.

Merging

So…we decided to just put everyone together.  The only thing I carried over from the 1st grade curriculum is the “Number of the Day,” which is some simple number work they do on a (*cough* nearly) daily basis to get more comfortable with numbers and place value.  They do, of course, do their own English and math, but I’m pretty laid back about that for this age group.  They aren’t doing Bible with Sophia, either.  We’ll be working through some things like The Ology. 

But we’re doing history/geography and science together.  The way we’ve been adjusting that is to have the littles read with me/us through the read-alouds, and readings from The Story of the World, Exploring American History, In God We Trust, and the occasional reading that pops up from Trial and Triumph.  The first three of those listed form the primary “spine” of the history.  Sophia then does the additional readings in the main material and does all the activities, while the littles do the readings from the 2nd and 3rd grade supplement, and activities as I find appropriate.  (To be clear: By “appropriate,” I mean in terms of cognitive difficulty and overall workload, not general content, which isn’t an issue.)

For science, I’ve been skipping most of the readings from World of Animals (with some exceptions — particularly the sections about each animal class), picking/choosing which of the smaller text to read from Guide to God’s Animals and slightly rewording parts from the larger print here and there.  (This is a great book, but the language is a bit technical for very young students.)  And then they read from the 2nd/3rd grade supplement.  Activities, again, are just at my discretion.

Week 7 Science: Fish

We’ve been doing something fun with our animal classes, which I’ll show in another post.  I wanted to share these videos, though.  For week 7, we learned about fish.  One of the fish we learned about was salmon.  Salmon are a little unusual in that they are not freshwater or ocean fish.  They hatch in the river, then swim to the sea.  And when they’re ready to lay their own eggs, they swim back upstream and jump up waterfalls when necessary, to lay their eggs in the same place they were hatched.

Remarkably, they also do this without eating!  (They’re an excellent jumping-off point — no pun intended — for discussion of diligence and perseverence.)

Another simple way to work a little “lesson” in for fish week is to cook something that uses canned salmon — in the tall can.  When you open the can and dump the fish out, it should have some backbone in it.  (By the way, this is edible.  I’m not sure if it’s naturally that way or just an effect of the canning process.  Just crush them in with the flesh and you can eat them.  They’re high in calcium.)  Often, many of the vertebrae are still all together in a row, so the kids can see what this spinal structure is like, and be reminded that fish are vertebrates.  (It also helps connect the idea of where our food comes from.  When we first started reading about salmon, my 5-year-old said, “but not food salmon,” and I had to explain that yes, the salmon we’re learning about swimming are the same as the salmon we ultimately eat.)