It’s time to work on the garden! This year we had a late start because of all the rain! We have vegetable garden, herb garden and fruit trees in the yard!
Usborne Books and More
In preparation of us putting in the garden, we have been reading a few of our books! Our favorites are Usborne Books and More It All Starts With a Seed, Secrets of the Vegetable Garden and Look Inside Nature. I’m excited that we will also have these books to read during the V – Vegetables week during God’s Creation A to Z.
Sister has has her own set of gardening tools. It came with a bag, gloves, hat, apron, pointed shovel, flat shovel and rake. She loves that she has her own tools to work along side my and my tools.
At the garden center she helped me pick out plants and seeds. The plants we purchased were Better Boy tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, green peppers, jalapeno peppers, acorn squash, basil, cilantro, parsley, thyme, oregeno, Rosemary and a strawberries. The plants we have that come back each year are the rhubarb, chives, lemon balm, sage and lavender. Plus we have an apple tree and peach tree. The plants that were purchased, were planted that day.
The seeds are going to wait a few days because we ran out of time. The plants from seeds are zucchini, garden beans and pickling cucumbers. She even got to pick out some flowers for her to plant and take care of herself.
The My Father’s World Voyage of Discovery has ten days suggested for learning the Ten Commandments. Because of when we started this, the Ten Commandments would have fallen around Christmas. We decided to move these two units to the end of the year instead.
She loved the egg carton, cotton ball and tweezer game that was suggested. We made a few modifications to it. We used a whole egg carton and played the freeze game. Nanny came up with the idea to put numbers 1- 12 at the bottom, not in order. She would then tell Sister which number to put the cotton ball in.
So you have purchased the My Father’s World God’s Creation A to Z, now what? You organize it! This just makes it so much easier to use throughout the school year. Here is how I organized everything:
Plastic file bin with hanging folders.
First, I started with a plastic file bin. I added hanging folders with labeled tabs for each week. Each hanging folder contains that weeks worksheets, craft ideas, and the book that came with the deluxe curriculum. I can also then add additional items that I come across that will be used for that week.
The file bin currently also contains the teacher manual, God’s Amazing World, Cuisenaire Rods, and textured letters. Those will eventually make it into the daily bins.
Bins for each day
Second, to make each day easier for Nanny and myself, I separate the items needed into daily plastic bins. These are Sterilite brand 14″ X 11″ boxes. They are the perfect size for each day. (We used these same bins for MFW Voyage of Discovery, but will be used for this too). The teachers manual breaks down what is needed for each day. I then take the books, worksheets, crafts supplies, hands on toys and another other item needed and put them into the daily bin designated for that week.
Teachers Manual, Student worksheets, and Cruisenaire Rods book.
Third, I needed to make the Teachers Manual, Student Book and cards, and Cruisenaire Rods easier to manage. I put tabs with the letter, on each week of the teachers manual. It makes it much easier to go directly to the week you need. The Cruisenaire Rod book, I tore out each sheet and put them in sheet protectors in a 3-Ring binder. The individual pages can be taken out of the book for each week. The rods can then be put on top and a dry erase marker used for the answers. This makes it so the sheets can be used inside the protectors over and over, in case she needs more practice. I also put together a 3-Ring Binder for my daughter to have her 100 days of school sheet, vowel ladder and her completed worksheets.
There were a few things I took to get laminated. They were the alphabet sheet, number sheet, verse, alphabet cards, bingo and letter cards (blue), and little sayings for each week. I then put them in clear pouches that fit in a 3-Ring binder.
School supplies
Fourth was the school supplies. I have a box for craft supplies and a smaller box for pens, pencils and markers. Some supplies are left over from MFW Voyage of Discovery, which saved on buying some supplies. The canvas bag and fabric markers are for the weekly badges. (I saw this on a message board as an idea for what to do with the badges they make each week. I thought it was a fantastic idea).
Fifth, billboard for the school year. This seemed like the best way to be able to see everything for the week. The curriculum comes with calendar sheets but we already had these monthly sheets. I also made Spanish flash cards to correlate with each week.
I hope this helps give you ideas on how to organize your curriculum. If you have additional ideas I would love to hear them.
We loved My Father’s World Voyage of Discovery so the next move was to purchase God’s Creation A to Z!! I am so excited about all of the classic literature the deluxe kit comes with! Plus the added extra’s of the ant mountain and butterfly garden!
She did great with Voyage of Discovery and now she is super excited to start God’s Creation A to Z. We did get the kit in, but we still have three more weeks of Voyage of Discovery and we are going to wait a few more weeks to jump into this. This will give us a little time to enjoy the outdoors, but still keep doing some review and of course keep reading books during that time.
They also added a new book to the God’s Creation A to Z this year. It is God’s Amazing World from apples to zebras. It has pages to match each week of the curriculum. The illustrations are fantastic!
My Father’s World God’s Amazing World
I love that with the Deluxe Kit there is a book for each week. We will still add science books and fun books from our home library and the local library as is suggested. It’s just nice the Deluxe Kit comes with a book to fit the theme each week and builds our home library with more classic literature.
For the Children’s Sake
For the Children’s Sake by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay comes with the Deluxe Kit. This is a book suggested for the educator. I also strongly suggest you read this book even if you don’t purchase the Deluxe kit. The teachers manual does give you “homework” in this book. I was excited to read it so I read it before we even started God’s Creation A to Z. It gave me so many ideas on how to handle the education of my children.
The next step is to organize everything. Be sure to check out my post on how I organized it for us to use.
I can’t believe we are at the end! I am happy to report that My Father’s World Voyage of Discovery was the right fit for us! The teacher’s manual broke it down so I knew exactly what I needed to prep for the week. Going to the library every week was perfect for adding books that fit the theme each week. Organizing each day in bins make it easy to grab and go when the time was right for schooling (Brother was sleeping).
Since I didn’t think about writing all of this down until the end, I’ll show some of the add on’s that we did starting with Z.
Z books from our library collection and the local library.
Z books from the library
Worksheet for coloring, writing and math
Letter craft
Science project from the teachers manual for this week is putting dirty pennies in vinegar. She got to see what the vinegar did to the pennies.
We started Voyage of Discovery the last week in September of 2018 because Brother was born. I was able to start with Sister while I was on maternity leave. We had a great seven weeks to start the school year off. It really gave her and I some time just for us, after the adjustment of getting a new little brother.
We where able to take a few field trips while I was on maternity leave. The first one was to County Line Orchard. Nanny was able to come with too! Going to the apple orchard was perfect for “A” week! At County Orchard we picked apples, walked through a corn maze and took a wagon ride.
The second field trip we took was to Cutlers Farm to pick out pumpkins at the pumpkin patch. This time it was Dad, Mom, Sister and Brother. They had a hayride out to the pumpkin patch. Sister has so much fun walking in the pumpkin patch picking out our pumpkins. She even got to ride a pony. We had a great time carving and painting the pumpkins. Plus you can’t forget about cooking the pumpkin seeds!!!
I was so sad to have to go back to work, but I knew my little ones were in good hands. Nanny was great and would do her schooling with her at least three days a week. (Sister had dance/tumbling one day a week and Toddler Time at the library one day a week). If they didn’t get to the fourth day of schooling than I did it with her in the evening, weekend…..or some times it rolled into the next week.
This is also why using daily bins for her schooling worked great. I could prep everything they needed (with a few exceptions) and it would be ready for them to work on it each day.
Sister and I were so excited when the box from My Father’s World came in with her new schooling!!! She had been begging to start “school” and here it finally was. I pulled everything out to see how much stuff there was to work with. The teachers manual was were I started because I needed to get an idea on what we would be doing through the year, each week, each day. Thankfully the beginning of the book was helpfully in explaining what to expect and gave me a list of supplies we would need.
So the first step was to get the supplies we needed and then to figure out how I wanted to organize this for use.
I started with two 3-Ring binders. One for the student sheets and one to put her sheets and craft projects in. The Student Sheet binder I had one clear plastic sheet for each day. This made it so easy for each week to take that sheet out and divvy up the sheets in the daily bins.
The binders and books not being used on the bookshelf right below the daily bins.
My Fathers World Voyage of Discovery binders.
I found that using daily plastic storage bins was the easiest way to to keep what was needed each day separate. On Sunday of each week, I would look at the teacher’s manual and see what was needed for the week and each day. So day one would have the teachers manual, Preschoolers Bible, student sheets, letter magnets (Melissa & Doug magnets, letter flash cards, Usborne Books and More Wipe-Clean Letter cards, book suggested that came with deluxe kit, a few books from the library that fit that weeks letter theme, worksheets we added to the curriculum, craft supplies if there was a craft for that day, science supplies if there was a project for that day and educational toy. That sounds like a lot but most of the time everything fit. The exception was if a book was to big to fit in the box.
Daily bins, supply bin and crayon bin.
I hope you find this helpful. If you found some other ways of organizing that worked great for you, feel free to comment below. I’d love to hear what you did.
Saturday we had a family field trip to Sunset Hill Farm County Park. They had a Spring Out event. It included family activities, farm animals, wagon rides, crafts, bounce house, food vendors, guided hikes, archery lessons, and vendor booths (including my Usborne Books and More booth).
Sister with butterfly face paint.
Dad and Sister were able to have some great daddy daughter time together. Sister was able to pet the farm animals, jump in the bounce houses, get a balloon made, paint her face, and watch her cousin fly a kite. She spent a lot of time in the bounce house. She even got her face painted and picked to have a purple sword balloon made.
Turkeys!!!!
We all had a great time! It was a hot day but so nice to finally get to spend a day outside. We finished up right before the storm came rolling in.
FIRST DAY OF HOMESCHOOLING!!! I had everything all organized and ready to go. Brother was six days old and I was on maternity leave. Her and I are both excited and we start Unit 1 Day 1 of Creation. We went through the unit in the teachers manual, read everything, did all the crafts, played with the toys and we were done in about 30 minutes. She is three so 30 minutes sounds good. Not for my daughter!!!! We got done and she was still sitting there. She asked if there was more! Um…..there will be more tomorrow!!!!
So that is when I decided that for us we were going to add more to it. A few things I decided to add:
Books! Each week you learn a letter, so we added books that start with that letter. We tried to get a good mix of educational and fun books. I sell Usborne Books and More so I looked up what books I thought would be great for each letter. She goes to the library once a week for Toddler Time. What better time to grab books for each week’s letter then when she is already there?
Letter craft! We found on Pinterest ideas for make a craft out of each letter. See the letter crafts here!
Math! I purchased the Usborne Books and More Wipe-Clean 123, Preschool worksheets book from our local teachers store and a basic wipe clean math book from the teachers store
We would space these additions out. Depending on how many additional books we had for that week we would put a few in with her schooling and a few I would read at night. The extra worksheets I would put one in each day of schooling unless the curriculum already had her doing a few things that day. The letter craft was usually done on day two or three. Photos to come!
My Father’s World – Voyage of Discovery Deluxe Kit
We made the leap and purchased the My Father’s World – Voyage of Discovery Deluxe Set. It came with everything shown above (minus the 3-Ring binders, but more on organizing the curriculum later). Plus we purchased the Preschoolers Bible, that you do need to go with the curriculum. It was so worth it to have everything in the Deluxe kit (plus the Preschoolers Bible). We have used it all. There is three options for purchasing the curriculum: Deluxe, Basic and A La Carte. You save A LOT by purchasing the kit, plus they do run specials on the kits.
This curriculum is written for four units (days) of “schooling” and one day for a field trip or outdoor activity. The teacher’s manual breaks each day down so is makes the school time go smoothly. Each week has a theme of a letter and number, shape or color. The books, crafts, science projects all tie in with that that weeks theme. The first two pages of each week will have the lesson plans for the week and tell you what items you will need to complete the projects for that week. It also comes with three special units: Creation, Christmas and the 10 Commandments.
At the front of the teachers manual it does give you the list of school supplies you will need through out the year. At the beginning of each unit it will also list anything you may need in addition to those items. The crafts in the individual units can be optional, but we did try to do all of them.
The curriculum is designed so you have everything (except your craft supplies) for the whole school session. It has the hands on kids toys, books, student sheets, flash cards etc. We actually added to the curriculum because I have a very ambitious little girl.
Hoover Academy 