i’m not a big blog reader (only b/c i don’t have much time), but i love your blog and your website and have encouraged friends to check them out!

have a great week and don’t grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time you’ll reap a harvest if you don’t give up:):)

It was difficult for us as well- trying to choose between Core 1 of Sonlight and MFW Adventures. We had a freind who raved about Adventures. Also, the idea of studying US History with the children was appealing. MFW also incorporates more hands on projects, which I thought would be good for the ages of our kids. I also found out that my sister in law is using the same curriculum with her children this year, so the thought of sharing ideas and similar learnings with our children played into the decision somewhat as well. I know, somewhat random reasons! We are still using the Sonlight readers and their science experiment DVDs this year.

i just read your recent blog post and it is so funny to see that you are using MFW! we used it last year and i have been thinking about using it instead of sonlight and i have had a REALLY, REALLY hard time deciding between it and sonlight. if you don’t mind me asking, what were your reasons for choosing MFW over Sonlight this year?

thanks so much for your help

Last year was our first experience with using Sonlight. Although we used grade level math and language arts for each child, we planned for the read alouds to be used with both of our older two girls (ages 4 1/2 and 6 1/2 when we started the year). The reason we chose to use the K level read alouds was that the age range recommendation set by Sonlight for Core K is 5-7. It was a perfect fit for our girls last year. Now, my oldest is wanting to read some of those same books – ones she might not have been interested in reading quite yet had she not already enjoyed them and remembered me reading them aloud to her =)

i am trying to figure out my curriculum list for the upcoming school year and wanted to ask you a question…. i noticed that you were using the sonlight K read alouds even though your oldest daughter was a first grader (last year). we have several sonlight K readalouds that we did not get to read last year (because we were actually using My Father’s World curriculum and adding in some of the SL readalouds). anyway, i was wondering about your choice to use the K readers for first grade… was it because you just had not gotten to them the year before, or some other reason?

i love reading your blog! hope you are doing well!

amber

Below is a link to a photo of our writing notebooks (for my 4 year old in PreK). She simply draws a picture and then writes about it using her ‘kid writing’. Then I use a pencil and write smaller under her writing, using ‘book spelling’. We compare the two writings, and I make sure to praise her for hearing certain letter sounds, knowing popcorn words, using capitals, punctuation, spacing, etc.
http://www.hubbardscupboard.org/character_activities.html#Kidwriting

As for my first grader, she has lined paper with space at the top (bound in a 3 prong writing folder). She also draws and writes, but I no longer feel I need to add the underwriting. She also has some half sheets if she wants to work on a book. To be honest, I am still trying to figure out what is best for her at this stage =) Here is a link to the writng paper from Donna Young’s website…
http://donnayoung.org/penmanship/blank-top-paper.htm

Hope this is helpful!
Michelle

Your blog is really wonderful and I’m so happy I found it, now that I’m an avid fan of your hubbardscupboard.org!

Thanks!