Summer Curriculum, week 1: "Orderly"

So I've started this summer's curriculum (details on what I've done and what I am doing this summer in a previous post). I normally wait until the first week of July to get things started. This is to give me some time to let my brain rest from a year of teaching before I begin teaching at home, but since I've been home, I wanted to jump right on this. I have a lot to cover, and there's no way to get it done before school starts back in August, especially if I wait until July to begin. I love the structure I have had at home with the other two, so I wanted to continue that with all three.

The first few weeks will be trial and error for me. I will need to adjust to what has worked and what doesn't work as we go. I almost didn't post this past week's progress because I just didn't pull it off as smoothly as I wanted, but I promised a post, so here goes: (note: all my curriculum comes from http://www.hubbardscupboard.org/weeks_1-4.html#attentive)

This week's character trait is "Orderly". This has been perfect since I've established a new chore chart in my home. Not only was I able to motivate them to clean (they woke up begging for chores this morning...I am not lying about this!!), but I was able to show them scripture that stresses how God is a God of order and he expects us to be responsible for what we have. The key verse came from 1 Corinthians 14:40, "but everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way."

Our letter for this week was "A". I thought next's week's letter would obviously be "B", but I have seen that it is "M". Why? Because next week we begin family words..."am". Smart! :) So Jed and J practiced writing the letter "A", while Abigail colored a picture that focused on that letter.

Our focus words this week were "We" and "Will". They had a booklet they colored that has phrases such as "We will write". There was also a page for the end of the week where they cut out the letters and words, put them all in proper order, glued them on a special sheet, and then wrote the words out. J obviously breezed through this, but Jed did surprisingly well.

I have been impressed so far with the progress the kids are doing. Hopefully I will be a little more on the ball with this week's curriculum. I was supposed to take them outside and such last week and look at examples of God's order. Because it was a crazy week (Memorial Day and a death in the family), and it was stinkin' hot, we just didn't do that. I did, though, have a tie-dye Friday for them to show them that even though at times things look chaotic, the end result of what God has planned for us is beautiful. :)

Abigail reading to me. 

The boys (including the neighbor kid) putting on a play for me. 

Tie Dye Day! On our new swing set!!

Their hard work displayed.