MFW Adventures Week 1 - Vikings

Its the first week of school and we are learning about Vikings this week. We spent the first few days figuring out our schedule, putting together our notebooks and navigating through the various curriculum for each subject. Each morning we begin with handwriting worksheets. Brooklee is learning cursive and Kellan is finally beginning to get the hang of manuscript. They both have a long ways to go.

Sadie Quinn joins us each morning to color, take supplies we are using or just roll around in the floor. I try to give her paper to use for her own masterpieces, but sometimes she just likes the thrill of making her sister and brother holler and chase her.

The kids look forward to group time each morning when we go to the living room and use the Roku to watch fun, educational videos on YouTube. We do our pledges, review the books of the Bible, and practice counting, letters, states, etc. during group time. Sadie Quinn even does the Pledge of Allegiance with us every morning. Here are some of our favorite videos:

We will add more videos to group time as the year progresses and will change out videos as needed. When we need a giggle break, the kids have some favorites to add:

We began Spanish this week by coloring our cover pages for our notebook and reviewing some things we learned in the past. We have incorporated Spanish songs and videos into our morning routines in the past, so while some of this is new to them, many of the greetings and vocabulary this week is a review.

We are using Teach Them Spanish, Grade 1 for our foreign language and are using several YouTube videos:

We all learned so much about the Vikings this week. I can honestly say that though I remember learning the name Leif Erikson and hearing about the Vikings, I did not recall that they were the first people to come to North America and really didn't even remember who they were. We had fun learning about their journeys, words that were passed down from them and their fierce boats. We even made our own! My little super hero loving boy loved learning that Thor and his family are based on the gods of the Vikings. 

We used several books and videos to expand our learning of Vikings:

Vikings 10 Interesting Facts

Vikings in a Nutshell

Some of the books we read:

Magic Tree House - Viking Ships at Sunrise

AO Imagination Station - Voyage with the Vikings

You Wouldn't Want to be a Viking Explorer

In following the MFW suggestions for the week, we also had some fun making an American flag dessert and learning more about our own names. We learned that Brooklee is a made up name meaning "peaceful stream or water" and "healer" so we decided her name means one who brings peace and healing. Kellan's name means "powerful" and "bright-headed" and Sadie Quinn means "Princess" and "Intelligent." We made practiced writing our names and made bracelets by matching letter beads to the letters in our names then stringing them on pieces of elastic.  I bought these beads at Walmart for less than $3 and they worked perfectly for small wire or string. However, they were a little challenging to string on the elastic string that Walmart had for making bracelets. 

And the finished product! It was an amazing first week of school and we had a blast learning about how our name is special to God, how the Vikings came to North America, how to greet someone in Spanish and where to find our city, state, country and continent on a map.