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 Post subject: My Father's World 3 part review
PostPosted: Sat Jul 28, 2012 7:32 pm 
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Location: The Beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, VA
Part One-

Name of curriculum: My Father’s World

Common abbreviation: MFW

Optimal age of students: The 5 year history cycle program is designed for multi level teaching for students in grades 2-8. There is also a K and 1st grade program. High school is being developed.

Type: Complete curriculum

Educational Philosophy: combines easy hands-on unit studies, with Charlotte Mason, and Classical Education from a Christian view

Worldview: Christian

Website: www.mfwbooks.com



Review: MFW is a chronological based history program that integrates the Bible throughout the program. The teacher’s manual (starting after 1st grade) is laid out in a weekly grid format with daily notes for teaching from the “spines”. The manual also contains an extensive listing of recommended library books that enrich the unit study in geography, history and science. It includes easy hands on projects that use common household items. The weekly lesson plans include a materials list for those projects. Notebooking is a primary method of review and “testing” in history and science. God’s word is a central theme to unify many subjects. Scripture reading and memory are scheduled. But doctrine is left to the parents to teach instead of from any specific denominational point of view within Christianity.

A quote from the website:

Recognizes the Bible, God's truth, to be the foundation of wisdom and education.
Utilizes hands-on, unit studies with daily lesson plans that are easy-to-teach.
Enables families and multi-age groups to learn together. Many of our programs may be taught to a range of ages simultaneously.
Combines the best of Charlotte Mason's ideas and classical education with a Biblical worldview, an international focus and our own observations of how children learn.
Uses a comprehensive sequenced learning program beginning with preschool learning toys to develop readiness skills. Our complete unit-based curriculum includes a phonics-based learning-to-read program and focuses on God's amazing creation (kindergarten), the world of the Bible (first grade), and U.S. history (second or third grade). Then a year of geography sets the foundation for four years of chronological world and U.S. history.
Provides easy-to-teach, integrated curriculum that is enjoyable, academically strong, and focused on character development.
Is committed to the Lord of All, who tenderly searches for people from every tribe and language. A portion of our profits helps support mission work overseas, especially Bible translation projects. Our heart's desire is that someday soon all people would be able to read of God's love in their own language.

Strengths: The teacher’s manual is easy to follow with daily lesson plans to combine 7-10 subjects over the course of the day. Strong at integrated Bible with history. Hands on projects are easy to do. The planning is done for you. Designed to help combine students in one main program for grades 2-8 to study as a family.

Weaknesses: Some families do not like to use libraries. MFW encourages library use for enrichment reading in the unit studies. However, all required books for the program are sold in either basic or deluxe package.

Comments: David and Marie Hazell lived in Russia for eight years working on Bible translation and returned to the U.S. in 2000. They now devote the majority of their time to the development of My Father's World curriculum with the dual goal of providing support for Bible translation and raising up a generation of children that see God's hand in all of history and share God's heart for the nations



Review written by Crystal Bollinger and originally posted on THL forum

© Dec. 2006



Part 2

(originally written in May 2007)



One thing is certain, you cannot take God out of My Father's World. At its very core, MFW is a curriculum that is all about training the hearts and minds, to help Raise Up Generations of Godly Families who see the world through God’s eyes and have God’s heart for the nations. That’s not just a cute little slogan --- it is the essence of MFW as a company and as a curriculum.

With that said, it does take the work of the Holy Spirit to accomplish it.

I’m going to give 2 posts on this. This first one is the overview of the Bible lessons in MFW and how it is all integrated. And then I’ll chime in on just how using MFW has impacted our family in ways that I’m still looking back and seeing God’s hand in our lives and living according to that knowledge.

The Word of God is integrated in different parts of the program from Bible readings, memory verses, and even in science lessons. It is not an after thought or devotional add on. It is the first thought.

The overall progression through the years for Bible into the overall program:

K: studying creation, and laying a foundation of Biblically based character in an age appropriate way. You can see a brief description of the themes for K on this link
http://www.mfwbooks.com/k_theme.htm

1st: overview of Genesis to Revelation in both art and composition. Proverbs for memory.

Adventures: an overview of the Names of Jesus (Gospel overview and analogy) and the science relates to the names of Jesus. So, when you study Jesus is the Living Water, you have science lessons about water. It makes a little bit more sense on this sample page with table of contents.
http://www.mfwbooks.com/pdf/advsample.pdf


Exploring Countries and Cultures: In ECC, you are studying the book of Matthew, line by line. You are using the gospel to teach many things including how Jesus walked and talked with the disciples. At the end of Matthew we read Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations. So you spend the whole year learning more of who Jesus is and the good news and how He helped his disciples get ready to go. So in that sense it is integrated into the overall theme of going into the world. We’ve spent time learning many places and people around the globe and we’ve heard stories of Christians who did extraordinary things. And at younger ages, we don’t have to have them learn it all at once.

CTG: An Old Testament survey as the spine for learning world history in ancient time. In other words, in this program, the Bible is the main history ”text”

RTR: a New Testament survey while studying Roman times. Then the shift into middle ages in history brings in church history. Still have your Bible lessons, but then you add in a bit more as you learn that God didn’t stop existing at the end of the New Testament. Again, you learn about many people who lived for Jesus.

EX1850: by this point, your Bible lessons can’t really be tied to history all the time. You still learn about the impact of Christianity in the picture of world history and how even today the Bible is important to help us with our own problems and trials. You continue to learn about missionaries and martyrs. The text for the entire year is the book of James --- while we learn about the problems that people faced in history, we get to see how God’s word can impact our lives when we have problems. Focus begins to take more personal application in our lives.

1850-MOD: The focus is to show how God’s people and prayer affects nations and history. There is a section to help your family pray for things to come so that we are not just passively watching history while it is being made.
The Bible studies in this year are really good. You use several books to cover many things. In A Young Person's Guide to Knowing God, you are given many examples of what God was doing in the little things and how everyday life shows who God is and that He is active in our lives.

Then, there is a book called Tales of Persia --- it is book of missionaries stories from the early to mid parts of the 1900's of what will now be called Iran.

And a study guide called Witnesses to all the World. I am liking that book even though it's a little hard and geared up a bit. Easy to use for family discussions. And it is tying in so perfectly with what my church is studying. Amazing to watch God do all of this.

We also have lots of prayer focus points in year 5. On her own, my 9 y.o daughter developed a heart to pray for the Muslims in western China. That's not in the curriculum itself, but praying for people groups is. God is so good!!!

And of course the read alouds in the deluxe package are part of Bible time too (they integrate over several subjects).


High School: Well, all I know is that year 1 of high school is to help with worldview and such. You read the entire Old Testament as the spine for world history. (in CTG, you read a lot of the OT). Books from ancient times are studied from a Christian perspective. So you aren’t learning Homer to follow Homer, but rather to see how people in history have always needed to have purpose in their lives, and that whole spiritual meaning of life thing. You know that kind of “why should study this stuff?” thing that we all went through as teenagers.



But ---- the best way for answers on high school is to call MFW office. I’m just not in that part of the program.

--Crystal Bollinger



Part 3

I said I wanted to try to not chicken out and share some of the personal stuff of how over the last 4 years of using MFW that have influenced our family to want to be serving Christ.

Let me try my best to keep it short and general instead of a long story.

We aren’t that great of a family. Kids fight, tempers flare. They sometimes run from the school table to avoid school. And dinner still isn’t on time. We ain’t your top quality family. We’re not going to make the covers of magazines. Ok – that’s so you know I’m not that great. Jesus is – but we aren’t. But, we are not failures yet either.

*thanks to the stories that MFW uses for read alouds, our family has the opportunity to talk about spiritual things with the kids. Before we used MFW, we read good literature out loud. It wasn’t anti-religious, but it wasn’t promoting valuable discussion of our spiritual lives either. MFW changed that.

*we were encouraged by stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. It made us want to be better in our walk with Christ as adults. And then our children see us trying to do that.

*we were reading the same scriptures at the same time! And trying to memorize them together. We didn’t do that before MFW.

*we pray more for more things because of the stuff we’re learning in MFW.

*we’ve learned the impact of “serving as senders” for missionaries. Sometimes in these missionary biographies, not only do we follow the title character, but we see the support staff. Maybe other families aren’t being shown that --- but I believe the Lord opens my family’s eyes in different ways.

*MFW materials have helped changed the way we look at being stewards of His money. It's more than just NOT spending it on stuff. This one little story we read in ECC, there was this guy (I can’t remember his name, that’s embarrassing) who always lived at the same level of wages even though the Lord increased his salary. He just gave more to what God told him to do. That impacted our lives. And our children aren’t kept in the dark about how we spend God’s money.

We now regularly are able to give money to help translate Bibles. My oldest daughter wanted to do something fancy to help raise money to print Bibles for people in other places. We prayed. And God set a series of events in motion that would take up a lot of space on this board. But, HE used her gift of a love for reading to help raise money to print Bibles. And at the same time to help me see what I thought was a passing thought or daydream come to life to have that money go to a specific people group. It was a seed planted from a book we read in ECC. It took until we were in EX1850 to see it come to life.

That’s the short list.

oh yeah.... and the academics are top notch quality too! Each year the academics increase in expectation and workload.

Crystal Bollinger
(I love sharing Crystal's reviews. MFW was my favorite curriculum I used during my homeschooling years. I have Crystal's permission to share her reviews.)

_________________
“The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.”
― Mother Teresa


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