My Father's World K - A Disappointment

by Angela
(Greensboro, NC, US)

Product: My Father's World
Subject: Kindergarten
Levels Used: K
Dates Used: 2009-2010 school year

Likes: I like that their curriculum helps support missions with their finances. I really really wanted to love this curriculum.....but I didn't. I did like the first 2 weeks as that seemed to be where it was based around bible and had lots of creative ideas....but after that it was downhill all the way.

Dislikes: I was greatly disappointed by this curriculum. It promised a unit study based program centered around Bible with much creativeness included. But what I found was one scripture per week with no required memorization, no basic Bible stores, and the phonics and order of phonics was set up not in the best order of learning the alphabet or phonics, but on the order of topics desired (like apples you study in the fall a few weeks into it and you don't finish your vowels until halfway through the year.

The math was super boring, and the worksheets were the EXACT same each week and my kids were super bored by a few weeks into it. There wasn't that much creativeness in each week's lessons I found and had to add so much to make this even ok.

We only wrote our letters one day a week and my children needed much more review than that. Mine have seriously struggled with phonics and halfway through the year still don't really understand blends (something understandable considering the mini lessons on just the last 2 days of the week on blends.

I've had to do so much more work (especially with the worksheets being the exact same except the different lesson name at the bottom of the page each week. I had to scurry to find more worksheets that brought variety to their day. It was redundant and boring to me and the kids. We didn't even study Bible on the first day of each week, but on day 2 we had our 1-3 scriptures -many of which seemed hard to understand for my kindergartner and just based on their preferred animal that week. Like for 't' and 'turtle' we had to learn about persevering and scriptures related. My kids were a bit lost and I had to add basic Bible so they'd know their Bible stories.

Even math was barely existent (count sticks once a week and write one number once a week) and you find out halfway through the year that they recommend you 'add a math' which was never mentioned in the teachers manual at any point up to then. The science is pretty much nonexistent after the first few weeks, imo. And sight words are spent on one day a week and my kids are still NOT getting them and struggling. (But now doing much better when I'm adding other programs.)

And for whatever reason, their k curriculum is set up on a 6 day week (no idea why and totally not a good thing, imo) and the teachers manual isn't laid out easily (you have to flip back and forth in it to different sections each day and I got online an outline someone had graciously put together because the curriculum had no basic outline for the week for you to look at.

Unfortunately, I'd have to give it a 0 out of 5.
I wish someone had told me more (or had read more) in detail about this curriculum before I spent our money and year on it. Perhaps their other years are more developed than the K, but the K curriculum seems thrown together. I've compared it with other curriculums basic skills that they are wanting the kids to know by the end of year and fear that not only will my kids not be up on their basic skills, but will greatly not be ready for 1st great at all.