I can not believe Brian has only five pages left in his MFW phonics book! Yay!!! He was kind of sad though because he has really enjoyed learning "new vowels" as he called the pages. This will give us a chance, when that book is done, to go back and write out some Proverb's pages that we skipped for two months. I found that having him write a Proverb out was such a struggle between him and I....he attitude against writing made him so obsinate and the work drag out as he sat at the table for an hour or more just not doing anything. Sending him to his room or the dining room to be isolated did not help much and then the whole day of school was blown. So we took two months off to allow for some maturity and now we are starting them up again.

Now to my hooraying for MFW! I called them Tuesday evening and left a message. They called back Wed and left a message for me. I then called them back (who knew they would call back so quick!) and spoke to David Hazell! I did not know this at the time however, he simply answered the phone and offered suggestions for Brian and the Proverb's page. David said that since Brian has no problem doing the other writing in the program, just break up the Proverb's page through out the day, having him do one or two lines at a time, do something else, then return to the page. Maybe Brian is simply overwhelmed at the amount of writing to do and will appreciate it broken into smaller chunks. Excellent, I think, and thank him.

Then Thursday I get another call, this time from Tim Hazell. He wanted to make sure someone had called me back and that answers were given. I told him of the previous day's call and he said, "That was probably my dad, he does not always give out his name." Wow! If I had known that I would have probably gushed about how much we love the program, so maybe it was better I did not know. So Tim got the gushing instead! Tim applauded his dad's suggestion and added having the Proverb written out in a sand tray or upon a marker board. Maybe a change in medium would encourage Brian. He also pondered whether Brian dragged his feet so much due to handwriting issues more than simply not liking writing. Tim said in Russia as students they had to rewrite a whole book to work on handwriting practice! It was taught that handwriting is like your "Ambassador" to the world...something people might see before they meet you and therefore needs to represent you properly. So I am going to go back to our HWT program to get Brian more comfortable with his own writing and see how that works with him.

I know when we first starting discussing homeschooling I told Paul I wanted to go with a company that provided support. That was why we first went with Sonlight. I did not know MFW exsisted yet. But with twin toddlers around Sonlight overwhelmed us, and their LA did not click with Brian and so we got discouraged. A dear friend of mine had used MFW K successfully and was starting out with 1st grade. It was wonderful to sit with her and see the curriculum up close and hear how another family used it. That was such an exciting day when the Lord confirmed our new curriculum choice for Brian! And while there are forums and yahoo groups to support MFW users, sometimes that overwhelms me with choices and I want to talk to the company and see what THEY had in mind when creating an assignment. The time and effort they spent on those two phone calls has proven to me they do care about the families and their individual needs very much and recognize we are raising up the next generation. The encouragement in their voices made every word seem charged with energy and enthusiasm that I can do this!

I post this both as a Thank You to MFW for being such a wonderful company, and as an invitation to anyone who looks at their curriculum and has questions about it...you are welcome to ask me! We look forward to staring up MFW Adventures with Brian in January and MFW K this fall with the girls!

If you are not familiar with their company, here is their site: http://www.mfwbooks.com/