Week 7

It's fall time! Time for fall crafts and activities. The most fun thing we did this week in school was paint pumpkins. We usually paint instead of carving because it's much easier for the kids and less messy. They enjoy painting their pumpkins though and I enjoy not having to touch gooey pumpkin insides! Boo and Sis painted faces of their Beanie Boo stuffed animals on their pumpkins. I'm not really sure what Baby Bear painted on hers but she had fun.

 

History: This week Sis read about the Israelite's time in the desert after leaving Egypt. She studied the 40 years of wandering, the giving of the 10 commandments, the 12 spies who went into Cannan, the bronze serpent and mostly focused on God's people rebelling against him. She also learned about the priestly garments like that the High Priest Aaron wore, specifically the Ephod and breastplate. Her project was to make a breastplate with the 12 gemstones that represented the tribes of Israel. We were suppose to make the stones out of homemade clay, but we simplified it and just made stones with paint and markers then glued them on construction paper. Sis also tried her best to copy the inscriptions that were written on each stone in Hebrew.



 Here is a picture of this weeks notebook pages...

Boo is still learning about pioneers and Indians. This week we learned about the first pioneers in Michigan, which happens to be our state so we were excited! We read a story about how Detroit began. We learned about the Indians introducing canoes to the pioneers and how they rode them down the rivers to the Great lakes. We also learned the names of the great lakes and remembered times that we have visited these beautiful lakes that surround our home state. Just for fun here's a picture of a recent trip we took to beautiful lake Michigan. We imagined what it would have been like seeing pioneers riding canoes here.

Bible: 
 Boo is still learning names of Jesus. For the past 2 weeks she has been learning that Jesus is the "Bread of Life." All of our bible stories have related to bread in some way. This week we learned how God used the widow to provide bread for Elijah. She did a craft, which was making a napkin holder shaped like 2 slices of bread with her memory verse on the front. she traced her bread shape onto both sides of a cardboard box. then cut ot out and covered it with a brown paper bag. We haven't bought any napkins for it yet. The plan though is to fill it up and put it on the dinner table like we did with her "Light of the World," candle to remind us that Jesus is the bread of life.

Language: Boo started poem memorization in her Language Lesson book. I have a confession, I always skipped this part when Sis was little because it's always seemed pointless to me. What is the point in memorizing and reciting a poem about a bee? My thought has always been that I would rather my kids be memorizing scripture if they're going to put something permanently in their brain to be able to recite. However, after reading about the benefits of children memorizing well written language I decided to give it a try. Maybe this will help her to be able to form well written sentences and understand language better. I guess it can't hurt. So Boo memorized her first poem called, "Who Has Seen the Wind."
Sis is working on writing more complex sentences in her Writing Stands curriculum. She is taking short sentences and adding to them to make them sound more interesting. She is also learning tips on how to be a better writer. Sis wants to write like Mom, when she grows up so this part of her schooling is important to her. I am enjoying her curriculum too, because I am also learning. One of the tips she learned is never use exclamation points in your writing!!!! (that was on purpose.) The words you choose in your sentence should be strong enough that you don't need an exclamation point to let your reader know it's exciting. Exclamation points makes your work look amateurish. I have never learned that in the writing courses I've taken.

Art: This week's poetry painting was perfect because it was about fall time and it also happened to go well with Boo's wind poem that she's learning. Sis' poem was called, "Gathering Leaves." We all painted pictures of a tree with fall colored leaves (yes it does seem like we paint a tree every week) this one was a little different, because we used crumbled paper towels dipped in paint to make the leaves.

For some reason this is our last poetry painting for a couple weeks. I don't know why but there is no painting scheduled next week, so it looks like we have a little break. Maybe we will come up with some fun fall activities to do for art instead.

Family Devotion Time

I'm pretty excited about sharing some new materials our family will be trying out. My husband went to the book store this week and picked this new book up for our family. I had never heard of it, but he is really excited about it. It's called "Cold Case Christianity for kids." I am so proud of my husband for taking the lead in our family devotion time and making it a priority in our family. I do most of the teaching during the day for our school time, because Dad works. It is so important that Dad is involved though especially when it comes to teaching God's word and as the head of our home he leads our family devotion time.   This book that he bought is written by J. Warner Wallace. This is the guy that also wrote the book Cold Case Christianity (the adult version.) This kids version just came out in the stores this past week. What is really cool about this book is that the author is an actual cold case homicide detective. He decided to take his methods of solving a homicide case to investigate the claims of the Bible. This is basically an apologetic book for kids, which is so desperately needed in these days that we are living. It is crucial that our children understand why they believe what they believe if they are going to make it in this world.

There is also a website that goes with the book. It has resources, such as coloring and activity sheets, notebook pages, and guides for parents to use while going through this with their family. To find a link to the web page you can Click Here.
This is a nice little certificate that each of the kids get when they complete the book.

I know I've mentioned this before, but it's something that has been on my heart, so wanted to talk a little about the importance of family devotion time. The main reason we chose to homeschool is so that we can give our children a solid Christian education and the curriculum I choose is not just for academic reasons, but I try to choose materials that will lead my children in a closer walk with the Lord. Our ultimate goal is not just to educate our children, but to disciple them. This topic of disciplining children goes far beyond homeschooling though. As Christians all parents have a responsibility not just to raise our kids, but to make disciples of them. We often stress the need for evangelism and reaching the world, but we fail to realize that as a parent the greatest calling or ministry we will ever have is to disciple our own children. Disciplining your kids doesn't mean taking them to church, sending them to Sunday School or handing them off for someone else to teach them God's word. All of those things are important and good. I'm thankful that we have a good church and my kids have classes to teach them the Bible. Ultimately though it is the job of their parents to train them in the "way they should go," to model for them the attitudes and lifestyle of a Christian, to teach them, study with them and answer the hard questions about God. I'm afraid that too many Christian parents in this nation are just assuming that their children will grow up to know Christ, because they raised their kids in church. Statistics however show that that is sadly not the case, rather the majority of kids who grow up in church walk away from the Lord once they hit college years. It's not enough to just be around Christianity and assume they are being taught by teachers. We MUST disciple our children at home.

It's our job to make sure our kids know why they believe what they believe. When kids are young they tend to just believe every thing. That's why we call it child like faith right? The problem is they don't stay children forever. The older they get the more this world will challenge that faith. The views and the secular beliefs all around them will rob them of that innocence. The older they get the more they will doubt and question. I've seen this with Sis, she's gone through periods of real questioning of what she believes. Questioning what we are being taught is good though. Acts 17:11 says that "the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians...they examined the scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true." We don't want our kids to be blind followers. Why were the Bereans considered noble? Because they didn't take the apostle Paul's word for it, they questioned what he was saying and weighed it against scripture. As our kids grow and begin to question their faith we have to be there showing them how to study the scriptures and find the truth of God's word on their own. They have to know not just that we say it is true, but why it is true.

Some times we stress so much about our children's math grades or how well they are reading. We will spend hours doing homework or trying to teach our kids different skills, but often time neglect devotion time with them. There should be nothing more important to us in this life than where our kids spend eternity. As a homeschooler I would say I spend most of my life trying to educate my kids. Their education is important to me. I spend hours lesson planning and preparing, doing experiments and providing projects for them. However, if we stop in the middle of all of this busyness to look at the big picture; What good is it if our kids get a good education, get a good job, grow up to be the best moms and dads, have beautiful families, but do not end up following Christ and spending eternity with Him? Then we missed the point! We raised our kids in a Christian home, but we did not disciple them.  I understand that I can not save my children, that is the Holy Spirit's job and it's beyond my ability. However it is my job to do everything in my power to make sure that my kids really understand the gospel and have had every opportunity to follow Christ. It is the responsibility of my husband and I to sit down and talk with them daily about the Lord, to have daily devotions with them as a family, to pray with them and answer their questions. If we neglect to do this because we are too busy with life, then we should not be surprised if our children fall away from the faith when they are on their own.

Proverbs 22:6 says "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." How many Christian parents are failing to actually train up their child though? I'll say it again, we can't assume that just because we are Christians and take our kids to church that they are being equipped to face the world when they leave home. It is getting harder and harder in the world that we live in to stand up for Christ. With ideas and beliefs that contradict Christianity becoming the norm in our society, the line between right and wrong is becoming blurred to the world. People's minds are so clouded by sin that wrong (such as abortion) seems right and right (such as standing up for marriage) seems wrong. It is naive to think that our kids will just grow up to make the right decisions, because they lived in a Christian home. We must train them. Christian parents we must make it our highest priority to teach our children the Bible. Do they understand why they believe the bible? Can they explain why the Bible is true? Are we teaching how to defend their faith? Are we teaching them how to pray? Are we worshiping with them at home? Or, are we teaching them that those are things we do at church on sunday, and other things are more important in our daily lives?

I understand it can be hard. Here we go though times when it really is a struggle to have a daily family devotion. Certain times of the year we get so busy. We go through periods of discouragement where we will stop for a while and then the Lord will deal with us and we will start back up again. We have tried different times, such as early morning before school, after dinner or just before bed, whatever works best for our schedules at that time in life. We try our best though to make family devotions a top priority. It is continually our prayer to become more consistent and not forget that this is our highest calling. If you are reading this and you have been neglecting to have a devotional time with your family I want to encourage you to start. Start small as the Lord leads you, there is nothing we can do for our children that is more important.

Week 6

Aside from our field trip that I posted about earlier, we had a pretty average school week. Both Sis and Boo are doing great in their swim classes. Sis is working on her rhythmic breathing and is perfect with her backstrokes. Boo swam the whole length of the pool unassisted on her back for the first time this week and is very close to moving up to the next level with Sis.

History: In our history studies Sis is still learning about Egypt. This week we decided to do the history project since it didn't require tons of extra materials. She made a column like those found in Egypt at the Temple of Karnak. The top of the column was to look like a lotus flower, which was sacred in Egypt. She made it out of white paper wrapped around a paper towel roll (the roll wasn't necessary but we thought that would make it more sturdy.) Then she cut and curled the top to make it resemble the flower. Last she painted pictures to symbolize the plagues on Egypt.

We also looked at the plagues and which Egyptian Gods each of the plagues were against. For example the Egyptians worshiped the river god of the Nile, when God turned the Nile into blood, it was a direct insult to their so called river god. Yahweh was saying "I am greater than the river god you worship." Here is Sis' notebook pages...

Boo learned about Dutch pioneers who came to the new world from Holland this week. We read a story about a ship full of cows that made the journey. I never realized that there were not cows in this part of the world until they were brought over from Europe! The Indians had horses and buffalo but they had never seen a cow! Think of all the wonderful things that the white man now had to share and trade with the indians..milk, butter, and cheese!
Boo is also learning songs this year for American history using the Celebrate America CD. This week we started learning the song "America." I never knew that song had so many verses!

Read-alouds: Boo and I also started reading a new book together "The Courage of Sara Noble." This is a story about a little pioneer girl who goes on a journey with her father to find the spot where they will build their new home. Sara has heard stories about the Indians that live there and wonders if they will be friendly or fierce like the children have warned her.

Sis and I also started reading a new book together called "Boy of the Pyramids." This is a mystery book which is Sis' favorite genre and it goes well with her history studies. So far we're enjoying it.




Bible: Both girls have weekly memory verses. This year Sis has to memorize all of Philippians chapter 2. That's 30 verses! She has a music CD that is helping her to learn it.

Boo learned a new name for Jesus this week. We learned Jesus is called The Bread of Life. All of our stories this week were related to bread (manna, Jesus feeds the 5,000) Then we talked about why Jesus is called the Bread of life. Her memory verse and copy work was John 6:35..."I am the Bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry and he who believes in me will never be thirsty."

Nothing too exciting happened in spelling, language or math this week...just trucking along through our books. There really is a lot more school work that goes on here than what I usually post in these blogs, but I figure a lot of the regular stuff like our spelling and math workbooks will put you to sleep. We did start Primary Language lessons with Boo in the past couple weeks. So far it's been really simple, mostly picture studies, copy work, and oral narrations. I think she likes it.

Art/ Poetry: We all agreed that this week's poetry painting was our favorite so far. The poem we read was called "Fireflies in the Garden." Our watercolor painting was of a night sky with twinkling fireflies.

Friday Field Trip

This past week we took our first field trip of the school year. I try to plan as many educational fun places to visit as we can fit in each year. That usually ends up not being too many. This place was pretty neat though. We visited every kids dream tree house. This place was built by the Tree House Masters from Animal Planet and will be featured on one of their episodes in January 2017.    

This tree house is used for educational children's classes at the nature preserve. It's also open to the public though to tour and play in when classes aren't being held. There's a huge ramp leading up to the tree house so it's even wheel chair and stroller accessible ( no climbing ladders to get into this tree house.) While the house itself seems to be held up by a large platform reaching the ground, it was build on top of two tree's, making it a genuine real tree house.

We had a fun day though. We went with Grandma and the girl's aunt and baby cousin. This wasn't a typical tree house. The inside was set up with a wooden table and chairs, benches built around the perimeter of the room with cusions, chalk boards, kids games,real windows, sky lights, a balcony off the back and even a ceiling fan!

We spent a little bit of time playing checkers with real pine cones, acorns, and nuts.

I loved that both of the trees that the house is built on actually come up through the middle of the tree house floor, so that there are real trees inside.

I just had to throw in a picture of my adorably handsome nephew in front of the tree here! I think he had a good time too, maybe he should come along on all of our field trips.


After spending some time inside the tree house the kids played for a while outside underneath the tree house running around and racing while mom took some pictures. There were also tree stumps outside that had been turned into Tic-Tac-Toe game boards, so we played with those for a bit too.

After our time at the tree house we went on a nature walk though the woods and hiking trails. That was pretty fun except Baby Bear fell down and skinned her knee, but nothing a few kisses (and ice-cream) couldn't make better. We found an enormous hollow tree stump, walked on a scary wobbly bridge, and found giant leaves the size of Baby Bears head. I think the coolest discovery we made was this deer track in the dirt, too bad we didn't get to see the deer that made it. That would have been really neat.

 

We had a fun day though. After our time at the nature preserve we went to lunch and enjoyed spending time with family. I wish we could spend every Friday taking field trips, it beats staying home on school days! I have a few more field trip ideas already in mind for this school year. Every year I say my goal is to go on more field trips and have more real life experiences for the girls. I'm hoping that this year I actually make that a reality!

Week 5

We started out our week with a trip to the apple orchard. We celebrated Boo's 7th birthday and had a hayride, pumpins, donuts, and cider (apple cider slushies, my favorite...yumm!!!)


Is this school year over yet? I know it's just started, but unfortunately that's how I feel this year. I really think the reason I feel this way is because I'm just being pulled in too many directions trying to teach all three girls different things. I've found that the things we do together as a family are the parts of school that we actually enjoy. The first half of our day Sis is off reading about ancient Egypt and Genesis, Boo and I are studying pilgrims, Baby Bear is coloring or drawing. Everyone has questions about what they're learning and I feel like I can't give full attention to anyone. I'm realizing that a family cycle like My Father's world is really what will work best for our family. We like to learn together. The girls like to do projects and activities together. I like both of their curriculum, but this year feels like they are too disconnected. I think that is one reason why Science and art are our two favorite subjects this year because those are the two things we are all doing together.

Science: 
We're learning about light (Creation Day 1 is Unit 1) This week we learned that light is actually made up of energy and the energy produced by light is called radiant energy. Then we learned that there are different kinds of energy and what they are. We did an experiment where we put a piece of a black plastic bag and a white plastic bag in direct sunlight. After 5 mins we observed that the black bag was hotter than the white. The black bag absorbed the light and changed it into thermal energy (heat) the white repelled the colors in the light and stayed cool. We learned that is why people who wear black on a sunny day get hotter than someone wearing white. Sis and Boo did worksheets showing the different forms of energy. Sis wrote about what she learned and Boo drew pictures. Boo's drawings are to the right and Sis' work is below...

I have to take a second to brag on my Baby. Baby Bear continues to amaze me everyday. For a 3 year old she is so attentive at school time and she remembers a lot. Sometimes Boo has trouble remembering something we learned and without fail Baby Bear blurts out the right answer...it's scary! So far this year she's pointed out where Michigan is on the map, that John Smith was the name of the man who met Pocahontas, answered math questions, told me that some words have 2 ll's" the list goes on and on. These are all things that nobody has tried to teach her! I guess she is just a super sponge and picks up on everything, Sis was that way too when she was little. Anyway funny story...Baby Bear sits at the table with us and likes to watch the science experiments even if she has no clue what we're learning (or so I think.) This week she got up one morning, came into the kitchen and said to me "Mom I'm hungry, I need some chemical energy!" not only was she listening, but she remembered which form of energy was food! Mind blown!

Art/Poetry: Art is the other subject that we do together 3 days a week. This year we are painting watercolor pictures to go along with a Robert Frost poem that we read. Sis' paintings are twice the size of the other girl's and she glues a verse from the poem someone onto her paintings. I am actually doing most of the paintings along with the girls to demonstrate. I love art so I've been enjoying it. This week we read the poem "One Step Backward Taken." Our painting was of  large rocks.

History: Boo is learning about the pilgrims. We will go back and have another lesson on this the week of Thanksgiving, but this week was an introduction. We read a story about a pilgrim boy in our American Pioneers and Patriots book. We added pilgrims to our timeline and Boo did copy work. There's so many fun projects and crafts that we could have done along with pilgrims, but we didn't get time for anything extra. 

The same thing with Sis who is learning about Ancient Egypt right now and Moses. I have a whole book of Egyptian projects but like I said earlier with me being pulled in so many directions we're ending up not having time to do many extras. It makes me sad. As a result I've already made up my mind that our whole family will be returning to the My Father's world cycle and doing history and Bible together next year. Sis completed her reading and note booking

assignments. Here's some of her work. I've really been getting on her for her handwriting. She really does have much neater handwriting than she uses in her note booking. I think it's a combination of having unlined paper and trying to get through her school work quickly, but both her drawings and handwriting are way sloppier than I know she's capable of. I hope int he weeks to come it improves. Content wise though I'm very happy with her work on her narrations and summaries.

Math: We have been waiting to really begin math until we were back from vacation and ready to buckle down for the school year. Up till now we have pretty much been reviewing math. This week Sis began her Math U See Epsilon. I like that MUS is not grade leveled, but rather labeled by the Greek alphabet and they complete each book at their own pace regardless of what grade they are in.This curriculum has been a great fit for Sis. The entire year of Epsilon deals with fractions. Lesson one was a review of what we learned about fractions last year in Delta.
MUS however is not a good fit for Boo. I have been trying to find her something for math that will be a better fit. For now she is still learning her addition facts. This week we learned +9.

Baby Bear: Baby Bear has been having fun learning her alphabet and sounds. So far we are on letter E. We have been doing one letter a week. I love the book "Big Thoughts for Little People." I used this book with all three of my girls. It uses a letter of the alphabet to teach a short devotional and has some questions to get your little one thinking. Like what color hair does the little boy driving the train have? what color hair do you have? Does God love both people with blond and brown hair?  This week was E is for Everyone. God loves everyone. There are also colorful pictures that they can look at to find things hidden objects that begin with the letter. I can't say enough good things about this book.

Weeks 3&4

Well we ended up only finishing 3 weeks of school before our really long break and family vacation. We love to take our vacations during off season after public schools start back up. This year we took almost the whole month of Sept off and we went on a two week trip to Disney World. It was an amazing time, but we're back to reality now and back to the books.
 I forgot to blog about our week 3 before we left because I was really busy packing, so I've included highlights of both weeks 3 and 4 in this post. As the school year gets busier I might actually double up on a lot of my posts instead of writing every week.

History:  Week 3 Boo learned about John Smith and Jamestown, we didn't really do anything special besides reading our lesson, looking at maps and adding it to our timeline. Week 4 was American Indian week for Boo. We read the book North American Indians. All the girls wanted to join Boo in making an Indian wigwam. We made the skeleton of our wigwams by taping strips of orange construction paper to form the body. Then we covered them with pieces of yellow paper (we were out of brown) dipped in a glue water mixture. After drying overnight we cut out a door and smoke hole in the top. The girls used their wigwams to play littlest pet shops.

 

















Sis is studying the Old Testament times in history right now. Week 3 she learned about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Week 4 she learned about Joseph. Here is her completed journal pages of all of her history work. Her project for week 3 was to make an optical Illusion picture of stars. The history focus was the promise that God gave to Abraham that his decedents would be like the stars in the sky. This was a project that she was able to glue right into her journal when it was finished. Sis and I also finished reading our chapter book The Golden Bull together for history.

Sis' week 4 history notebook:

Bible: Boo is learning the different names for Jesus this year. The first few weeks were spent learning about names and how they have meanings. We learned that Jesus means "The Lord Saves." Then we learned our first name "Light of the World." We discussed how the world is full of darkness (sin) and Jesus is the light in that darkness. If we have Jesus in us then we also have his light to shine so that those in darkness will see Jesus in us. We are decorating a wall with all of the names we learn this year instead of making a poster as suggested in our curriculum. Boo is memorizing verses to go with each name and she's practicing her handwriting by copying her verses. A project we did for Light of the World was to decorate a candle and we lit it and had a candle lit dinner one night to remind us that Jesus is the Light of the World.
 
   








Spelling: This week we finally started spelling with Sis. We spent the week doing placement testing. I've never had my kids tested before for grade level or compared to averages because it's just really not important to me. However, for spelling this year her curriculum requires placement testing. I was surprised Sis tested at 8th grade. Now that the testing is over, next week we will begin her regular spelling lessons.

Reading and Story time: I'm so excited (maybe a little too excited) that we started reading my favorite children's books together as a read aloud. The Epic Order of the Seven books. I can't explain how much I love this series of books! I have been waiting for about 6 years to start reading them with Sis. I wanted her to be old enough to fully understand them because they are written on a preteen level. The first book The Ark, The Reed, and The Fire Cloud fits nicely with Sis' history studies of the Old Test this year. These books are fictional adventure stories about a group of animals that travel through the bible days. They contain so much historical and biblical information though. I just love them. For anyone interested the author is Jenny L. Cote and she is currently still writing this series. Boo and Baby bear are a bit too young to fully understand but they are at least sitting and listening as I read. Sis is really enjoying this story so far.



Art/Poetry: Our Robert Frost poem for week 3 was called "A Peck of Gold." Our painting was of a sky filled with dusty clouds. I have to admit that I was a little hesitant about covering our pretty colorful backgrounds with ugly brown cloud blobs, but I guess the dust clouds were the main point of the poem!

Our week 4 poem was "A Passing Glimpse." We did paintings of a field. I joined in on this one and it was fun. I demonstrated the steps and the girls followed.