I was so excited and blessed by our lesson this morning I posted about it as soon as we were done with that segment of our studies. Now I guess I need to complete the day.

After swim break(physical ed), and lunch we continued our lessons:

Bible(from NPL Grade 1):
Principle: Jesus is the promised Savior
Leading Idea: Jesus’ brith, death, and resurrection was foretold 400 years before He was born

Scripture reference: Is 9:6, Deut 18:18-22, Acts 13, 15, 21

This lesson was a beautiful one(all because I love talking about and sharing about the God I love and serve!!) Our discussion focused mainly on what a prophet is, what he does, whose he is, and what words he is supposed to speak. I had a poster of The Books of the Bible divided into Old and New Test. and then further divisions in the Old of The Law, History, Wisdom, Prophets….we lingered on this one. We spent a good 20-30 minutes (if not more) on this lesson. The children were engaged and I had their attention…there was no wandering of the thoughts. They asked questions and I answered and then we read more scriptures. We(dd read 1 page for her oral reading practice and I read the other) read in our Children’s Book of the Bible 2 pages on The Power of the Prophets.

She will read in her primary bible reader(from Abeka) p. 101-104 on the birth of the Savior.

Handwriting(cursive)- I “lightly” touched on:
Principle: Obedience or Self-Government
Leading Question: Why is it important to write neatly and clearly?
(No scripture reference today-we discussed last week Ex. 24:4-the biblical origin)

DD reasoned that we need to write neatly and do our best in our handwriting so that others will be able to read what we write.

She completed her handwriting lesson for the day…lower case o and connecting t,e,a,o, and u together.

Literature:
I introduced the Bible as Literature…it was a very ‘light’ overview(as I need to understand more myself to present it better)

We began our poetry reading today. We recited together A Thank You Prayer…author unknown.

She’ll read more poetry of her choice (during her independent reading time tonight) from these resources I got from the library..

The Home Book of Verse for Young Folks.- This is a wonderful book. It was recommended in the NP Lit Guide. I wish I could keep this(I guess I”ll have to buy it) b/c we’ll never go thru all of this in the time I have it from the library. It has the poetry arranged in categories such as poems about:

• In The Nursery
• The Duty of Children
• Rhymes of Childhood
• Just Nonsense
• Fairyland
• The Glad Evangel
• This Wonderful World-I’m pulling poems from this category to go with our ‘creation’ theme
• Stories in Rhyme
• My Country(poems of American history)
• The Happy Warrior
• Life Lessons
• A Garland of Gold

This is a keeper.

Another one I found in the library is:
The Oxford Book of Christian Verse
and
The Family Book of Verse

Both of these are good too.

So for homework later she’ll do arithmetic seatwork, handwriting, independent reading(in bible and poetry),

It was a good day. Although we did not do phonics, language, or spelling today I feel like we did a lot. It seemed like it took us forever to get done…we started about 11:30 and finished at about 5:00pm.

I’m pleased with our progress, nonetheless!!!!

Oh we had a wonderful lesson today I just want to share it!! I am so blessed right now…

I decided to start with History today instead of the usual Arithmetic, Phonics/Spelling, etc. We’ll get back to that (I think) but I felt that I needed to lay a foundation first this year…kind of teach things in order, so to speak. I’m beginning to see how everything we teach can fit on our HisStory timeline, since everything has a history…all things, even the subjects we study, have a beginning…all things begin in Christ, in God…so I started with the Creation link today.

Also, the schedule I had outlined had us doing our core studies first then History units in the afternoon but I kept feeling ‘dis-united’ in everything. It wasn’t ‘feeling’ like our studies were “united”…. core subjects here and having nothing to do with our history units…that is not what I wanted so it came to me today to first off, re-read some posts on our yahoo list about putting everything we study on the COC timeline since everything has a history. I never understood this until today…everything has a beginning and that beginning is God and starts “…in the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth…”

So our day began with this:

Principle: God tells us about Himself through Creation(this is the truth that I want my children to learn in today’s lesson

Leading Question(s): Why is Creation here? and/or What does Creation tells us?(this is a question or statement, for the teacher, to lead off the discussion to arrive AT the above principle)

Scripture Reference: Roman 1:20(this gives the answer (or proof) to the leading idea or question)

Now one would think that reading Romans 1:20 it would be easy to see that Creation testifies of God, tells about His qualities and attributes…what He is like but I guess to a 7 year old who has not really been ‘trained’ to ‘reason’ and cull out the meaning of the things they read, it is not that easy.

I had to keep referring her back to Romasn 1:20 to answer these 2 questions and to break the passage down into smaller segments(and break the questions down into smaller questions) in order for her to see that the answer to the questions I posed are right there in scripture. Many times she would get distracted and tell me “I don’t know” but I’d tell her over and over, “the answer is right there in the scripture”…she finally got, Praise the Lord!!!

But what blessed me is that in the middle of our discussion and my explanations this became so clear and STRONG to me, that: That God wants to be known!!!!!!!!!!!!! My children have asked me in the past, “Mommy why can’t we see God?” and I’d tell them “Because God is a Spirit..and we can’t see Spirits” but the answer came to me just as sweetly today…. “but we can see God in what He has created”

God has created this great big world and it is like He is shouting “I want everyone to know ME!!!!!!!! I LOVE YOU ALL…BECAUSE I AM LOVE…I DON’T JUST HAVE LOVE… I AM LOVE AND I LOVE YOU!!! I WANT YOU TO KNOW ME!!!!!!!!!! AND BECAUSE I AM SPIRIT AND YOU MUST WORSHIP ME IN SPIRIT AND TRUTH I’VE MADE IT POSSIBLE FOR YOU TO SEE MY QUALITIES, TO SEE MY ATTRIBUTES….THRU MY CREATION…THRU THE THINGS I HAVE CREATED!!! THRU THE SKY, THE SEAS, THE OCEAN, THE LAND, THE PRINCIPLES OF ARITHMETIC, SCIENCE, NATURE!!!! MY WORD DECLARES MY PRESENCE AND SO DOES CREATION!! MY CREATION!!

Romans 1:20 tells us in the New International Reader’s Version(the version of my dd’s bible)…
Ever since the world was created it has been possible to see the
qualities of God that are not seen. I’m talking about his eternal power
and about the fact that he is God. Those things can be seen in what he
has made. So people have no excuse for what they do.

Psalm 19:1(verses 1-4 even) is for tomorrow’s lesson… I like to use 2 or 3 scriptures to confirm the word given…(in the mouth of 2 or 3 witnesses every word will be established)

Now I don’t know if I overwhelmed her or not but I felt ‘the preach’ come upon me and I began to tell my dd what I was receiving in my spirit at that moment…that God wants to be known…He has created this world for us to live in(she reasoned this idea) and then for us to see His attributes(she reasoned after many readings of Rom 1:20)…how much does God want us to know Him!!!! We can only ’see’ things in the physical with our natural eyes so God made it possible that IN THE NATURAL THINGS/NATURE/CREATION we can see His attributes in creation….I was blessed….she got fidgety!!

Anyway, she then drew a picture for her creation page/divider in her notebook and put creation on the timeline…as I explained that even in the subjects we study we can see attributes of God, in Arithmetic, reading, phonics… She remarked “I don’t see God in Arithmetic”…to which I replied “but this year we will learn about God’s attributes in the topics that we study”….what an awesome beginning to the beginning of our studies/year.

We then went to Arithmetic and continued with the principle that God shows Himself to us by the things He made…one of which is the principles of Arithmetic…we discussed numbers being infinte today and how God is also infinite…that is an attribute in arithmetic that we see that does testify of God…He has no beginning nor end…just like numbers…

We covered counting by 2’s forward and backward and counting by 2’s by even and odd numbers. We also reviewed addition facts adding 0 to any number, adding 1 to any number, commutative property (5+2=2+5), and doubles(2+2, 3+3, 4+4, 5+5, etc). She completed her workbook page…

then I let her have a swim break!!

It’s in the 90’s today!!