This year we are studying from MIGHTY WORKS OF GOD: SELF GOVERNMENT. I did not write my own HisStory lessons this year…but I did want our principle this year to be SELF-GOVERNMENT so I felt this was an appropriate time to check this resource out and use it. I really like it. It gives several principles to discuss with your children for each chapter. I love how Mrs. Smith explains the concept of self-government, the concept of history being God’s story or HisStory, how she defines and explains government being direction and control. These lessons come in very small “sound-bites” if you will…very simple…nothing overwhelming to you or the child….but yet these topics are ‘heavy’ with meaning and application. I’m so grateful for this book because I don’t know if I’d be able to explain these difficult concepts and then offer such comprehensive reflective and reasoning questions. Even though the lessons are simple the concepts are not. The lessons conclude with an assignment to record the principle in the child’s notebook or print out an activity sheet. Most of the time the child just has to record one sentence. I just add on additional questions for my daughter to answer and write about, if I see the need. I sometimes add in my own application(if God gives me one) and my own questions for reflection in addition to what’s there. Some people may feel it is too simplistic but I love the freedom to be able to add on additional activities if I so desire or additional writing prompts. There are days when what is there is sooooo sufficient depending on how our day is going and how tired we all are. It is perfect for us for where we are right now!!

Some of the principle we have disussed and learned about so far are:

History is His Story

Studying History will help us to recognize God’s Hand as he works in the lives of men and nations.

God commands us to remember all H has done for us as individuals and nations.

Government is direction and control.

If I govern myself well, I will not need others to control me.

God has a plan for civil government.

A change has taken place in my thinking, my heart, and in therefore, my actions or my implementation of how we homeschool.

As I was being refreshed and renewed, I didn’t know it at the time, but God was kind of ‘weaning’ me from all that I had read about what others were doing in their homeschool, even from the much of the material I was studying in the Red Books and the NP lesson plans book. All of a sudden I didn’t have a ‘taste’ for any of it and I began to wonder if I was on the right track with the BPA. I even wondered if I should still be homeschooling…but I’ve learned never to make a major decision when emotions are running high and even when I’m experiencing much uncertainty…the answer will come in the calm…I just continued to wait on the Lord, enjoying my rest in not having to do school just enjoy my family and children.

But I had come to the point where I’m tired of doing things my way or in my own wisdom/thinking. I’ve said that before and even when I thought I was doing what the Lord wanted me to do I realize now that I was not. I received very clear instruction from the Lord to go back to doing certain things that I used to do(when homeschooling was a pure joy!!) when my dd was 5(and when I didn’t have to report to the school district). Once she turned 6 and I had to start sending in everything we were doing a war ensued inside of me-wanting to follow the Holy Spirit’s leading but yet somehow feeling like I needed to cater to the districts and always being more concerned with what they’ll think; and the school district’s/worlds expectations won out…and that burned me out.

So God put me in a place where all of those distractions that used to pull at me were non-existent, flushed my insides out from the ‘old wine’ so that He could put in the ‘new wine’ of His revelation/instruction.

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So I’ve returned to using scripture as copywork for our handwriting lessons. That will coincide with our Bible Study.

I’ve decided to accept the fact that I cannot do all the subjects that I had planned in one day…. Now, we do what we can each day (along with my other responsibilities). The way it has been going since we started back last week, we either do ’skills’ lessons(math, handwriting, grammar, spelling, etc) or our unit study…and I’m even praying about if and/or how to incorporate our ’skills’ lessons into our unit study lessons.

I also count time the children spend cleaning their rooms/household chores as school. It goes under life skills.

I’ve gone back to using math add-ons/games on the internet to be a part of my dd’s math curriculum.

In short, I’ve eased up on myself and my children…My lessons have gone back to ’simple’(no less effective, I pray :). I’m learning how to be much more loving to them no matter how far behind I feel we are and basically to accept and be content with where they are in their development and not PUSH them to where I feel their public/private school counterparts are…even the lessons given in the NP are very aggressive and complete and are WONDERFUL in my eyes…I would want my children to attain to ALL of what I read in these lesson plan books but I’ve had to just stop striving to MAKE my children be…rather I’m learning to just LET them be…while teaching and guiding them gently.

I tell you things go sooooo much smoothly. We go to bed now happy with each other and so much less tension in the house since our days are not spent arguing and me fussing and upset and tense and feeling like I’ve failed if we don’t do have a math lesson everyday…so what if we don’t finish the book.

I’m learning to REALLY put my trust in the Lord and in following His way and instruction. My children are fine and will get to where they are supposed to be…God will make sure of that!!! The scripture God brought back to me is this:

Matthew 11:27-31(amplified)

28Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy-laden and overburdened, and I will cause you to rest. [I will ^[f]ease and relieve and ^[g]refresh ^[h]your souls.]

29Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am gentle (meek) and humble (lowly) in heart, and you will find rest (^[i]relief and ease and refreshment and ^[j]recreation and blessed quiet) for your souls.^(A)

30For My yoke is wholesome (useful, ^[k]good–not harsh, hard, sharp, or pressing, but comfortable, gracious, and pleasant), and My burden is light and easy to be borne.

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So having said all of that this week we started His Story again and picked up with the 3rd link Jesus Christ-The focal point of History. That was our principle.

For BIBLE/HISTORY I read to my children the bible stories of Jesus getting baptized by John the Baptist, Jesus and the little children, and Jesus choosing 12 disciples. I gave them bible sheets, from Heart of Wisdom site to color as I read these stories. In all of this we would discuss and reason Jesus’ purpose (Principle of Individuality) for coming and referencing that to the Chain of Christianity in showing what God was doing/how His plan was unfolding to bring liberty to America and the world from the beginning…Creation.

It was such a simple lesson, if I wasn’t trusting God with my homeschool I would wonder if my children learned anything from something so simple..I trust that what I shared in this unit that God would put His Super to my natural and bring something Supernatural out of it in the lives of my children.

Today we read about the Last Supper, Jesus’ Resurrection, and His Soon Return.

For GEOGRAPHY we looked at and studied maps of Israel and the Middle East Region. My dd had to locate the nation of Israel first She labeled a blank outline map of Israel. She labeled Jerusalem, Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee, the Dead Sea, and the Jordan River and the surrounding nations of Syria, Jordan, Egypt and the Med. sea. These are some of the sites we visited and used in our study
http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/asia/lgcolor/ilcolor.htm

http://www.freeworldmaps.net/asia/israel/map.html

http://www.masada2000.org/geography.html

This next site is a WONDERFUL site. You can download interactive maps and map puzzles where your child has to put each state in it’s place(for US map) or each country in it’s respective place on the continent. When we did our Moses link my dd fell in love with this and kept asking (on non-History unit days) if she could do the map puzzle of Africa!

http://www.yourchildlearns.com/megamaps.htm

Now, on to ART. I decided to study/introduce my children to the painting of The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci since we read about the Last Supper today.

I found a printable here at this site:

http://arthistory.about.com/library/artists/tours/leonardo/n_leo_10.htm

I read a very short biography of Leonardo and gave my dd the printable of his painting and asked her to study it and reproduce it. This is what she did…I thought it was precious so I decided to post it….

I also found more art history at this site…

http://arthistory.about.com/cs/leonardo/a/last_supper.htm

I found these search engines just for kids…

AJKids - AOL@school - Awesome Library - Google - KartOO - KidsClick! - ThinkQuest Library - Yahooligans

I clicked on AJKids and found the following site that gives a biography of Leonardo in simpler language for younger children.

http://www.askforkids.com/fr?u=http%3A%2F%2Flibrary.thinkquest.org%2F3044%2Fnov_over.html&bu=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.askforkids.com%2Fweb%3Fq%3D%22da%2Bvinci%2C%2Bleonardo%22%26dm%3Dlang%26page%3D1&q=%22da%2Bvinci%2C%2Bleonardo%22&o=0&l=dir&s=k&dm=lang&qt=0

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So all in all, things are going well…I’m happy and my children are responding so much better to school and just overall. My 5yob can’t seem to stop hugging me and coming up to me laying on my shoulder and he keeps telling me, “Mommy, I love you”. I tell I love him too and I stand in awe at what God is doing in my life and in my family as I determine to trust Him and go with His leading for everyday.

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!!

Link: MOSES UNIT
Governing Principle: God uses men and nations to further His gospel

Subjects covered: History (of Moses)

• Moses individuality
• God preserves and protects Moses in Egypt to fulfill his prupose as lawgiver and leader of first republic
• When it was time God took Moses out of Egypt
• In spite fo paganism in Egypt Moses believed in the God of his forefathers

Subjects covered: Literature (of Moses)

• Identify literary elements in Moses’ story
• ancient writings (hieroglyphics)(??)
• writings of Moses-1st five books of bible(??)

Subjects covered: Geography (of Moses-Egypt)

• Map of ancient Egypt or continent of Africa
• physical geography
• rivers
• lakes
• mountains
• climate and vegetation
• animal life
• people

subjects covered: ART (of Moses-Egypt)

• study how the Egyptians depicted ’subject matter’ in their sculputure/painting
• give assignment on depicting selected ’subject matter’ in art assignment

I plan 2 weeks for this unit. Sometimes I feel this is not intricate enough but I’ve decided not to sweat it. Once I’m in the study other ideas may come up but my objective here is just to introduce my children to the principle(they already know the story of Moses) and do a little ‘expansion’ on the subject and principle.

This is what I have so far. I plan to take the entire 1st quarter on this
one…..I’m going to follow up in another post with the how I have the Moses
link laid out….different links seem to lend themselves toward including
different (or very few) other subjects) from what I can see right now in my
understanding AND lends themselves to different ‘activities’. Prayerfully as I
continue to grow and mature and understand more I can include more. I had many
reservations about doing unit study b/c I did not want the ‘INDIVIDUALITY’ of
each subject to get lost in the unit so that is whyy I’m highlighting the
SUBJECTS of Creation in this unit. I feel that is a good way to start the year
AT THE BEGINNING of ALL THINGS…even the beginning of subjects of study..it all
starts with Creation…As you see this can take off in many directions depending
on what u feel u want to emphasize.

Also, as I’ve been studying/reading I’v come to realize that each subject has it’s own
principles, and so I’m endeavoring to pull those out so as not to lose them
under the ‘Governing Principle’…

Here is the first of several posts on my unit study layouts using the links on the Chain of ChristianityLink:

Link: Creation Unit

Governing principle: God’s Principle of Individuality(this is the principle that will be referred to MOST, maybe not all the time but MOST:-)

Subjects Covered: History (of Creation)
Leading Ideas:

1. What can we learn from Creation? Gen chapter 1, 2, Rom 1:20, etc(these leading ideas develop into lessons which I’ve just begun writing)
2. There is diversity in Creation. Psalm 19:1(define diversity, what does this show us about God?, etc)
3. All that God made is unique and exists for His glory and purpose. Rev 4:11…highlight the creation of man as special and how God feels about us…how do we treat the creation of God(nature and us)…what can we do to help take care of God’s creation(including ourselves and maintain own individuality…this can lead in Principle of Self-Govern)
4. God gets pleasure out of all He created….He is pleased with each individual thing just like He created it..can lead into many areas of discussion
5. Individuality of ’subjects’-All that God made can be ‘categorized’ into ’subjects’ - Here is where I plan to go into each subject addressed in THIS unit and define it, present it’s biblical origin(this is where the NP Lessons come in handy. I’ll use the lessons in this book to present the BIBLICAL FOUNDATIONS instead of writing it myself…it’s already written..AND I’ve already spent money on it!!!!!!!!!!:-)

Subjects Covered: Literature (of Creation)
Leading Ideas/Content:

1. The Bible as Literature- (I’m using NP Lessons and use the ‘foundation’ lessons to define literature and the biblical origin/purpose of literature)

- read Creation story and identify literary elements

2. Individuality of Poetry- introduce Psalms 23 as poetry(NPLit Guide p. 74)

- Individuality of Poets and their Poetry- read Poetry of Creation(NP Lit Guide p. 108-109)

1. “The Voice of Grass”

2. Poems about creation/birds/naturefrom The Home Book of Verse for Young Folks

Subjects Covered: Geography (of Creation)
Leading Ideas/Content: I still need to develop my leading ideas for this content or I just may present it like this depending on my time and energy level.

1. Individuality of the earth (taken from GACE starting p261+)..God made the earth for man

- in the universe

- in the solar system

- terrestrial globe(??? I have no idea what this means or how to present it so I may hold off on this until I study and know what I’m talking about!!)

2. Individuality of continents(begin study each continent-especially as we encounter it in literature or read-alouds)

- land

- water

- atmosphere(for these 3 I plan to just take some books out of the library and study present these concepts using very “BROAD strokes of the paintbrush”, putting on a LIGHT coat until I have the time to go deeper in study)

3. Individuality of Living Things

- plants

- animals(same as continent study)

Subjects Covered: ART (of Creation)-(I’m excited about this one…I was NEVER into art until now…of course, I understand it now!)
Leading Ideas/Content:

1. Primary colors are each uniquely individual

2. Primary colors combine(union) to make more unique colors/shades

3. Color comes from God

4. Individuality of artists and their art work- Each individual is unique and will produce unique things whether from writing(poetry)/music/art, etc.

I still need to chose which artists we will study…I desire to study artists who painted (or sculpted, whatever) scenes of creation or of God creating man, trees, etc…..I still need to research that)

Subjects Covered: Music (of Creation)
Leading Ideas/Content:

1. Notes are unique and have distinct sounds

2. Notes combine to make more unique sounds-melody, harmony

3. Melody forms unique songs to give expression to what is in our hearts

4. God gave us sound/music/notes for our pleasure and for His.

As I post in a previous entry I’m endeavoring to write some simple unit studies for each link on the Chain of Christianity. Several people on our yahoo list expressed an interest in how I was doing it so I decided to post it to my blog.

One thing I had to overcome was the feeling that every link/unit had to be structured the same or incorporate many of the same subjects…they don’t. I just saw this revelation this evening….that each link is INDIVIDUAL. Just like people we each have our ‘personality’ and individual bent/gifting/contribution/emphasis in this world…so does each link. Each link/unit will have it’s own ‘personality’ so to speak..it’s own ‘flavor’. This has freed me up tremendously from wondering “Am I doing it right?”. As long as I go with what I feel the Lord is instructing me to emphasize in each link for my children then it is right.

Since the ‘flavor’ of the Creation link speaks of God Himself…everything coming from Him…He is the beginning of all things then it is quite easy to incorporate many if not all subjects. Once you look at my outline you may wonder where is Science? For some strange reason I could not come up with anything for Science…it’s as if I’m at a brick wall or something so I just left it alone..maybe God will show me later. Until then I have Dr. Hooker’s book that I plan on using.

The Moses link has it’s own ‘flavor’/uniqueness and so it seemed to lend itself more towards delving into a ‘broad’ study of Egypt, even the art forms(Art of Antiquity) or from the Mesopotamian era.

One thing I like to do when I write my lessons is to use AT LEAST 2 scriptures to support my leading idea or principle…no less than 2. I see examples everywhere of just one scripture but the word of God tells us to let every word be established in the mouth of 2 or 3 witnesses(II Cor 13:1). So that is the principle I live by in my study of God’s word, even before I came to know BPA. I also want this to be an example to my children of not taking scripture out of context…b/c the Word supports and confirms itself there will always be another scripture or principle in scripture to support one you already have.

I am excited about writing unit studies. Unit studies was the way I was leaning even before I found BPA. So now that I’ve found BPA I am attempting to unite my unit study inclination and BPA. I pray the following helps you in your own journey to give you a jumping off point for writing your own.