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.

==========================

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.

We have started back to homeschooling and I’ve begun our 2nd half of the year with a new attitude, new vision, new (or maybe I should say RE-newed) purpose. I am sooooo grateful to our Gracious God for the blessing of REST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We took from the last week in Nov to the 2nd week in Jan. off for vacation/break….and ooohhhhh was it needed and appreciated!!! There is something to be said about taking REGULAR intervals of rest and actually in my own personal studies I’ve come across God’s principle of REST. He knew we would need rest and so He even instituted and incorporated rest into His commandments…”Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy”

Ex. 20:8-11

8Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

9Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:

10But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:

11For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it

In fact Moses instructed the Israelites to observe the sabbath even before God wrote it on the tablets of the 10 commandments and as we all know God established His cycle of rest in the beginning when He rested on the seventh day in Genesis. Not only did He rest and establish rest but the Word says He made it HOLY!! Our seventh day of rest is HOLY..God considers it HOLY!! How awesome is that! I still don’t fully understand the import of it’s holiness but if God says it is HOLY unto Him then I shall begin to look at it as HOLY and treat it as HOLY…just like the tithe is HOLY unto Him. That is one thing that I’ve been taught not to mess with because the tithe is not ours, it is the Lord’s and it is HOLY unto Him. Therefore, I render it unto Him with respect and sobriety b/c it is HOLY….just like taking my rest when God says to take a rest.

God is just soooooo good…His very name means good(the scripture says God is good—-a little bit of mathematics here, if a=b then b=a….if God is good then the definition of the word good is God and vice versa). Anyway, God has given us daily rest periods(the time where we sleep), the then weekly rests(after we’ve worked for 6 days we are commanded to rest on the seventh…and as far as homeschooling I would encourage every homeschooling mom to schedule regular intervals of rest(and even one prolonged period of rest) in their homeschool schedules b/c it is soooo beneficial. I’ve come to see the answer to burnout, any kind of burnout is rest…but isn’t that what God told us to do in the beginning? I wonder why we’ve not seen it as important and as HOLY as God sees it? Of course it was not stressed in church about how important it is to rest…the 7th day was always spent in church and so was Wednesday night at bible study and so was Friday night prayer and then we go to work and take care of our families and try to spend time and have real relationships the remainder of the week and we are in “rest-deficits”….we don’t have anything to give b/c we violate God’s principle of rest and dont’ take the time to rest and be renewed.
The following is for your consideration:
Isaiah 58:13-14

13 “If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath
and from doing as you please on my holy day,
if you call the Sabbath a delight
and the LORD’s holy day honorable,
and if you honor it by not going your own way
and not doing as you please or speaking idle words,

14 then you will find your joy in the LORD,
and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land
and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob.”
The mouth of the LORD has spoken.

This scripture says to me that God has promised a blessing in keeping what God has established as HOLY!

The book by Dr. Richard Heidler called The Messianic Church Arising has been such a blessing to me in pointing this principle out.

Something else that has been brewing in my heart is to study the Biblical feasts and not just study but to implement in our lives and homeschool. That is the reason I bought the book by Dr. Heidler. It has turned out to be a wonderful rsource for me (along with Chuck Pierce’s book called Reordering Your Day. This one talks about establishing the prayer watches in your life.) So I’m in prayer about what principles to bring out about each feast as we observe them. I’ll share what we do when we do it. My heart has also been pricked into acquiring more understanding of the Hebraic view of life, God, education, family, etc. Although man has put ‘labels’ on all these topics that I’ve mentioned I don’t see it as becoming Jewish or Hebrew but this quest I’m on is about attaining to the knowledge of The One Who Loved me and Gave His Life for Me…about knowing the Eternal, Ageless One Who Created me and Gave me Life and continues to sustain and commune with me…the One who beckons to me in the night seasons when all is quiet and everyone is sleep…beckoning me to come sit in His Presence JUST because He loves me and wants to spend time with me…the One who speaks Words of comfort to my storm-tossed and weary soul…a soul that is weary from worrying about our homeschool not being up-to-par, storm-tossed with the emotions and physical fatigue of taking care of sick children and rushing my 7yog to the hospital with 103 fever b/c it would go no lower on a Sunday and then my 2 yo coming down with a fever of 102, a soul that allowed itself to be burdened down with the care of finances that are not there in abundance the way I’ve prayed for them to be for so long and yet we still wait, etc, on and on…yet and still I praise Him. It is in these night seasons, at 3am, 4 am sometimes 12 midnight as I respond to His call that He frees me from these cares and concerns and He sets me free to rejoice in Him

I willfully issue forth a praise and I determine to live a life of love and obedience that I pray is a pleasing fragrance unto the Lord even thru the pressure of trial, testing, and warfare.

He continues to show Himself faithful in my life and on my behalf and I shall continue to worship Him for His goodness and to kiss His nail-scarred Hands and Feet…those precious Hands and Feet, I lay tender kisses of my love, of my praise….of my very life.

Well, what a treat…I came to post an entry in my neglected blog!!! So sorry blog and anyone who might be interested in my ramblings and musings. It has been a while…too long since I have posted anything and shared anything that we were doing. Well I got involved in this home-based business and it seemed to have taken my life over for a while but I do miss my blog and I miss sharing the many precious thoughts that the Lord gives/shows me and I do miss the fellowship with my fellow homeschool moms. So here I am, back again….

My life for the past 2+ months has seemed to be on fast forward with seemingly no time to just stop and enjoy the journey. I’m tired of the hustle and bustle I’ve been in and I’m tired of only thinking about 1 thing..making money with this business and I’m tired of trying to do it myself!!! So I’ve determined to give the whole kit-n-kaboodle to God and let Him increase and multiply it. That then frees me up to enjoy my children again and enjoy keeping house again and enjoy homeschooling again and regain the satisfaction of my “former life” all the while trusting the Lord with our finances, etc. which is how it should have been in the first place.

I MUST share what we have done(if I can remember) what we did in our 2nd quarter of school. Our quarter ended last week so we are on break from now(Nov. 26) until Jan 8, 2007!! Yeah!!!! Since I was so busy with the business I ended up relying more heavily on our workbooks and really drilling the math facts also. Although I don’t want that to comprise the bulk of our schooling it served it’s purpose for these past 2 months when I really could not ‘concentrate’ on our lessons and the principles behind such. We covered what I call ‘Core’ subjects with our workbooks and do History using the Principle Approach mostly. So I plan on using this ‘vacation’ for delving into ‘fun’ things like studying more Art…dd7 has proclaimed that she is an artist and wants to learn more about Art so we will. My precious ds5 has not seen a lesson book consistently in a while so I need to sure up his foundation…and all the while having to keep up with a very active and determined 2 year old boy who has learned to exercise his ability to say NO and mean it!!!!

I don’t see how people with more than 3 children do it all(homeschool and such!) Maybe this too is just a phase. I so look forward to the days when all 3 children can sit down for lessons and read alouds and no one is tearing the pages out of books and constantly interrupting and banging on closed doors while I’m trying to give dd7 a math test in her room so we won’t be disturbed.

I guess I should cherish these times…I have found them to be very stressful and stress-filled…to the point where I stopped enjoying what I was doing.but I pressed on thru the unhappiness and tiredness and threatening tears..thinking somehow that I could not do it all..all that was required was just too much for me…emotionallly that is (and even at times physically). I got so tired of running after my toddler and correcting him only to have him do it again and again to where I just had to stop lessons altogether. Many times me and dd7 would get our lessons done after the boys went to bed and we would spend 2 quiet hours together working, even thru my exhaustion, working from about 9-11 or 9-10:30pm

So all of that seems to be behind me now. I decided to just lighten up on what I was expecting of myself and get realistic about what I could actually accomplish in a day and I ended up lightening up on our homeschool schedule…just getting the ‘necessary’ subjects done…math, reading, spelling , grammar…yes even bible study slid out of first place. Many days I was in such an attitude I did not feel ‘right’ about sitting down talking about our responsiblities as Christians and how we are to live our lives…..I just was not the example to look to for the fruit of the Spirit..or so I felt at the time.

I’ve also decided to get back to doing what I have found much enjoyment in the past and that is blogging, writing/studying for lessons, letting my children BE children and relaxing and trusting God.

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We started school again.  This is the first 2 days of our second quarter.  I gave dd7 a math test from the work done last quarter…she aced it!!  Very simple stuff though.  We had to slow down the pace from what the workbook was doing so we are still at the beginning of the workbook…lots of ground to cover but I see improvement in her understanding and retention…I’ve just got to try not to put too much pressure on her when she gives wrong answers for what I know she knows…trying to get her to THINK about what the problem is asking and not just memorize and spit out the answer. 

My ds5 is doing well with his spelling/phonics/orthography…I finally decided to start using WRR(Writing Road to Reading) with him and we went over yesterday sounding out and spelling the words from the Ayers list…we worked on these:  go, me, and, do, at.

As I taught each word we wrote each letter and he did wonderful…yes, he’s a boy and he argued with me over which way the lower case ’a’ faces and things like that but I held up and out and we finally got the lesson accomplished…at least we got accomplished what I could handle!!!

Today for read aloud we read the book Bearskin by Howard Pyle.  It was a good little story.  

So we are back in the saddle again, after being somewhat refreshed by our 2 week vacation…it was very nice…thank the Lord!!!! 

What a fun-time we had in our read aloud time yesterday! I don’t read aloud everyday…I wish I could be consistent enough to do that but we do it when I really feel the inspiration. I blogged the other week about taking a read-aloud/literature book and take as many lessons as we can from that. Well, my children asked me the other day if they could watch the Sword in the Stone movie. I said yes, since we are still on ‘vacation’…and it gave me a thought to go get books on knights, and armor and such. So I consulted the reading list from Teaching the Trivium’s products. The Bluedorns son and daughter has published a list of good read alouds and biographies and such. So I chose to get books by Homer Pyle(fitting with my dc’s desire to watch the Sword in the Stone and medieval times). I got the one entitled Some Merry Adventures of Robin Hood. I was seeking an unabridged version and I think I got one…most of them say “adapted by such and such”.

As I began to read I could tell it was not ‘capturing’ my children’s attention. They were in the room listening but out of obedience, if u know what I mean. Their minds were elsewhere. As I read the scene describing how Robin Hood met Little John and how they had a ‘duel’ fighting with ‘cudgers’ and ‘goose-feathered arrows’ I started to really act out the scenes as I read them and the more I got into they did. I even began to have them act out scenes. I told boy(5) that he would be Robin Hood and girl(7) that she could be Little John and when I got to the part where Robin Hood told his merry men “Three blasts upon the bugle horn I will blow in my hour of need, then come quickly, for I shall want your aid”—-I had boy(5) blow his pretend horn and then had “Little John” run to his aid. We had a blast!!!

The second chapter was the story of how the Sherriff of Nottingham tried to trap Robin in by having a shooting match. As the archers from surrounding towns came to compete — “And now the archers shot, each man in turn, and the good folk never saw such archery as was done that day”–my children went and grabbed their “bow and arrows” they had made out of plastic clothes hangers and my dd’s hair elastic hair bands and used non-sharpened pencils for arrows — they each took their turn at shooting—each other and me.

I loved it and they did too. I stopped after the 1st chapter so that we could clean up the downstairs and my dd says to me “Mommy what about the story of Robin Hood”? I promised her I would read more after we cleaned up and I tended to the baby. Then we read the 2nd chapter.

I decided to try and make a “little” vocabulary lesson to enhance their understanding of what they hear me read. I made up a sheet of vocabulary words b/c this book is written in very similar style as the King James Bible…using words like nay, no harm shall befall him(Robin Hood speaking of LIttle John), guile, etc. so I made a list of 10 vocab. words from the first 2 chapters that me and dd(7) will look up in the dictionary and define.

Here are the words I chose:

• archer
• forest
• skill
• cunning
• yeomen
• outlaw
• bold
• shrewd p. 12
• cudgels p. 13
• 10.Nay p. 14

Part 2 of this assigment is to copy the sentences that these words are used in from the book–exactly as the author wrote it. I think I’ll use these sentences as copywork for our cursive handwriting, vocabulary, grammar/sentence construction, paragraph writing. Here are the passages we will attempt to work on:

Copy each sentence. Underline all vocabulary words.

• No archer ever lived that could speed a gray goose shaft with such skill and cunning as his.
• There lived within the green glades of Sherwood Forest, near Nottingham Town, a famous outlaw whose name was Robin Hood.
• Nor were there ever such yeomen as the seven-score merry men that roamed with him through the greenwood shades.
• When Robin was a youth of eighteen, stout of sinew and bold of heart, the Sheriff of Nottingham proclaimed a shooting-match and offered a prize of forty marks to whomsoever should shoot the best shaft in Nottingham.
• So shrewd was the stroke that the stranger came within a hair’s breadth of falling off the bridge.
• I must needs own thou art a brave and a sturdy soul, and, withal, a good stout stroke with the cudgels.”
• Nay, forbear!” cried Robin; “he is a right good man and true, and no harm shall befall him.”

I received in my email a wonderul example of how to teach grammar, spelling, vocab, and penmanship straight from descriptive texts of living books. You can view this article on how to do that here at Trivium Pursuit email list archives.

I would just be sure to add/teach the biblical origin/purpose and the biblical prinicples of each of these subject areas.

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Well hello world, hello blog…it’s been a little while. I just wanted to pop in to say that we have finished our first quarter last week. It went very well. (I still need to post what we did for Art) So we are off for 2 weeks at least… we finished a week ahead of schedule so I just may extend our break for 3 weeks. We’ll see, because the troops seem to get a little ‘restless’ with no school work to do…It’s as if play time only satisfies for a while and then they come asking for something to do so I’m thinking to start back after 2 weeks(maybe with a good read-aloud book) and then ease back into our ‘routine’. We are having a blast…at least I am…not having to think too much about lessons.

I started my own home-based business. To check it out to see if it would be something that would be right for you, click HERE!!

I’m excited about it. Working from home this way is very exciting and even fulfilling…to finally have some organization to pursuing our (financial as well as other)goals for our family has been a real blessing to us..and to be coached into taking action to work towards fulfilling those goals and dreams is yet another worthwhile and exciting journey for us to take together as a family.

So I’ll check back in later…(hopefully sooner than later)!!

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I wanted to post the ‘little’ lesson I wrote for BAR or Reading Comprehension using the NP models and forms. This lessons supplements the Bible Study for that particular week so we used the leading idea and principle from the Bible Study for that week.

Principle: Eph 6:1-Children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right

Leading Idea: Jesus submitted to and obeyed His parents, even though He was God’s son

Scripture: Luke 2:41-52

Memory verse: Matthew 5:16-Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

Day1:

Read scripture

Copy memory verse

Define obedience on Word Map

Day 2:

Read scripture

Define antonym(grammar)

Identify antonym to obedience=disobedience

Read Deut 28, 4:40, Psalm 1 to compare/contrast consequences of obedience and disobedience.

Fill in T-chart with observations from scripture

Day 3:

Discuss how we let our light shine thru being obedient

Here is what my dd did for her reading comprehension assignment. I used the Noah Plan’s form for a word map from the Reading Guide(2nd edition). This guide is packed full of resources to use to teach reading and all that is included in reading…fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, phonemic awareness. It recommends the WRR for orthography and spelling.

The second day’s assignment was a T-chart that I used to introduce the concept of antonyms and to highlight the consequences of obedience and disobedience. This was based on the scriptures I used….u can adapt these to whatever scriptures you use and to the ages of your children and their ability to reason, etc.

I absolutely love the richness, thoroughness and the detail this reading guide goes into and the tools it gives u to teach reading. The only hitch for me is in the implementation of it. I only have so many hours in a day to do what needs to be done and I can’t implement ‘half’ of what I want to do, what is in my heart to do right now. So I’ll just do what I can. This is the first and ONLY BAR assigment I’ve written…prayerfully I’ll be able to write more..also, this lesson came spur of the moment. This was not in my plan. While we were on this particular Bible Study lesson I felt a prompting to do a little BAR or comprehension lesson on it. As you can see it was nothing “earth shattering” but prayerfully God was able to use it to re-inforce and solidify and “imprint His laws” on my child’s heart!! If so then this simple lesson made a difference in my child’s life…to God be all the Glory!!

Today we studied the terrestrial earth.  We studied from this website…

http://www.geography4kids.com/ 

I just read to them from the pages on this website.  Today was not met with the same oohs and aahs from yesterday but I wanted to introduce these concepts.  I feel though that I can spend another day on this to insure understanding.  I think I may need to go thru GACE again just to make sure I am outlining this clear.  Or maybe I can just leave it at this for an introduction and move on to the individuality of the continents and living things in the next unit(which is Moses where we’ll take a look at Egypt and the continent of Asia…)

Yesterday we finally got to the Geography portion of our Creation unit. We started with these scriptures as our leading ideas…pointing to God’s Principle of Individuality….these scriptures could actually be principles in themselves.

Isaiah 45:18
For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else.

Psalm 115:16

The heaven, even the heavens, are the LORD’s: but the earth hath he given to the children of men.

Job 26:7

He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.

In the NIVr version of my dc’s bible it says that God hung the earth FIRMLY in place…and we discussed that and what all of these verses mean.

As suggested in GACE(p 269-270) we started discussing the indivduality of the earth in the universe, in the solar system, and the terrestrial globe. I tried to highlight the following(as I was amazed myself that)

1. out of all the galaxies and phenomenon and the vastness of space(there are galaxies and stars billions of light years away) that God made earth just for man.

2. the earth is special-why and how

3. That out of all the galaxies we exist in a galaxy(Milky Way) and are located right on the edge of the galaxy where we won’t burn up with radiation. Any closer to the center of the galaxy the radiation is so strong that no life could exist.

4. That out of all the planets in our solar system orbiting the sun that earth is the only one that has conditions right for life…perfect distance from the sun where we are not too hot nor cold; the perfect distance where the water can stay in liquid form…etc.

This was a wonderful study on the first day.

Overall I think it went well(mainly b/c I was not sure how to even teach these ideas but I got thru it and more understanding came to me as I was teaching my dc…understanding of how to make my points clearer).

I found these websites to supplement our scripture study…to illustrate the universe, solar system and terrestrial globe.

http://www.godandscience.org/love/design.html

http://www.kidsastronomy.com/deep_space.htm

http://solarviews.com/eng/homepage.htm

These are the drawings/geography-astronomy projects my dc made after our first lesson.

This nebula was drawn by the boy(5yo), written by his own hand, mom assisting with the spelling only. I thought this was an excellent rendition of a nebula from a 5 year old taught by a mom who had no idea what a nebula was or that they even existed!! We observed nebulas from this sight…

http://www.godandscience.org/love/tourjs.html click on the Orion Nebula from the slide show tour of the universe.

Or

Here is another good picture of it..http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap020213.html

He also drew Jupiter…(I wrote Jupiter for him

Ok, now my 5yo girl recorded this for her notebook…

Her scripture verse is Gen. 1:1. She added her own little commentary to the end of this…she says…that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth….(her commentary) HE WAS SO GOOD AT IT.

I thought that was precious!

In our last, ‘haphazard’, 3 weeks we had to take a more ‘relaxed’ approach to our homeschooling due to the many events/celebrations that occurred. I purchased some time ago A FAMILY PROGRAM FOR READING ALOUD developed by ROSALIE JUNE SLATER. This has been a wonderful, very rich resource of classic reading selections and how to teach certain categories of literature from the Principle Approach. I decided to go back to the beginning of the book and start there with my read aloud selections. We don’t read aloud as often as I want to..our days seem to get away from us. I guess I feel like Literature is not priority on our list of subjects to study but in the last several weeks we have managed to investigate several of the suggested books in this wonderful resource written by Ms. Slater.

POETRY: We started with THE HOME BOOK OF VERSE FOR YOUNG FOLKS for our poetry introduction. We started with this in July. We are also using Abeka’s spelling workbook and they have a poem assigned for each month for the student to memorize, to use expression when reciting, to practice reading with alternately with Mommy. DD’s favorite poem in THE HOME BOOK OF VERSE is TREE’s by Joyce Kilmer. It goes like this:

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A treee that looks a God all day
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

We’ve also recited Robert Blake’s THE LAMB which is the poem in Abeka’s spelling and poetry text.
Little lamb Little Lamb Who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee?
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed
By the stream and o’er the mead;
………..etc.

We worked on this one also in Abeka’s spelling and poetry text…A THANK YOU PRAYER..author unknown
For milk to drink and food to eat;
For eyes and ears and hands and feet;
Thank You God

For mother, father, and their care
For our house and clothes to wear
Thank You God

For friends with whom I run and play
For sun and rain and night and day
Thank You God

For all the things You give to me
Help me to always thankful be
Thank You God.

We will study Psalm 23 as poetry as well as the other literary genre found in the Bible.

PICTURE BOOKS AND STORIES: We got from the library and read the following:

THE RUNAWAY BUNNY
THE GINGERBREAD BOY
**TIME OF WONDER
**THE BIG SNOW
THE LITTLE ENGINE THAT COULD
THE VELVETEEN RABBIT
MADELINE-this is turning out to be one of my dc’s favorite. We found a ‘pop-up, 3D’ version of this book’

** we did not read these as they were due back to the library before we any interest was aroused in these books. They were kind of slow moving I think for my dc. TIME OF WONDER was very descriptive(which is good) but at the time I started to read it my dc had blank faces and were not really interested…so back to the library it went..maybe we’ll try again with it later.

We also have ‘zoo-billion’ other picture books, easy readers, and easy chapter books on the children’s shelves and also in our schoolroom that have been given to us(free! Praise God!!) by other parents and such…some were going to be THROWN out by the school my dh works for…some of these were BRAND NEW, STILL IN THE PLASTIC books that my dh found in the ‘throw away’ pile at his school so God has blessed us to have a home library already. I just need to make MORE use of these books, i.e. take the time to look thru them myself b/c the dc choose the same ones over and over and when dd is feeling lazy she’ll choose one with as few words a possible

So that is the beginning ’smathering’ of our read-aloud program. Sometimes I wish we could do all of study from one literature book..I guess you would call that a literature unit. I wonder if somehow I could teach reading, spelling, grammar, history, geog, science, etc. from one classic novel. This is kind of burning in my heart to do this so I think I will look into how to write lessons for these subject areas after choosing a children’s classic…just something very basic but still cover the important areas.

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