The last few days, that I have not blogged about our educational activities, we have had some wonderful moments…at least for me…I think for my dc as well. As far as our daily schedule it does not look at all the same as what I posted our schedule would be…although I do use it to make sure we get done all that I have planned for each day; although that changes slightly, too. Overall though we’ve been getting thru our core studies and doing some sort/form of history or science. On Wed. we started at 11:30 and did not finish until 7:00pm. That day I had to keep giving them breaks b/c of the things I needed to finish(like cooking, laundry etc.), so we did not go straight thru from 11-7…we took many breaks in between and when it was time to come back to our lessons we would(cheerfully I might add) and most nights right before bedtime dd completed her homework assignments. Most of the time her assignments include completing a math homework assignment, handwriting, reading a book(or 2 as she desires and most of the time she wants to read more…I think to keep from going to bed:) ), doing a page in her grammar book and on days we did history unit - literature(poetry) segment she would read poems out of the Home Book of Verse for Young Folks until she got sleepy.

As far as our lessons this week in Bible Study, they have really blessed me. We are following the lessons in NP Lessons Grade 1 and this week we talked about prophets and prophecy. I spoke very strongly and reiterated and emphasized how a prophet of God will speak ONLY those words that God tells him to speak. After about 2-3 days of lessons on this I let them watch Veggie Tales JONAH. They have asked for it again and are watching it for the 2nd time this week-this is in addition to their other studies and bible for today. They gave their grandmom and grandpa an earful(as my mom told me later) about Jonah and about prophets and also about their lessons. They seemingly talked at length about what we’ve been studying.

Arithmetic has been going well. She has memorized all +1, -1, +0, -0, and doubles without counting her fingers or otherwise. These I tried to teach by ‘principle’ and reasoning that any number plus one is always the next counting number, therefore no need to count on her fingers for those. We are working on 6+6, 7+7 up to 10+10 and she shocked me by blurting out the answer to 8+8 and 9+9. We had been writing it for about 2 days and I guess she remembered it. She kept forgetting 7+7 so any of those that she forgot I would let her use the abacus and write the problem and the answer so it would ’stick’. We are also spending much time counting by 2’s and getting an understanding of skip counting. We are doing much better in identifying even and odd numbers and skip counting by evens and odds. The next topics we’ll do is +2, -2 combinations(which is skip counting forward and backward by 2’s) and doubles +1( if 7+7=14, then 8+7=15….1 more than the double 7+7)…I don’t know how well this strategy will go over but I’ll give it a whirl.

Her cursive handwriting is coming along beautifully…I’m amazed. She really likes doing this and asks me for her handwriting homework if I ‘forget’.

Phonics/Spelling we have not done yet. I’ll probably work that in next week somehow. Dd is reading on a 3rd to 4th grade level so I have not been too sure as to where to start. She reads pretty fluently but has no idea why u pronounce the word NOT with the short O sound. I have the Abeka phonics and I also have WRR. I think I’ll start off dictating the word list from section I in WRR and covering the spelling/phonics rules. I like Abeka’s approach so I’ve been trying to combine both but I keep getting bogged down in my thinking when I try to do that…so I’ll have to play it by ear.

Reading is done everyday, sometimes several times a day. I eventually want to get to the point of writing some BAR lessons(from NP Reading Guide) to insure comprehension.

Art is covered is history or science lessons or bible study. As I read the science book dd drew a flower garden on the chalkboard. Last Friday ended up being art day. I let them take their huge art pads out in the garage and paint to their hearts content. We talked briefly about primary colors.

Another blessing of a book is their science book , Dr. Hooker’s A CHILD’S BOOK OF NATURE. I still have not come up with any ‘lesson’ , per se, for this book so we just do science in ‘read-aloud’ style. Our first 2 lessons were on Flowers and Our Love For Flowers. Today was so amazing. First off my ds(5) asked could I read to them about flowers today. That was not on my scheduled plan for today but I said yes. As we read, Dr. Hooker was talking about how mostly everyone likes flowers and how we can find prints/pictures of flowers on our clothes, carpets/rugs, sheets, furniture. I decided to point out to my children that we have flowers on a table ornament in ourl living room. Well, that science session turned into a flower hunt as I continued to read and with excitement my dc skipped and jumped around the house finding flowers on our picture frames, our clothes, our sheets, our carpets, framed artwork on the wall, etc., all over the place. I could feel the Spirit of the Lord in this and in this lesson…(this book is wonderful!!!). My children were so excited(you should have seen their smiles and their eyes get big as they began to recognize what God had given us in flowers). I talked and reasoned that flowers are beautiful and they come from God therefore God is beautiful…piggybacking on our history lesson this week about how God shows us HImself thru the things He has created…we can see His beauty and love for us as we look at/for His flowers. We talked about how flowers make us feel and inquired as to why we thought God would give us flowers. DD reasoned that God gave us flowers to make us feel good(b/c when we look at flowers we feel happy and not sad), to make us happy(as they were this afternoon)

How awesome it is to let the Lord lead in how to give/teach/minister His truth(s) to these precious children.

As I closed the book(b/c that lesson was over) both of my dc said very emphatically “MOM WE WANT YOU TO READ MORE”!!!

…so I did…I was soooo inspired that I decided to take the lesson outside so we could see real flowers as we read the next lesson on sap and how the sap runs thru the stem. I wanted them to touch and see a real stem while I read how the rose bud turns into a rose b/c of the sap running thru the stem. We then answered the questions at th end of the chapter and there concluded our science for the day.

It was absolutely wonderful. I thank God for being able to take and have the time to explore His wonderful world with my children by my side as we both learn to observe closely and appreciate God and all that He has done/provided for us.

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!!

It seems like it has been an eternity since I have been able to post anything. I”ve been so busy and every time we finish with our lessons and I think I have 15min. to myself the baby is pulling at me wanting to be rocked/held or someone is hungry b/c it is lunchtime or I something else more pressing needs to be tended to, like the house/dishes or I’m pouring over my lesson plans and praying/deciding how to ‘tweek’ them so as to meet the needs of my children and to insure ‘understanding’/teaching them so that they learn to reason. So I’m finally here at my blog and I will attempt to chronicle the last several days. I’ve been remiss at putting down what happened each day and now I don’t remember all that was done but I can give a ‘general’ picture of how our days went.

Last Friday was ‘Park Day’! We met another homeschool mom at the park with her dd and the children enjoyed the park.

This past Monday was the start of our ‘academia’ studies - we started with Bible Study and Arithmetic and Handwriting(Beginning Cursive). I figured those are THE most important right now so we do those FIRST. Somewhere in day I also go over their memory verse. DH gave them a memory verse on Sunday during our family worship and it is Heb. 11:1 from the Kid’s NIrV bible.

Bible Study

I’m using the NP Lessons for Grade 1(even though my dd is 2nd grade). I’m substituting other reading material for the Bible As Reader program. This week we are discussing and reviewing the principle that The Bible is God’s inspired Word…that men did not write the bible but God spoke to men on this earth and gave them the words to write. For dd’s oral reading (Bible As Reader) we read from The Children’s Book of The Bible. We are reading from the section HOW THE BIBLE CAME TO BE.

On Monday we discussed 2 Tim 3:16 and the purpose of the bible/scripture and the origin of the bible. I had dd draw her own original picture to make a divider page for Bible Study for her notebook.

Then we covered Arithmetic.
I”m using Abeka Grade 2 and I’ve been kind of agonizing over how to incorporate the content in the is workbook with how Ray’s teaches along with how GACE has laid out the arithmetic course…sounds crazy I know!! Anyway, I’ve decided to go with GACE’s layout(which is how I’ve written my arithmetic course content anyway and just use the workbook pages to reinforce what we do in Arithmetic lesson time.

On Monday, we started with oral counting by 1’s, 5,’s, and 10’s and did oral drill on addition combos. adding/subtr 0, adding /subtr 1. She completed the page in her Abeka text to ‘reinforce’(hopefully) what we did in our lessons.

I don’t remember if I read-aloud to them or not on Monday. Somewhere in here I don’t remember if it was after lessons or not I managed to have them clean their rooms and also take my Kindergartener thru some beginning phonics. All of this took us from 11:00 am - 2:00pm. I don’t know why it took us so long to do 2 subjects!! but it has been getting better with each day, I’m pleased to say.

After lessons and blessing their rooms (by freeing it from clutter) they were able to go out and swim in the pool(physical edu) and then we ate lunch. The rest of the day was spent by me reading thru my lesson guides to prepare for the next day.

Sometime in this day we practiced lower case e in our cursive handwriting.

Tuesday

Tuesday we covered:

We actually did Arithmetic first:
oral(and written) counting by 1’s, 5 and 10
worked with money(1,5, and 10 dollar bills, and dimes, pennies, nickels)
reviewed place value
intro. even and odd/counting by 2’s
completed page in workbook

We discussed Gen 1:5 - that (Arithmetic) Counting was established by God. She drew and colored her own original picture for her Arithmetic divider in her notebook

Bible - Principle: The Bible is God’s inspired Word
we read more from CBOB about HOW THE BIBLE CAME TO BE.

Literacy - discussed the purpose of being able to read, write, speak,(spelling and grammar) and the biblical origins of each
Ex 24:7 - Reading
Gen 1:1-3 - Speaking
Writing - Ex 24:4

DD reasoned that one (the most important) purpose of being able to read and write, spell and speak clearly and to have command of the English language is to understand God’s will, which is HIs word, to obey His Word and to be able to read the bible to others(from Ex 24:7)

Handwriting- lower case cursive i and t

Grammar - She did the page in her grammar book…This grammar is very weak in biblical foundation but I’ll have to add that when I get the time to study up on it. Right now I just need this workbook to cover the elements of grammar and to keep me on track.

After lessons they managed their ‘government’ of their rooms, ate lunch and we spent about 1 hour reading aloud an assortment of story(picture books). I’m noticing dd is reading more on her own…she had slacked off reading by herself..along with me slacking off in our read aloud time. I’m finding that as I have started reading aloud again she has taken off in her reading on her own again. She read 2 books on her own after I finished reading aloud and at night right before bed I told her to pick 2 more books to do her independent reading along with her bible before bed. She did with not complaints. Yea!!

We started at 10:30am and was done by 2:30

Wednesday(today)

Bible - same principle; discussed/reviewed divisions of the bible(Old/New Testament), read another section on How the BIBLE CAME TO BE called Writing the Law…this went into how Moses first wrote the law. This coincides so well with the COC which I have not even gotten to teaching yet!!!!!!!! My late mornings are sooooo busy and we spend like 3-4 hours getting our core subjects done along with read aloud and chores that we are ‘done for’ after lunch!!

Arithmetic
Handwriting
Phonics
Read Aloud/Oral Reading

We started at about 10:30 today and got done by 12:30…so we are getting the hang of our schedule.

Still no history units or science got done today. I think I’ll start next week with those.. This week we are just trying to get adjusted to our new schedule and get into a ‘groove’.

Also, she has homework or seatwork as Abeka calls it. I assign homework in the evenings after dinner and her bath. While she does her independent work(that reviews the days’ lesson) I can give the other two baths and put them to bed. Then she’s free to do her independent reading.

In between bible and arithmetic she gets a little break…either clean her room if not done before lessons or occupy the baby(play with him) while I work with my Kindergartener. In just the few days of school he is able to read words like at, it, mat, bat, mit(no extra t yet), sit, pit. Today we started with short e sound. We sing the song Be My Echo to the tune of Are You Sleeping? That has really helped him remember the vowel/letter sounds.

Things are going well. I MUST go now. It took me about 2 hours just to type this with the baby pulling at me, refereeing candy distribution, changing pamper, etc. Now the baby is sleep and I’ve gotta go get dinner done.

Until later!!!

Our first ‘official’ day of school was July 6, 2006. We started off with a bang with a trip to the Botanical gardens. We went with our homeschool support group(it was about 6 families in all..about 15 children). Once we got there they gave the children a ‘class’/presentation on bees and beehives. The children glued the queen bee, baby bees and worker bees onto their layout of the hive on their construction paper. They then went to another station and learned about bee antenna. They were then given their own set of ‘antennas’ to wear home. We were taken thru the garden ‘maze’ and stopped at different sights along the way to show how bees ’see’ and smell pollen, etc.

We were then able to walk thru the gardens on our own. We decided to take the ‘tram’ that gave us a tour of the garden and talked about it’s history.

We(and 1 other family) left and went home after our tram ride while some of the other families stayed and ate lunch at the garden. That was the jist of our first day of school.

It was a nice outing…I just wish it wasn’t so early in the morning as we tend to be night owls and late risers so getting up and trying to get out of the house was a bit of a trauma for us. We had to meet the other families at 8:45am(so we had to get up at 7:30am…uuugggghhhh….but we made it.