Wordless Wednesday - My view at breakfast

"There is no greater joy than to know that my children are walking in the truth." 3 John 1:4

Monday encouragement for myself

"He who guards his lips guards his soul, but he who speaks rashly will come to ruin." ~Proverbs 13:3

"Oh Lord, I call to you; come quickly to me.  Hear my voice when I call to you.  May my prayer be set before you like incense; may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice.  Set a guard over my mouth, O Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips." ~ Psalm 141:1-3

"O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!  You have set your glory above the heavens.  From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and avenger." ~Psalm 8:1-2

"The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble.  Those who know your name will trust in You, for You, Lord, have never forsaken those who seek you." ~ Psalm 9:9-10


Lord, you know that Mondays are often difficult days in our home.  This Monday is no exception.  I am emotionally and physically weary, and there are so many things and people vying for my attention.  Help me to praise You when I am feeling overwhelmed.  According to Psalm 8:2, praise defeats my enemy!  I know that satan is the enemy of my soul and wants me to live in a constant state of discouragement.  I cannot be effective when I am discouraged.  Though my own flesh is weak, as your child I claim Your strength!  I claim your grace for this day.  I claim your wisdom and love to flow from my lips, and not the darker thoughts that would like to be spoken.  I choose to praise You, for You are the same every day regardless of my circumstances.  Your love for me is wide and deep and all-encompassing, even when I fail and disappoint You.  You are unchanging, magnificent, holy God.  I praise and worship You.  Amen.

Little Man's I Can Read Party!

After nearly two years, Little Man and I finally finished this book (and he finished with flying colors I might add!) so we began planning his "I Can Read" party.

He chose his favorite two stories from his reading book and read them aloud to his assembled family members.

He showed them the picture after each of the two stories (which was always a highly anticipated moment for him, after each story throughout the book!)

In honor of learning how to read, hubby and I gave him his very first "real" Bible.  This picture is grainy but shows how excited he was to receive it!  It was not that long ago when the Bible was the primary textbook in schools, and it was used to teach children how to read so that they would be able to read God's precious Word for themselves!

It was very special that both sets of Little Man's grandparents were here to celebrate this milestone with him!  Here he is with my parents:

and with hubby's parents:

The whole gang!

Since that time, he has been reading his Bible almost non-stop.  He is nearly half way through Genesis now!!  May all my children always have this thirst for God's Word.

Congratulations Little Man!

Wordless Wednesday

Not the "quietest" quiet time, but meaningful and precious in its own way. :-)  First time Little Man actually read the Bible for himself during quiet time, rather than just looking at the pictures!

You know your child has been learning about a Biblical Worldview when.....

.....you are discussing the movie Spy Kids, and you ask your children why they think the older sister treated her younger brother so poorly at the beginning of the movie, and one of them immediately says:

"because everyone is born a sinner."

I LOVE our Bible Curriculum!!

We are going through Book 1 of the "What We Believe" series by Apologia Press, called "Who is God and Can I Really Know Him?" This is a four book biblical worldview series, geared for ages 6 to 14. Since our youngest is 6, and our oldest is 14, I thought perhaps it would be a perfect time to start this series together, and it has been wonderful. Love, love, love it.


I am loving the opportunity to systematically take our children through a course that teaches what worldviews are, what it means to have a biblical worldview, and how building our lives on the Rock of God's truth as opposed to the shifting sands of whatever seems good at the moment, is the best foundation for life.

There is an accompanying coloring book (which our two youngest use) and an accompanying spiral bound notebook (which our three oldest use) which give us the opportunity to interact with the material and write down (or color a picture of) what we are learning.

This is a little flapbook one of the boys made, with one page each, illustrating the seven ways to build our lives on the Rock of God's truth.


Then we talked about six ways to build our lives on sand. The older three copied these into their notebooks.


During each lesson there is a fun, hands on demonstration of one of the concepts presented. We had fun doing this optical illusion activity ~ to demonstrate that what we see with our eyes is not always the "truth". There was a fish bowl taped to one side of the pencil, and a fish taped to the other side. When we twisted the pencil between our hands really fast, it looked as if the fish was IN the fishbowl, when in fact it wasn't.



This is designed to be used a minimum of three days a week, which is how often we use it.

For my homeschooling friends who may have heard of the controversy surrounding this series in particular, I would encourage you to do your own research, pray, and then determine whether or not this would be a good fit for your family. And if you've never heard of the controversy, it basically centered on the fact that Dr. Jay Wile, author of the popular science series used by many homeschoolers, left Apologia (the company) because he couldn't agree with some of the doctrine taught in this worldview series, and the fact that his name had become virtually synonymous with Apologia led many people to assume that he endorsed every product published by Apologia Press, when in fact he did not.

Last summer my husband and I did copious amounts of reading on this issue, and read many reviews of the series (it is brand new, this is its first school year). We read Jay Wile's blog from back when he resigned from Apologia and every single comment. This information, coupled with prayer, allowed us to feel very comfortable teaching our children from this series, using it as the framework within which to disciple them as the Lord leads us. I am so thankful for the Lord's leading in this decision, as I am loving the book and the discussions that we are having as a result of it. Just another example of how we can trust God with every decision!

Our Week In Review

This past week we learned about the Mongols, Marco Polo, and the Far East. I had forgotten that the Mongol Empire was the largest empire ever formed in terms of land, larger even than Alexander the Great's Empire. Wow! Yet historians don't study it too much because the Mongols didn't really advance their culture. They didn't build cities to replace the ones they conquered and burned, they didn't create amazing architecture, or works of literature, or even a distinct political system. They pretty much destroyed and conquered, and therefore their empire was short lived. Fascinating to read about though!

We really enjoyed reading about Marco Polo, who helped usher in the Age of Exploration. He traveled for about 2 years to reach China, became friends with Kublai Khan (The Great Khan, as he was called, grandson of Genghis), served in his court for many years, and then journeyed home. His perspective of China and his telling of their achievements and inventions, helped open more trade between the East and the West, and gave people a desire to learn what else could be "out there".

Amazing how each era of history flows into the next! And amazing to see God's hand in and through it all!

What was different about this week:

We had a little friend join us for one day, as she had pink eye and couldn't go to her own classroom in public school. That changed the dynamic a bit, but we had fun with her, and she got all her own homework done while at our house!


Of course other people's toys are always more interesting....!


What worked well this week:

We finally were able to start our Bible curriculum for this fall! Yay for an organized schoolroom! We are using a Bible/Worldview program published by Apologia Press that includes three volumes. We will take two years to go through all three books. It appears to be perfect for the age spread of our children, and I am happy we can all go through this together.


Son C has taken to writing like a duck to water! He can't wait to come home from co-op each Friday afternoon so he can start on his writing homework immediately. Here he is doing writing on Sunday afternoon! (in co-op he is in a writing class with 3 other children, and he loves that he gets to learn with his friends!)


Something else that worked well this past week was the start of grammar with son C. I have always understood the homeschooling adage, "better late than early" to have sound educational principle behind it, but now I am really testing it for the first time. Son C is in the fourth grade and has had NO formal grammar up to this point. Please don't judge! :-) He has picked up a lot of grammar from his older siblings, and so far the adage appears to be true because he is understanding the terms and concepts right away and "catching up" at lightning speed.

We played preposition bingo every day for an entire week. He got to use chocolate chips as the bingo chips, and eat them afterward!



At the end of the week, I drew a doghouse on the whiteboard, and he named our imaginary dog "Goldie". I began to fill in prepositions around the doghouse (on the doghouse, over the doghouse, in the doghouse, beneath the doghouse, etc) and son C quickly took over the pen and wrote as many as he could fit. Then I wrote a sentence across the bottom of the whiteboard (pictured in red), taught him how to cross off the prepositional phrases because the subject and verb are NEVER found in them, and then he could easily identify the subject and verb of the sentence. We did this several times with other sentences.


This week (starting today) he is beginning work in a grammar book, so our work last week was to bring him up to speed so he would be ready for the bookwork. He is doing great and I love his enthusiasm!

Our Week in Review - Classical Greece, part 2

Before I tell you about our history studies, I just have to share this picture from Little Man's Bible Journal..... it has a story behind it, which I find hilarious!

We are reading through Psalms and Proverbs right now, reading the chapter from each book that corresponds to each day's date. So on March 16 we read Psalm 16 and Proverbs 16. The Proverbs are so interesting to read with the children.... each verse can be its own picture and I never know what they will choose to illustrate in their Bible journals. It is pretty amazing to look through them after class and see how they have chosen to illustrate some small gem of wisdom.

Little Man, of his own accord, chose to illustrate Proverbs 16:31, which reads, "Gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained by a righteous life." When he showed me this picture afterward, he said, "this is you, mommy. Your gray hair is like a crown. I think when your dye grows out this time, you should leave your hair gray and wear it like this." Hahaha! In addition to my lovely hair, I got a kick out of my pointy b**bs! I love that Little Man so much. He makes me smile.


We spent last week continuing our study of the classical period of Ancient Greece. We learned about some of the Greeks who made significant discoveries or advances in math, science, and philosophy. Fortunately for anyone with young children studying famous dead Greeks, there is a whole series of books about Greek mathematicians, scientisits, and astronomers, that are well written and very fun to read. A couple of our favorites last week were this book about Pythagoras, who developed several math formulas still in use today:


...and this one about Erasthosthenes (AIR-a-TOS-the-neez) who figured out a way to measure the circumference of the earth. Later it was realized that he came to within 200 miles of the actual distance around! Not bad!


We worked in our history notebooks last week, catching up on some explanation of architecture...



...and writing down some interesting facts we learned about other aspects of Greek life. We LOVE the lapbooks that Tapestry of Grace sells ~ what a great way for the boys to narrate back to me (and/or write down) what they have internalized from our reading!



In other news, our third grader, C, learned the difference between linear measure and the area of a square or rectangle! I guess this was appropriate since we learned about Greek mathematicians all week. At first it was hard for him to visualize, so I got the brainstorm to show him the difference between a ruler and a lego building board. That did it. He got it!


It was a great week of learning, and we are almost done with the Greeks! Very soon we will have our unit celebration and be on to the Romans!

Theme Verse

It took several weeks into the school year before our theme verse for the year became evident, so I was thrilled when I felt the Lord give us these words to say outloud each morning and meditate on throughout the year:


Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men. ~ Colossians 3:23

I found a poster with this verse on it, and it even pictures soccer players! (very appropriate!) We have displayed this poster prominently in our schoolroom and we recite the verse each morning. Then during devotions we pray that we will "work with all our heart". It has been sweet for me to hear the children pray this for each other.



Does your family have a theme verse for this year? I'd love to hear it if you do.

Our Week in Review

Here are a few highlights of our week last week.

In Bible we read John chapter 13, which talks about the Passover Feast which Jesus and his disciples shared together just before his arrest and crucifixion. This is commonly referred to as the "Last Supper". We talked about how this was Jesus' last chance to tell his disciples the important stuff. His last shot at imparting wisdom and truth to them. So we need to attach that weight of meaning to these words. His "last words" actually span the next 4 chapters, so we are not all the way through them yet, but we noted that one of the major things Jesus seemed to have wanted them to get, was to love one another as He loved us. I have been pondering what that means for me as His follower, and what it means for our family. Here are their Bible Journal pages of the last supper:



(Little Man chose to color a page from an Old Testament coloring book instead. A lovely prerogative of being the youngest child!) ;-)


We love our new schoolroom, but it has been rather chilly down there lately, especially since we still don't have a furnace (more on that in another post), so we have done school upstairs quite a bit this fall. Here Little Man is doing a preschool activity at the kitchen table and C is in the background doing math right in front of one of our borrowed space heaters.

Again, right in front of a space heater!


Son G had to do some correcting this week of 5 digit multiplication problems. Daddy helped check his work. :-)


And son C finished his Math U See Alpha book with a lesson on telling time! He was sooooo excited to learn about time, and when I gave him his new Beta book, his eyes were shining and he said, "I'm so tempted to start this book right away today!" Don't you just love that enthusiasm?


We have been working on writing every day this year, thanks to our wonderful little co-op!


I just wanted to highlight this dandy little writing tool that IEW sells, called a portable wall. It is only $7 on their website, and it is a tri-fold cardstock that visually shows all 9 IEW writing models, has an entire page of -ly adverbs, synonyms for the word "said" (which is a banned word), and loads of other helpful tools for writing. And when it's opened up, it helps cut down on distractions too. We use it almost daily and my children LOVE it! (I need to get a couple more!)


Daughter G worked on another science experiment this week from her Apologia General Science textbook. The purpose of this one was to illustrate the process of experimentation, and it was a wonderful illustration. First she had to gently drop an egg in water and see what happened. As you can see, it immediately sank to the bottom of the glass.


Then she added a tsp of salt, stirred it until it dissolved, and then recorded what happened to the egg. The first several times there was no change, but she continued this process 6 times until.......



......the egg floated! It began to float on the 4th attempt, but she continued adding a tsp at a time until the entire end of the egg was up out of the water. We talked about trial and error, and how important it is to not give up when the first experiment you do to explain a hypothesis, fails. We can learn more from our "failures" than our successes at times! (hmmm, great life lesson couched in science here!)

For this week, we are doing half days today and tomorrow, and Wed will be getting ready for Thanksgiving all day long. The kids are super excited for Thursday, and so am I!