Weekly Wrap-up

It was a crazy weekend so the weekly wrap-up comes as the next week begins. Oh, well!

Last week was full of momentus occasions. Tink (dd7)is really starting to take off in her writing and spelling. She's always loved to write but recently I've noticed her grammar and spelling coming along quite nicely. She also is trying to loose her first tooth (well, she had two pulled by the dentist but this would be her first to loose by herself). Right now we call her, "Buck-tooth" because the permanent tooth has pushed her baby tooth out into an awkward position. Funny and fitting right here at Halloween.

Man-Man (ds5) began putting letters together this week to form words. He started reading! He's always asking me, "Mommy, what does this spell?" and then spelling whatever word he sees to me. So I realized that we don't need to work on letter sounds much more (he's got that down), he's ready to read. I'm surprised because Tink was a lot older before she was ready. That just shows you that each child is different and wonderful in their own way.

Speaking of doing things sooner than I expected, Princess (dd2) started potty training this past week. She just turned 2 on August 30 so this came as a shock to me. My pediatrician warned me at her 2 year check up that due to the fact that her vocabulary skills are so high she'd probably be potty trained by Christmas. This too, was unexpected. Man-Man was three days away from turning 3 before he was trained, and Tink was 2 1/2. Princess has done quite well. She wears "big girl panties" at home during the day and pull ups for bed and when we're away from the house. I must say that I have to train them in actual underwear because they have NO PROBLEM going to potty in a pull up. I guess it's too much like a diaper. So the panties are out and mom's on call all day!

The weekend was so busy! We had a birthday party on Saturday morning for a dear friend and went straight from that to our local college's homecoming parade. My adopted college student was Homecoming Queen so we had to go cheer her on. We came home to get a little nap in before getting dressed in our costumes for Halloween. Tink went as Padme Amidala from Star Wars (Princess Leia's mom), Man-Man was Batman, and Princess was Strawberry Shortcake. I'll post more pics in the next post. We had so much fun! We always do. The kids have been to this every year since they were born. It's a tradition of ours. We came home and trick-or-treated a little in the neighborhood and then we handed out candy. The kids really had a ball and they especially loved handing the candy out. What a fun day!

Well, I need to begin our week now. God bless everyone in their own homeschool journey!

Jill

Public Schools doing away with books?

My mom recently emailed me a copy of this article from the Tupelo, MS Public School District's website. They were praising the fact that by the end of this semester all children and teachers in grades 6-12 will have personal computers. Now instead of giving each child a text book to read during the year (which I have issues with anyway...) they will get a diluted form sent to them via email from their teacher.

The project will be largely paid for by money the district normally spends on textbooks and photocopies, Shaver said. Instead of providing textbooks for each of its students, the district will now just have a set of textbooks for each subject and classroom. Teachers creating handouts for students will now make those handouts into electronic documents, or PDFs, and email them to students.

I take serious issue with this. Why not let the children read for themselves? Why not let them make their own inferences and have their own opinions? I just don't see the benefit of having a personal computer in exchange for a book. Albeit, textbooks are horrible ways to teach anyway...but at least it's better than a teacher handout. Oh, let's add this article to the list of reasons that I choose to school my children in our home. Now, I'm signing off of this computer to go and read an actual book! Goodnight!

Pumpkin Time!

I must admit that Halloween is my least favorite time of year. I love the weather and I love watching the kids dress up and go Trick-Or-Treating but other than that I really would rather skip this day. Tink (dd7) asked the other day if I would celebrate this "holiday" if I didn't have kids. I told her, "No, honey, the kids make it o.k. but other than that it's just a holiday for Satan." Obviously Man-Man (ds5) was listening because when we went to Wal-Mart to get a pumpkin he loudly proclaimed across the store, "Mom, I though we didn't celebrate Halloween because it was for Satan!" I had to laugh. It's true, but nonetheless the kids wanted to carve a pumpkin. So we made it happen.

We host a group of college students from our church every Tuesday night and I seized the opportunity to have the college students assist my children in this task. Everyone had a wonderful time! It started out as a selfish request on my part but turned into a wonderful night full of memories.

We started out the night by eating and celebrating one of our student's birthdays. Then we had all of the "kids" (ours and the college kids) draw a picture of what they would like the Jack-o-lantern to look like. Tink was the judge of the contest and the top two designs were then drawn onto the pumpkins. To help our kids feel more a part we let them color in the face with markers before we carved it. This was a great idea because Princess (dd2) had her own baby pumpkin to color the entire night.

Above are pictures of the finished products. What a wonderful night and a fun way to get the pumpkin carving done.

Jill

Answers in Genesis

How do the Dinosaurs fit into the Bible?
How did Dinosaurs die?
Was the earth really created in 6 days?
How do you explain carbon dating?
Why do scientists insist the earth is millions of years old but the Bible says it's 6000 years old?
Who did Cain marry?
How did all of the animals fit into the ark?

Have you ever asked or been asked any of these questions? Do you know the answers?


Our church just finished up a two day/7 session conference put on by Answers in Genesis. The speaker was CEO and President of AIG, Ken Hamm. This conference was best described by a friend of mine, "lifechanging"! I have always known that homeschooling was best for our family and this just strengthened my resolve all the more. The things that I was taught in school, things which are still being taught in public schools, are simply not true and not consistent with the Word of God. Many churches don't even know where to stand when a topic such as "old earth vs. new earth" comes up. Did God create the world in 6 days? 6- 24 hour days? Evolution? God allowing suffering?

O.K. basically this was the most amazing Apologetics conference ever! We came home with tons of books and resources that will take me years to comb through. But at least I know that if my children ask questions such as these, I can give them a definite answer and not simply say, "I don't know about that...but just trust in Jesus." This is why we're loosing our children. We don't have the answers and don't know where to find them.

This web site, Answers in Genesis, is full of info that you may find helpful in answering some of life's biggest question. What a resource we have right at our fingertips. They even have constructed a new Creation Museum in Cincinatti, KY. Our family is planning to go as soon as we're able.

If you're ever given the opportunity to hear Ken Hamm speak I urge you to make every effort to attend. You're life will be forever changed, as well as the lives of your children. If nothing else, go to this website and devour everything you possibly can so that we can store up the Word of God as a sword of the Spirit! God bless!

Weekly Wrap-up

I love this idea that I just found from Rose Cottage. It's called the Weekly Wrap-up. I think I'd like to try to do this each week as a way to look back and see what we've been up to. We never get entirely through my lesson plans each week (but hey, what teacher does?). I really do that on purpose. We have wonderful, blessed days where one subject may take us through the entire day...or it may just take a few minutes. Isn't that what learning is all about? I take the lead from the kids and we sometimes end up a little behind (on paper) but miles ahead in reality.

So this week was very good week for our nature study and art/handiworks. We had a few days of beautiful Fall weather and we took full advantage of this. Two days at the park and two nature studies in one week! Wow! Like I mentioned in previous posts, the nature studies have really become a way of life in our homeschool and the kids even think of their own topics to discover/explore. Monday's nature study was helping to find the different aspects of nature at the park versus our house. This led to a wonderful language arts session afterwards which incorporated spelling, copywork, grammar, punctuation, and paragraph structure. Wow! I'm no where close to teaching those things in my grammar lesson book. But the questions came up and the opportunity to teach was there. I took it!

Today we did the same thing. Dd7 has Strep throat so we've been keeping a low profile for a couple of days. While Ds5 was in KinderTots today I took the girls to the park nearby and thankfully no one else was there. We decided to walk around looking at the different types and colors of the leaves. We collected a few and brought them home to draw and write about them. The same result happened...we had a wonderful language arts lesson and she didn't even know it. And the artwork is simply beautiful.

We also worked on our handiworks this week. The kids have been making clay structures off and on recently. They have a lot of items dried and today we decided to paint them. Even Dd2 got in on the painting. We gave them to Daddy since today is his birthday. Ds5 helped me cook breakfast this morning (I let the kids help me cook at least a couple of times a week...they love it and I love the extra opportunity to teach!). He even let Dd2 help stir the chocolate chip pancakes (a family favorite that we end up eating at least once a week!).

Dd7 has been working hard on her piano lessons as well. I try to remember to have her practice each day but I must admit that it rarely gets done on the weekends. I just never seem to remember unless we're doing school. But she still gets her 5 practices a week in. She's very good and almost done with her first set of books. She's far surpassed me already and I'm no good when she has questions. But she can usually figure it out on her own.

As I mentioned earlier, this was a sick week for us and I was afraid that that meant no school. Quite the contrary! We took all day Tues and Wed. reading books in bed. I got most of our AO reading for the week done on Tues. and on Wed. I let her pick what she wanted to read. Her first choice? Shakespeare! She's too much like her Mamma! We both love Shakespeare. Except that I never started learning the works until the 8th grade! Obviously, we read the story versions, but still they are very difficult and confusing. She just loves a challenge though. We began Viking Tales this week and it's already a hit for us. I hope that continues.

Ds5 is doing great on his letters and letter sounds. We're farther than I thought we'd be by this time of the year. I figure he'll be putting words together very soon. He's already doing C-A-T and other three letter words. But I don't push him. He asks me and I tell him. I'm a firm believer that they will read when they are ready and pushing them too early is the wrong approach. But I know that each child will be ready at different times. Dd7 is an excellent reader. She reads American Girl and Little House on the Praire books with no problem. Yet she didn't start reading until the first grade. Ds5 is in K-4 technically (although I'm doing K with him this year) and he's close to starting to read. I love seeing how each child is different. That's one of the joys of homeschooling!

Well, it's been a busy, full, fun week where we've learned a lot more than I expected. The sickness didn't keep us down. It just kept us from doing math (my daughter's best...but LEAST favorite subject). But we're way ahead in math anyway so I gave her a break this week. Next week though...is a different story. Until then...God bless!

The Gentle Art of Learning

Yesterday was a classic CM day for us. It started out somewhat different and I was worried we wouldn't get an entire school day in. My dd7 spent the night at a friend's house because the public schools had parent/teacher conferences the next day. I meant to pick her up early but due to a Dr's appt I didn't get her until after 10. Usually this means the day is shot for us. But yesterday was different. I decided that it was simply too beautiful to pass up the park on the way home so I told the kids that if they did their nature study at the park then we could play when it was done. We've had over 4 weeks of rain straight here already this Fall and we're tired of not seeing the sunshine and God's beautiful world! So the kids all jumped at the chance to play outside. We ended up running into two other close friends who'd decided to take advantage of the beautiful weather as well so it turned out perfect.

My instructions for this 1 mile walk that we went on were to find pieces of nature that we don't see in our backyard. That's it. The kids were finding things left and right. They had so much fun and we even carried a few samples home to investigate further. They had a ball! The best part was that my ds5 wanted to go on the nature walk INSTEAD of playing on the huge playground. My SON wanted this! I was amazed. This nature study is truly turning into something special in our home!

We got home and went about the rest of the day as normal with lunch, chores, and naps. When the naps were over we opened up all of the windows in the school room and the kitchen and dd2 and ds5 played outside all afternoon. I told dd7 to start with drawing a picture of her nature walk. She drew a beautiful illustration of the items that we saw and I followed that activity by asking her to write about it. Now, she loves writing. She's written many children's books and poems already. Writing is a gift that she has. Yet usually when I ask her to write things for school she just makes a list. She did that again today. So I sat down with her and explained what a paragraph is and how we need sentences to make a paragraph. We turned her list into about 5 different sentences and she wrote them out on a scratch sheet of paper. We then corrected her spelling and punctuation before she wrote her final draft for her nature journal.

I realized while she was doing this that even though we were still working on science we actually had covered grammar, punctuation, spelling, and copywork all in that one activity! We didn't need to have seperate activities for each thing. I was amazed that after she completed the assignment we needed only to finish math and we were done with school for the day. She so enjoyed sitting in the kitchen with me, windows open and the cool Autum air blowing in, watching her brother and sister play outside while completing a story of her own making. Now THAT has to be what Charlotte Mason describes as the "gentle art of learning". Just because we didn't use a specific curriculum for language arts and spelling doesn't mean that she didn't learn just as much. I know for a fact that she learned much more! Now, off to teach another day! God bless!

A Time for Family and God's Handiworks

Today we had another nature study adventure. These have honestly become our very favorite parts of the week. Even my dd2 talks about our nature studies. The other day we were playing on a playground waiting for Dd7 to get out of her enrichment school and Ds5 was playing on the swingset. He was swinging and looking at the playground surrounded by huge beautiful trees. He said to me, "Mom, this would be a great place to have a nature study!" Yes, it truly would. It warmed my heart that while playing on a playground surrounded by plastic structures on which to play he would be thinking of our beloved nature studies.

So today we went out. We worked on the Nature Study Outdoor Hour's 2nd lesson today. Yes, we've done about four nature studies but we're only on their second lesson (we sometimes do our own observations). Today the assignment was to be still, quiet, and listen. Out we went and I must admit that quiet does not always come easily in my house. But we did the best we could. I never realized that I could hear crickets so loudly in the middle of the day. My Dd7 first noticed them. We then heard at least three different types of birds. We heard the sound the wind makes as it's blowing through the bronze colored leaves still hanging barely onto the limbs in the trees above. We heard the way the leaves sound while rustling under our foot steps.

We decided to touch as well as listen. We noticed the difference in the way smooth living leaves feels as opposed to the dried, crackling feel of the dead ones. We saw a vine growing up a tree and noticed that it felt prickly and hard. We felt the soft figs that were growing in one of the trees (at least I think that's what they are...we're waiting on Daddy to make a definite determination).

We also saw the beauty of our God's world. We saw the robin eating his food from the ground and scurrying to his tree home when we came too close. We saw that a few leaves were still in the trees while most have fallen to the ground. We saw that some trees were in fact, still green.

This was a fascinating lesson for all of us and it only took a few quick minutes. We came back in and listed on three different charts the things we saw, heard, and felt. Then Dd7 copied our lists into her notebook.

I can honestly say that our nature studies have become something I look forward to, rather than dread. It's not "just another thing to do" for us but it's a stress free time to observe our Lord and His wonderful handiworks.