Highlights from Weeks 2 and 3

I have a confession. Week 2 actually took two weeks to complete. And I am just now getting around to posting about week 3. We should be on week 5 by now, but are actually on week 4 in the fifth week of school. Confused yet? My head is spinning. In a nutshell, we have been crazy busy.


Overall things are going fairly smoothly. We seem to be in our groove. This is the first year that we have gotten into our groove so quickly and it is also the first year we have taken so much time off during the summer. I am convinced we all needed the mental break.

Here are a few of my favorite moments from Weeks 2 & 3

During our morning meeting we have been using our JOY prayer cards. J for Jesus. We spend time praising Him by praying scripture. This week we prayed Hebrews 12:2 as we thanked Jesus for being the author and perfector of our faith. O is for others. We prayed for those who have never heard of God. And Y is for yourself. We prayed 1 Thes. 5:6 that God would help us be self-controlled in our thoughts and actions. Each morning my children choose which one they want to pray and we join together in prayer. I am not much for scripted prayer time, but I am very for focused prayer. It is a beautiful moment at the beginning of our day.

We had a lesson this week during Morning Meeting about honesty and it couldn't have come at a better time. The morning of the lesson, Caleb (4 years old) chose to take some tickets off of his sister's board and put them on his own. (we do AK) When I asked him where those tickets came from he thankfully owned up to what he had done immediately. Right after this incident, we started MM with the ice cream and salt lesson about lying. Here's the skinny on the lesson (idea came from here) I gave the kids each a bowl of ice cream. We talked about choices that please the Lord. Then I sprinkled a good amount of salt over their ice cream and talked about how we sometimes make choices that do not please the Lord and because we are often embarrassed of our behavior we try to cover it up with a lie.I then poured chocolate syrup on their ice cream and asked them if they wanted to try it. They knew the salt was still there even though you couldn't see it. Each tried a bite with disgust. The lesson: the bad choice is still there even though you tried to cover it up with a lie. Then I took a bowl with dried salt in it and we talked about how Jesus is the only one who can wash those unpleasing choices away. We dipped the bowl in some water and the bowl was clean again. I used the incident with Caleb as an example with the kids. He made a bad choice to "steal" tickets from Julia. However, he chose to take responsibility for that choice right away and did not lie about it. I praised him for doing the right thing in that moment. And in case you are wondering, yes I did give the kids new scoops of ice cream to enjoy. They thought they were living the high life eating ice cream at 8 o'clock in the morning.

I love teaching science! I am so happy to be back in an Apologia book this year learning about Flying Creatures. We did an activity during week 2 that didn't go as planned. We were to make two gliders, one with long narrow wings and the other with short wide wings to see which would glide the farthest. We followed the instructions to the "T" or so I thought. The experiments bombed. The glider that should have gone farther to teach the fact about flight didn't go that far. Oh well. We had fun trying. We also have used the book Genesis for Kids. Neat book, but I have already given up on it. Several of the activities we tried have all failed. I think we will just stick with Apologia for our science this year.

During week 3, we learned about the Jewish Feast of Rosh Hashanah. (say that out loud.... it's just fun to say) Rosh Hashanah is all about celebrating the new year and beginnings. It is also about repentance, rememberance, and revelation. During the week we made shofars using party horns, toilet paper tubes, and tape. I am sure my neighbors were hating me that day when I let them loose in the backyard with the shofars. At the end of the week, we had a special dinner for Rosh Hashanah which included celebrating God's new fruits (we tried pomegranate), dipping apples in honey ("your words are sweeter than honey"), and celebrating God's creation through the blessing of the wine.(this time we used sparkling grape juice instead of real wine... the kid's were thankful) We did a VERY condensed version of the celebration but it was a special time nonetheless.

We also learned about early civilizations and with this learned about early forms of writing. We learned about cuneiform writing. The kids got to write their name in cuneiform and also make cookie cuneiform tablets. Fun and yummy!

One of my favorite things to do with my children is to read aloud to them. Right now we are reading Tanglewoods Secrets. I have been pleasantly surprised with this book. And if my children are really listening, not just with their ears but with their hearts I am confident that God is teaching them some things.

As usual, there is so much more is going on that I would love to share with you, but there is just not enough time to share it all. Here are a few more pictures from weeks 2 and 3...

This is what Benjamin does most days during school

He's is working hard!

Some days we just need to start our day with donuts!

Caleb learning about measurement

Patterns

Counting

Gummy Bear experiment

Isaac's timeline

Writing spelling words with lemon juice

Julia's timeline

Memory Verse work

Lemon Juice spelling words

Benjamin "helping" Isaac practice

Counting

Art Lesson

Apologia Flying Creatures

Benjamin loves the piano

Working on her Apologia notebook

If Benjamin is not getting into something, he is usually right here hugging on my leg begging to be held. Love him so!

I want to take a moment to say I love homeschooling. Some days I get frustrated. Some days I am delightfully full from a day of enjoyable learning with my kids. Some days I fall into bed at night so tired I can't think straight. Homeschool for our family goes far beyond the books. It is for His Kingdom. I am confident that God is blessing our efforts.

On a less serious note, come back and check out my next post. I am going to show you the less glamorous side of our homeschool days. Reality Check!