Our Grace Journey has the 2009 Inductive Advent study up on the website! Print it now so you are ready for Sunday!
While we have a usable Jesse Tree from HERE (I have blogged about it in the past), I found something that I think Young M and I will work together on for next year (perhaps a set for us and then a set to be made and put away for each child - for when they have their own households). It is a cross-stitched set - what a wonderful heirloom idea (or hope chest!).
We have Bartholomew's Passage ready to go. I just have to go buy our candles for our Advent wreath.
We will also continue our deviation from our regularly scheduled language arts and "reading" curriculum (but keeping up with our history/lit readings from AO) and work on the Christmas Unit Study I bought a couple of years ago from www.unitstudy.com. I also have a freebie lapbook from Hands of a Child that are purely "fun" and not any kind of educational, lol, Free Here! Young M wants to also do the Symbols of Christmas lapbook from HOAC as well. I suspect she is loading herself up, but, as long as she gets her other work done, she can go for it.
That and along with making a few Christmas presents for some people, cookies (fun, free e-book from Homeschoolfreebies.com last week) and hopefully, some caroling, we should have a fun, Christ-centered month leading up to Christmas.
Sorry for the radio silence over here. Baby G is 1 and walking everywhere - he keeps us all very, very busy. I have a brief moment while he is busy trying to sweep with the children's broom (one that my parent's bought them from Nappanee, IN several years ago - it is the real corn straw deal, but with a short handle).
Anyway, I decided that we were seriously stuck in a homeschooling rut and decided to take a break from much of our regularly scheduled curriculum and do a unit study on Thanksgiving that I had purchased 2-3 years ago, but had not used. I think I will be adding in a Lapbook to go along with it. Currently, the children are working on Amanda Bennett's Thanksgiving Unit Study. I have Young M working in the Upper Level and Med. G. in the Lower Level. I also have a Hands of a Child Pilgrims Lapbook, I think one on Natives and one for total Thanksgiving goofieness (I have had a couple of these for several years!). While still doing their Math (and Young M, her Latin), the Unit Study will take place of most of the rest - Lit, History, handwriting, etc. Plus, they are learning research skills.
The AB Unit Study, for each day, has a quote or scripture to copy into their notebooks, Words of Wisdom to look up the definitions and copy into their notebooks, a section on Interesting People and Places that includes various activities. Yesterday was about King David. Today is some mapwork. Then there is a section called Read and Discover. There are various books she recommends to get from the library and/or websites to look at for information. She also includes some out of publication (and copyright) pieces within the unit and a list of resources for each age group and family activities/books/videos. There are also included a couple of craft activities. Needless to say, because they get to use the computer, the encyclopedias and dictionary along with their literature, they are currently enjoying this process.
More often than not, we homeschoolers are asked why we homeschool and get the comment "I could never homeschool my children." after you tell them why.
I want to reverse the question. If you send your child to a government (public) school, why do YOU do so? A simple enough question, but I doubt the answer is as simple as you like to think.
Then, after you answer the question, have a good look at your answer. How good are those answers? Are they solid, well supported answers or are the generic fluff. And if you were to tell me that your school is different/better than all the others, I would solidly challenge you on it to show me how/why.
You don't really have to tell me, but seriously - turn off your television, turn off your phone and put away your gossip magazine and turn on your brain and really think about your decision to trust the government with educating your children (after all, there are a whole lot of us who do not necessarily care to trust the government with our healthcare...and this is the care and training of your children's minds).
The tone of this list, in general, is a little snarky, and yet, she is on to something. This one in particular cracked me up - probably because I have heard it before. Feel free to click on the link above to read the whole list, but be forewarned I do not necessarily agree with all of her views.
17 Stop saying, "Oh, I could never homeschool!" Even if you think it's some kind of compliment, it sounds more like you're horrified. One of these days, I won't bother disagreeing with you any more.
So, today is Monday. The Monday after my husband was home all last week. So, there is some semblance of hope of a return to the normal routine, I guess.
We did manage to get most of our lessons done today. However, M has misplaced her Math book and G, his reading....I often wonder how this happens in the space of 24 hours. Is there a space/time continuum that I am not fully aware of into which lesson books (and answer keys) can just disappear into? What happens that they turn up in random places. Last week, I had the children looking high and low for M's Language Arts teacher guide....only to find it on my keyboard tray (fairly certain is was not there the day before and I know I did not put it there). Certainly not like the child is using it to cheat (my checking of her work reflects that she goes WAY too fast and misses too much in her speed for that to be the case, lol!). So there must be some other valid explanation for this.
I did finish reading the the story of Aladdin to G out of the Blue Fairy Tale books (my favorite series of Fairy Tales stemming back to when I was a girl in Indiana and even in OK). M, who was listening in, commented that this tale certainly was not like the Disney version - I think she might have seen it once in recent years. But, she is right - sure is not like Disney. I suspect it is this violation of books that has curtailed my children's desire to go to Disney World - they suspect that if Disney has screwed up the fairy tales, the odds are good they have messed up the rides as well, lol! However, that does not impede them from wanting to go to Epcot (I suppose they figure Disney cannot mess up the countries as easily?). Anyway, I do have a couple of other read-alouds I want to accomplish tonight, but it won't take very long.
I managed to play with the baby and get him to take 2 decent naps, which allowed me to get a 20 min. recharge in there. I did accomplish getting the dishwasher loaded and running. And maybe, just maybe, I will get a bit of organization to the explosion known as M's room in tonight....it could happen.
Tomorrow, we have the lovely diversion of piano lessons. We enjoy them, but it sucks a full 2 hours out of our day by the time we figure in travel time, etc. Sigh. G is currently whiney about practicing piano, but M was whiney at the same stage and now she loves it!
Anyway, today was Monday - it can only get better from here - right?
Other children around the country save up for things like video games or American Girl dolls and such.
Not my children. My children have saved up birthday monies for their own set of Jonathan Park Communicator Watches (and yes, they really work, lol!). I have kindly offered to pay for part of the shipping for them. I was able to find them elsewhere, but the difference in price/shipping was around a dollar or so and I would rather Vision Forum have the profits for their ministry instead (especially since it was their catalog and their radio show that inspired the children).
Currently, my son wants to be a Creation scientist with vertebrate paleontology as a specialty. This courtesy of listening to Jonathan Park, lol! They listen to it every Saturday morning (or Sunday afternoon if they miss it on Saturday) and we started buying them the various seasons cd's for birthday's. They already own the first 2 seasons right now. To me, it is amazing that my children love to listen to radio shows in this day and age. But, I suppose that is way better than watching TV. We are thankful that VCY has these great radio shows for the children each week.
I think my favorite part of their listening to the radio shows (and reading) is how it translates into their play (and their imagination). I have also seen a change in how the neighbor children play. They attend PS and when we moved here a year ago, the only thing they knew how to play was "Hannah Montana", "High School Musical" and the "Penguins of Madagascar" (???) and some "star" type show. Now, they play "Narnia", explorers, spy's, being animals, etc. Lots of imagination instead of copying TV (well, Narnia is pushing it, but I would rather them play that than the other stuff). I have seen many a sword battle out in the yard and many a prisoner being held, lol!
I think the other difference is the kind of books that they read or have read to them. Rather than being twaddly worthless books, they are well written books and inspire the child to "live" them while they read them. Then, they take that story, and add it into their imaginary play. I suspect that most children, now, at the ripe old age of 10 no longer do much imaginary play. I am thankful that our homeschooling has allowed that kind of fun to develope in my children. I am thankful, too, that my parents were readers. It encouraged me to read. And I know a lot of what I read translated into play outside with the neighborhood children when we lived in Indiana (okay, I admit it - we also played Elvis and Fabian - my brother being Elvis and one of the other girls brothers was Fabian - we girls were the fans chasing them, lol! - and yet, Elvis was dead by then, LOL - {shrug}).
Anyway, if you are stuck in the rut of just doing "workbook" style homeschooling, please relook at what your children are reading - it makes all the difference in the world!
One of the beauties about homeschooling is the ability to stop all normal activities and focus on a project. The children are participating in a geography fair this Sunday afternoon.
M has picked out Belize for her country. We were able to get some neat information from a family at church. They were missionaries in Guatemala for several years, but spent time in Belize as well.
Mid. G & I decided together that rather than an entire country, we would focus on one state. He decided to do Oklahoma (for obvious reasons). It is kind of fun to help him out since I have so many pictures from various areas of the state. By the way, did you know it is illegal to hunt whales in the OK waterways?? I could be in trouble for all the time my friend Kathy & I spent looking for that whale in Catoosa.... Hmmm - maybe I will scan the picture of me and that whale!! In doubt about that whale?? Check it out HERE, lol!
Anyway, Mid. G is on the Encarta thing on the laptop. He loved picking out books about OK and getting out Grampie's encyclopedia's to look things up in it, too! M has taken the project on as her own, with only limited help from me! I will post pictures of the finished projects.
A journal of our home educating endeavors and our walk through life.
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