Thy mercy my God is the theme of my song the joy of my heart and the boast of my tongue thy free grace alone from the first to the last hath won my affection and bound my soul fast
Without thy sweet mercy I could not live here sin would reduce me to utter despair but through thy free goodness my spirits revived and he that first made me so keeps me alive
Thy mercy is more than a match for my heart which wonders to feel it's heartless depart dissolved by thy goodness I fall to the ground and weep for the praise of the mercy I've found
Great father of mercies,thy goodness I own and the covenant love of thy crucified son all praise to the spirit whose whisper divine seals mercy and pardon and righteousness mine
I hope you all had a good and productive week. We are 3 weeks away from our Christmas break and doing well.
This week we were able to do all the things that we were supposed to. I have been trying to keep a cold off bay. Johann had a cough from last week, but is getting better. And dad is trying to keep it all away from him (getting sick with his illness is not recommended).
Here is what we did though: Science, we moved on to species and Zach seems to be quite interrested.
Reading, we are continuing on with our BJU readers and narration. This week we did retelling of story and summary of ideas.
History, we moved on to the times of the Pilgrims. Zach was very excited to realized that we had visited quite a few of the original colonies.
Math, we finished the Singapore 1A and we are both exited about that. We did weight and measurements this week and Zach had fun. Here is Zach measuring the wall with his hand.
Here he is measuring the desk using a pen:
Here he is measuring his truck with blocks: Spelling, I had held back in doing it, because of all the writing involved, but surprisingly on Monday Zach wanted to do spelling, so, we had a nice spelling session using a board and markers. I forgot to take a picture of that. Hopefully he will do it again next week and I will remember to take a pic.
This week we have moved on to a different topic in our FLL: Sentences. That`s exiting. We love FFL but sometimes it tends to get repetitive, which in itself is good but . . . Anyway, this week was a bit more exiting.
Here he is putting some sentences in order
I had also forgotten to mention that since we came back from our vacation 2 months ago, we have started doing Daily Geography once a week, and Zach has been enjoying it very much.
As for Joho he has been doing his reading with dad as well as his regular math games, as shown here, and this week he also did some sight word matching, which you can see here.
Last week I mentioned that the boys have been into firefighting these days. Here is a pic of them rescuing a house (that they built).
Another thing that happened this week was on Monday when Johann was hanging on my arm as usual while I was getting a dish out of the fridge, and blam, on the floor it went with the freshly, as of the night before, baked apple crisp. I let out a shout, of course, but by God's grace, and only His grace, managed to keep it together. My husband reminded of how this would be a perfect chance for me to demonstrate forgiveness and so I did. This was one of those dishes that goes both in the oven and on the stove. Both my husband and I loooved it. Anyway, today, my husband brought home a cast iron dutch oven (we've never owned one before). Thank you hubby!
As mentioned before I am always trying to spice up our homeschool and come up with extra things for teaching different subjects. Now I am not very creative, so much of my ideas are either from somewhere or a derivative of another idea. Here is a sample of things I have done.
For language, in the past, I have made up matching cards of sight words for the kids to practice them. They've mastered them for a while now, but as I took them out to give them to a friend of mine, Joho decided he wanted to do them.
Today for our math lesson, I was supposed to have a weighing scale, but I did not. So here is what I came up with:
Lapbooks I have been working on:
As we go through our First Language Lessons book, I am making a lapbook to go along with it
This is one to go along our Building Spelling Skills
I finally starting on the Biomes one
Some visuals:
I am going to start teaching them about Continents, so, I found these continent maps at abcteach.com and a song to learn the continents at Lessons Pathways.
Here are the words of the song, sung to the tune of Up Goes the Weasel
Asia, Africa, Antartica,
Australia and Europe too,
North America, South America
These are the seven continents
And here is our latest addition: The idea came from Pumpkin Patch, a blog that definitely deserves a visit. You will find the template and the instructions there. The boys were really happy to see this clock when they woke up this morning. Hopefully they will know how to tell time in no time.
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Here is love, vast as the ocean,
Loving kindness as the flood,
When the Prince of Life, our Ransom,
Shed for us His precious blood.
Who His love will not remember?
Who can cease to sing His praise?
He can never be forgotten,
Throughout Heaven's eternal days.
On the mount of crucifixion,
Fountains opened deep and wide;
Through the floodgates of God's mercy
Flowed a vast and gracious tide.
Grace and love, like mighty rivers,
Poured incessant from above,
And Heaven's peace and perfect justice
Kissed a guilty world in love.
Let me all Thy love accepting,
Love Thee, ever all my days;
Let me seek Thy kingdom only
And my life be to Thy praise;
Thou alone shall be my glory,
Nothing in the world I see.
Thou hast cleansed and sanctified me,
Thou Thyself hast set me free.
In Thy truth Thou dost direct me
By Thy Spirit through Thy Word;
And Thy grace my need is meeting,
As I trust in Thee, my Lord.
Of Thy fullness Thou art pouring
Thy great love and power on me,
Without measure, full and boundless,
Drawing out my heart to Thee.
Ok, one of the reason I started blogging is because I enjoyed reading other blogs. I found so many treasures and valuable info, helps, tips and ideas, that I thought I should give back to the blogosphere and share of what I was learning here in the blogosphere and on my own.
So, I have decided to make a weekly post which I will call Link Treasures to share some of the wonderful articles and post I come across during that week.
Another week is is done. We had a pretty nice week mixed with school and some fun activities. Monday night we went to one of the boys' playdate friend birthday party, and they had their regular playdate on Wednesday as well.
For school, we are still trodding along in our Math. We were able to cover the shape chapter in 4 days, leaving today a Math free day.
FLL is going well as well. We are at our 5th poem memorization and Zachary is doing very well with it (it is a 3 stanzas one). It is called Mr. Nobody. I particularly liked today's lesson about dates, as I think Zach needed that one.
In science, we finished our biome unit with the aquatic biome. I have been lagging with the science experiments. Hopefully I will still do them before moving on to the next unit (or may be not, we'll see. . .) I did start on the lapbook on this unit, but I can't say when that is going to be done . . .
History is going ok as well. Nothing special to report here.
We all enjoyed our outing out in the leaves on Monday. You can check that post here.
Last night we had fun doing a little bridge experiment.
From trains to trucks and construction, Zach has adopted a new thing now: firefighting. So he did a lot of that on his free time this week. Sorry no picture for that, but they will be coming soon.
And that's it. I hope you all had a good week as well, and have a good wee-end.
Did I just say patience and perseverance. Wow, these two words are so packed with meaning and weight. If more of us were patient and persevered a bit more, the world most likely would be a different place.
I have always known I was not a patient person. as for perseverance, well, I have my moments. being a parent certainly brings out the presence or lack thereof of these 2 virtues.
But, I am not planning to talk about me. We all know we need to to improve in these areas. The object of this post is about nurturing these virtues in our kids.
As you may know, Zach is learning violin using the Suzuki method. Like any other instruments and anything in life, anytime we learn something, it is about trial and error. Correcting the wrong habit and training ourselves, our fingers, or whatever it is that needs the training, to do the right thing.
Well, this week has been a difficult week for Zach on his violin. He has this technique that he just can't seem to master, or should I say, is having the hardest time to master. I have been bombarded with phrases like "I'll never be able to do it.", "But it is so hard", "I can't do it", "I give up", all mixed with tears.
How do we respond? How do we encourage and challenge?
This got me thinking and I realized how great an opportunity his learning the violin was in teaching him patience and perseverance. When I signed him up in February I was thinking of it as a mean to teach him discipline, but I guess there was much more that could and will be accomplish through that process. He wants to play it, so he will have to be patient and persevere.
I don't think patience and perseverance are things we learned once and then that's it, we got it. They are things we never finish improving on. I am always reminded of Moses, who was the most patient man on earth, and yet he did not get to see the promised land because he struck the rock after losing patience. But, we can certainly grasp what patience and perseverance are, and the need to acquire them and aspire at exhibiting them in our life.
At the heart of our impatience is this instant gratification that we are plagued with because of sin. And, we need to fight that. By having to wait we learn to appreciate things better, because of the hard work, or the pain involved while waiting. We learn to depend on Christ for strength and grace. We learn to see how weak we are.
I am certainly humbled as I watched my son struggle to master a technique and his readiness to give up, as I realize how often this is how we adults behave. As I try to encourage him to persevere and work hard in mastering that particular technique, to be patient with himself and keep on, I also realized that I need to work much harder at some things that, frankly, I had given up on, even if done subconsciously.
We have the promises of God in James 1:12, Philippians 3:14, Heb 13:6 and Isaiah 41:13. Let's us garb hold of them and persevere in the task at hand and wait upon the Lord.
The Lord's grace be upon us as we seek to teach out children these important values and attitudes of the Christian faith.
Romans 5:2b-5: And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know thet suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope that does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
I am a christian wife and mother to 2 beautiful young boys who just started on the homeschooling journey. My desire is to train my children in the ways of the Lord while giving them a good education, all for the glory of our great and wonderful God. The road is not easy, specially when you try to do things God's way but the reward is well worth the effort.
To God be the Glory!
The idea came from 
