Days with Daisy - Homeschool Blogger

Review of FFOZ Jot and Tittle Hebrew lessons

Tue, 6 Jan 2009 19:37:00 -0600

We are using Jot and Tittle and find it excellent. I am using it
with myself and 5 children ages 7, 9, 11, 14 and 15 and after a few weeks
most of us can read Hebrew pretty well, if not very quickly. You do need the audio lessons
which come with FFOZ Vol 1 but you may be able to buy them separately.

The workbook consists of a double page spread each week. The right hand page has the
aleph bet down one side, the name of the week's torah portion, and
places for practicing writing the torah portion name in block and cursive
(cursive is optional). Under each letter of the torah portion name you write the
name of the letter, and on the aleph bet list you circle or colour the
letters used. You quickly gain familiarity with the aleph bet.

The left page has a scroll picture with the first sentence of the torah portion
of the week in Hebrew. We look up the vowel points and put them in,
either from http://www.mechon-mamre.org/ or our print tanach. I require the
children to memorise the verse in Hebrew and know what each word
means. The literal meaning of the verse is given.

Then there's a list of usually 8 related words, related to the Torah Portion
name. For example this week is Vayechi, which means "and he lived".
So the related words are things like "mayim chayim" which means living
water, and "chayecha!" which means "I swear upon your life!" So all to
do with chai, or life.

At the end of a book, which is where we are now, at the end of Genesis, or Breisheet, there is review, crossword puzzles etc.

The audio lessons go for about 10 minutes each, and we listen to them at
least once a day. Tikvah Michael does them.

It takes about 30 minutes practicing each day. (Tikvah suggests 10
min but that hasn't been enough for us.) I give the children a reward
of a special ice cream if they learn the verse, the meanings, the
related words, and can write the name of the portion in both block and
cursive. If we have a busy week I give them until Sunday to memorise,
otherwise I test them on Friday. One of them also tests me!

Hope this helps with anyone considering purchasing it.

Also I requested and was given permission to copy the book for my own
homeschooled students. If I had been in the US with better shipping
rates and no exchange rate problem I probably would have bought them a
workbook each. I like to support FFOZ; they are a good organisation.

More info here: http://ffoz.org/resources/books/jot_tittle.html

Pray for Israel

Mon, 5 Jan 2009 16:08:00 -0600

Everyday life prevents me from spending time updating my blog. I just thought I should put in some prayer points for Israel. Do you realise that if you are a believer in Yeshua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) then you have been grafted in to Israel and Israel is your home? If you do not live in Israel you are in exile and are on the mission field. Those IDF soldiers are defending your land.

Prayer Points Please

1. Safety of the people living within 40 Kilometers (25 miles) of the Gaza Borders

2. Safety of the troops

3. Safety for Gilad Shalit, 926 days in captivity of the enemy.

4. Pray for those who think they are our enemies. Pray the Lord will open their eyes and lead them into the light of Truth.

Our ministry center is in the north and far from the fighting right now but we are warned to prepare for an attack from the north. We have been told to provision and make ready our bomb shelters.

Pray over all of Israel, as her watchmen. Pray Psalm 91.

for updates please see http://www.haaretz.com/ and http://www.ynetnews.com/

It's hard to believe my "newborn" is 5 months old now!

Fri, 7 Dec 2007 00:56:00 -0600

My last entry was his newborn picture. That's how long I haven't blogged for.

I've had a lot to say in recent weeks, but very little time for blogging. I am drastically cutting down my computer time to get serious about looking after my family.

I finally bought the Managers of Their Homes book and am implementing a schedule. I don't want to speak too soon, but it is helping. I really want to wait a month or so to give a more realistic evaluation, but I feel that I am at a point in my life that I CAN do this!

I really battle with tiredness. In fact I shouldn't really say battle because most often I just surrender to it. After going through the Demolishing Strongholds workbook at http://www.restorationministries.org/
I finally feel able to fight it as a demonic attack.

I encourage you to go through this material as well, it's all free, which is refreshing! I found I was "demonised" by almost every demonic stronghold mentioned in the workbook. I had believed that Christians couldn't be "demon possessed", but now I know that ALL MY LIFE I have been "demonised" and had NEVER BEEN TOLD HOW TO GET FREE!!! I have been a Christian about 20 years.

I have always felt that my battles against sin were hopeless. I would muster up a whole lot of will-power and pray, and ask to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and that would last a few hours at most before my defenses collapsed and I would give way to sin. Usually anger or irritability, but many others as well.

Most of the time I HAD NO WARNING that I was about to sin- the thought, the feeling and the action would all be over in a split second. This was not the "Victorious Christian Life" I had heard about. I now realised that in those cases I was under the power of demonic strongholds- demons that had taken up residence, and I THOUGHT THEY WERE ME!!! I thought those thoughts were my thoughts. I have been free a week now, and I feel I'm finally starting to live.

I want to emphasise that I was personally responsible for every sin I committed whilst under the influence of demons. Our Father in Heaven will not take the excuse "the devil made me do it" or "I was tired" or even "I was pre-menstrual". There is NO EXCUSE FOR SIN, but there is forgiveness if we renounce it and turn from it.

But I had confessed and repented more often than I can remember and still there was no victory. I really really wanted to do what my Heavenly Father wanted, but much of the time, I was unable to. Now of course the attacks still come, but I have control. There is a point when I realise I am having a thought that doesn't conform to Yahweh's will, and that I have a choice, to either give in to it, or to renounce that thought and ask to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Then, miraculously, it is GONE!!!! Will power just did not work, but Holy Spirit power sure does!

I won't say I haven't sinned for the past week, I have. But now I feel that I have a choice. I feel that it IS possible to have victory over sin.

Hopefully I will have time to update my blog as I travel this journey, and I hope if you can Identify with my struggle, you will head over and check out Demolishing Strongholds
by Mike and Sue Dowgiewicz. They also have an audio and a video of the material in the book, also for free if you prefer to watch or listen.

Now we are gradually helping our children to get rid of their demonic strongholds too.

Heart of Wisdom book giveaway!

Thu, 6 Dec 2007 22:41:00 -0600

Robin Sampson at Heart of Wisdom is running a Homeschool Weekly Book Giveaway!

To enter: The Heart of Wisdom Winter Giveaway Contest is open to everyone over the age of 18 anywhere in the world. There are two steps to enter:

Subscribe to the Heart of Wisdom blog (enter your email address in the box on the upper left corner of the HOW Blog and click “subscribe.”)
Leave a comment below and/or sign Mr. Linky to verify your entry. (If you are already subscribed your name will be automatically entered). You need a blog address to sign Mr Linky below.

Every Monday, one entry will be randomly chosen using Random.org to receive one homeschool book or Heart of Wisdom Ebook. RANDOM.ORG acts as an unbiased third party who conducts the draws in a manner that is guaranteed to be fair and truly random.

Newborn Photos

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 20:48:00 -0500

It's A Boy!

Mon, 9 Jul 2007 04:08:00 -0500

Micah Elisha was born at home on Wednesday 4th July. 3.7kg. I am recovering and Micah is doing well. When I work out how to I'll put up a photo; we're borrowing my parents' camera as our died just before Micah was born...

Unschooling

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 19:34:00 -0500

Well, baby is now nearly 2 weeks overdue. Well on Tuesday he/she will be. At least I had planned to do lessons up until the due date.

I have been reading a few history books lately. Famous Men of the Middle Ages is a good one. It's also available free online at The Baldwin Project, along with a lot of other good books.

I've also been reading a book from the library, the only book from the library on homeschooling (!) about unschooling. Whilst I don't think I'll ever become a complete hardcore unschooler, the ideas in it certainly have merit. However I don't think it is biblical to just "trust the child" to educate themselves on what they want to learn when they want to learn it. Children need discipline, and they also need to be instructed in the Scriptures, which is one of the main reasons we're homeschooling! However, I am encouraged to give the children more choice in what they learn, and more time to follow their own interests, as well as committing to helping them, not just learning what I have scheduled for them. We have periods of unschooling where a lot of this goes on, and usually the children are happy to return to lessons when we do.

I sometimes have a tendency to overschedule lessons, just because there's so much great curriculum to do! Added to that I don't want to waste what we've bought! I love it when our scheduled lessons provide a spark of an idea which kindles into an interest. This has happened with bird-watching after beginning lessons in Jeannie Fulbright's "Flying Creatures of the fifth day" book. Three of our children are now noticing the great variety of bird life around us and thinking of ways to attract them to bird feeders. They are becoming proficient at using our field guide too. The same kind of thing happened when we studied the Astronomy book from the same series. However this was not so evident when we did Botany, I think because instead of doing it as a group, with me reading aloud, I assigned the reading and projects for them to do on their own.

I've almost decided to resume where we left off studying Diana Waring's "Romans, Reformers, Revolutionaries" guide. I really want my children to have an overview of the sweep of world history before they leave me, and I think this will help us get just that. It does involve a lot more planning and gathering of resources than The Mystery of History, but it also offers more choice and is "meatier" for the older ones. We will use the relevant lessons in Mystery of History as read alouds. I'm thinking of leaving the younger ones (6 and 7) out of history for now unless they want to do it, because they really don't have the maturity to understand even what history is! I'll read them interesting stories from history, and leave the formal study until later.

You'd think after about 10 years home schooling I'd know what I was doing!

Hope to have some baby news soon...

I Haven't Had the Baby Yet!

Sat, 23 Jun 2007 21:33:00 -0500

But that's pretty normal for me. Most of my babies (4 out of 6) have been "late" , ranging from 10 days to 3 weeks over the "due date". All I can say is I'm looking forward to losing a LOT of weight soon!

Diana Waring's History Alive Study Guides

Sat, 23 Jun 2007 21:16:00 -0500

We have used "Ancient Civilizations and the Bible" and are now onto "Romans, Reformers, Revolutionaries" in this series of history study guides. I have moderated a Yahoo group for discussing this curriculum for a couple of years now but there have been few members. If anyone reading this is using one of the study guides, or wants to know more about them, I have placed a "join" button for the group at the side of my blog.

The third guide in the series is called "World Empires, World Missions, World Wars". So basically three guides, for Ancient, Middle and Modern History. Each is designed to be used over a year but we took longer! For more info visit www.dianawaring.com and join the Yahoo group!

Large

Tue, 5 Jun 2007 05:30:00 -0500

I'm feeling very blobby lately. I'm 38 or so weeks pregnant and getting rather tired of the burden. I was thankful that it's only like this for a short while, and some who are very overweight have to carry around a burden like this for a long time! I get so tired and have a lot of back pain. But soon I will get to see our precious new baby and it will all be worth every minute of discomfort!

I'm still homeschooling, on a pretty strict schedule at the moment. We're reading through the Book of Acts for Bible Study, and also going through a stickfigure Bible timeline, drawing a couple of pages each day. I got it free from homeschoolestore.com. We've started a new history curriculum, the Mystery of History Volume 2- the Early Church and the Middle Ages. So far so good. All ages together, 6yo to 14yo. We're doing Flying Creatures by Jeannie Fulbright for Science, but the 14yo is doing General Science Apologia. He's not really a science boy but I hope he gets something out of it and it's a great foundation explaining the whole rationale of creation science. So a lot of our work is sitting around the kitchen table all together at the moment, and I like being together. Also I can conserve my energy just sitting there!

I'm able to do less and less housework these days, especially tidying which involves picking things up off the floor. I cook, and I wash clothes and hang them out to dry. Beyond that anything is a bonus.

I may blog again before the baby is born, but I may not!