Rebuilding Jerusalem, African Tribes, USA Flag, Eggs, and Babies

William:

We finished going through the books of Ezra and Nehemiah and talked about the rebuilding of the temple and walls in Jerusalem after some of Judah returned from being taken into captivity by the Babylonians. The Medes and Persians took over the Babylonians, and they allowed the Jews to return to their land. Now, we're in the book of Esther. William has learned about Esther before in sabbath school. Oh! I was pleased that when the Persian king Darius was mentioned in Ezra or Nehemiah (he's mentioned in both, but he only commented once), Will said, "I learned about Darius in sabbath school!" Yes, he would have learned about Darius when he learned about Daniel being thrown in the lion's den. That would have quite some time ago. I've read stories to him about Daniel, too, but it's been a long time. I told him it would be a while yet before we made it to Daniel.

We continued working on phonics and reading, using Rocket Readers and Complete Curriculum for Grade 1, also reviewing phonics flash cards sometimes. He works on his writing, too. We haven't done Explode the Code in awhile, so I think I'll take that book out this week.

In Our Christian Heritage, we went over the United States flag. He's always loved the US flag. Now he knows more about it, like how many stars and stripes are on it, what they mean, and how many stars were on the original flag and why. He also learned what the colors mean and learned about the pledge of allegiance.

I'm always telling William not to act like a heathen (my mom would tell us that when we were little, too). One of the things he does is constantly take off his shirt and toss it somewhere in the floor. He'll come to the table to eat a meal without a shirt. I'll tell him to go get his shirt on, that he's acting like a heathen. Well, I've told him about how there are still some hardcore heathen tribes in the world, especially in Africa, and I've told him about some of the things they do. I'd been telling him for awhile that I was going to find some videos on Youtube to show him so that he could see the same stuff I watched on PBS while growing up. Well, a few days ago, he was flipping through this comic book thing--The Far Side. I've had it forever. Don't much care for it. But, anyway, he brought it to me and asked about a certain picture. It showed some civilized characters with smiley face heads and cameras around their neck, coming out of a jungle. They were obviously exploring and taking photographs. Well, right there outside of the jungle was a heathen tribe, ragged skirt things, no shirts, bone necklaces, huts, and there were sticks stuck in the ground with smiley face heads stuck on them. I explained quickly to Will what it was all about, and I said, "See? Isn't that what I've been telling you--that heathens go around with no shirts?" So, then the next morning, I finally did show him some videos, much to his delight. Well, he sat beside me rather dumbfounded. I asked him whether he hadn't believed what I'd been saying for so long, and he said he hadn't. I guess he thought I was joking.

Anyway, he learned about the Ethiopian Mursi tribe, whose women wear lip dishes, and some of them had stretched ear lopes, too, like maybe they wore ear dishes. They wear raggy clothes, those who DO wear clothes, and the men fight with sticks. No one had any upper clothing, and many of the males--adult and child--were completely naked! He also learned about the Dinka tribe. It seemed much more civilized than the Mursi tribe, but they used cattle urine to wash their dishes and hands (it showed the Nile river, so ther was water available). They also like to burn cattle dung for fragrance and for insect repellant. Well, I must say that at least it's cattle dung and not some unclean animal. They do have the best-smelling of all animals I know, but I thought it kind of odd to deliberately burn it for the fragrance. I have yet to tell William about Ezekiel having to bake his bread over cow dung. I think I'll save that for when we get there. Anyway, they translated what a Dinka tribe male member was saying as he stood by the Nile river. He said something like, "Oh, Nile of our fathers, I have no offering for you, but thank you for...this, this, and this." I can't remember what exactly. But, that gave a great opportunity for me to explain to William a real example of someone talking to the creation as if it is God. The Creator God is the God of OUR fathers, I explained. I reminded him that He is the true God who created all things, including the nile river, and He is the one we are to thank for our blessings.

We read his newest issue of Your Big Backyard magazine. One of the main focuses of the March issue was eggs. We talked about different animals' eggs and their similarities and differences: amphibian eggs, fish eggs, bird eggs, reptile eggs, and insect eggs; land eggs and water eggs. We also discussed sandhill cranes and cheetahs, and the song of the month was "Little Sandhill Crane," sung to the tune of "Do Your Ears Hang Low?" Very cute. We always love the songs. I think we'll do the food project this time, too. Sometimes I do, sometimes not. It will be a fried egg with the yolk showing in the middle, and then strips of toast situated around it to look like the sun. He always loves when I make fun food for him. Maybe if I did it more, including Trusten, maybe I could get Trusten to eat more.

I'm pregnant with another blessing, so William said, "Momma, did you know that God has nothing but eggs in the sky, and he puts them in us and then a baby is born?" Of course, this was after the talk about the animal eggs, too. So, we're going back over human and mammalian reproduction. He watched a birth video this morning. He totally forgot about watching them with me way back in the day. He says he doesn't even remember Trusten's birth (less than 2 years ago) now. Well, we FINALLY got to see my video of labor with William. I had the 8mm video converted to dvd a couple months ago, but it wouldn't work on the computer. Nathan just bought another tv. He wants to have a nice big screen to do some workout videos that he bought. Anyway, I got the video to work on there. It doesn't show the actual birth, but I'm glad I got to show William what I went through to get him here. Anyway, later today I will refresh him on the reproductive system and how babies grow in the womb, etc. He's totally forgot things.

Let's see. What else? We've done a little math. He's catching on to that better.

We go over new things every day, but I just can't remember it all to include here (nor would I have time to record it all). Oh, yeah, we finished his social skills book. So, we'll start on the other book for that.

Trusten:

I'm sure Trusten will probably be completely potty-trained (day, anyway) by his second birthday (in May). He's doing pretty well...still a ways to go, though.

ddd

I get extremely aggravated with Blogger's bold feature. It doesn't work properly, and I have trouble with it all the time. So, sorry about the above d's. I don't have time for that. Anyway, Trusten actually sat through his ENTIRE "Wild Animal Babies" (don't like that Blogger doesn't have underline, either) magazine a few days ago. YAY!!!!! I had to go semi-quickly, though. He loses interest in things so quickly.

He loves light. "Light, light!" He's always wanting to see some lights on. I don't use artificial lighting inside the house during the day, unless it's dark and cloudy. I love lots of windows that let in a lot of sunlight. I explained to him that we have the wonderful sunlight outside. I showed him the light on the living room carpet and the shadows. He pointed to his shadow and said, "Boy!" :-)

It's a nightmare getting his teeth brushed. We let him brush himself, but he doesn't do them efficiently yet. So, I usually am the one to do it. Sometimes we both do it. One of us holds him and the other brushes. He's very strong and very determined. It's really an effort to get that job finished. I never look forward to it.

Of course, he doesn't like his hair brushed, either. Well, there's not a whole lot that is easy with him, actually. LOL He certainly keeps me busy. I'm tired sometimes now, though, being pregnant. Thankfully, I haven't had much nausea. I hope I can keep my energy levels up and avoid nausea. Then, I'll be okay to deal with Trusten and continue to gain weight. (I've had a fat deficiency problem--not just fat in general, but mainly Omega 3s, as I require a very high intake to get my neurological system to work appropriately, and I've also, as a side effect, lost too much weight, so I'm working hard to gain.)

Myself:
Well, yesterday (Sunday), I left the boys with Nathan and got to spend some time alone. I went to the forest and sat atop a cliff and looked over the mountains. I was able to pray and think in peace. I also was able to sit at a picnic table and write and also read a few pages in the book I've been reading (I'm almost finished!), and then I went and bought a laptop computer with some money that Nathan gave to me. I've wanted a laptop for years, but I kept talking myself out of it (Nathan has told me he'd get one, but I've said, "Oh, I can do without.") When we bought a new computer, we bought another desktop (an Apple Imac). A laptop (I didn't request bold, see what I mean?) would enable me to write outside, but I've told myself I'd spend too much time on the computer while outside, BUT I decided that I won't. I don't think I'll even be tempted. I'm just going to use it for the days I get to leave and spend time alone. I didn't get a really expensive one, the second least expensive. I didn't need anything fancy. It does have a built-in wireless card, but I won't need the service on it. I can access the Internet with my iPhone. I just hope they make available an application that I can download so that I can tether my iphone to the computer and be able to access it on the bigger browser. Some people do it now by "jailbreaking" their iphone, but I looked into that, and Apple said that it's a copyright infringement, so I will NOT be doing that. I'll just make do with it as it is for now.

Well, I can't think of much noteworthy to discuss right now about what Nathan and I have been learning. By the time I'm finished writing about William, I usually don't have time for anything else. It's hard enough to even be able to write that much and watch the kids, too. So, ta-ta for now.

Chinese Stuff, Rainbows, Christian Heroes, and Geography

I picked a project out of his Social Studies Grade 1 book--eating Chinese food with chopsticks. SO, we had Chinese noodles (from the natural food market, and it even came in biodegradable plastic) and ate with chopsticks (see pics above). Will really doesn't do much worse with them than I do. He figured it out well enough to eat. :-) Oh, and look! He even drank out of a glass with Chinese decor. ;-) (That was coincidence. We've owned those glasses for awhile.) I told him a few new things about China that he didn't already know. And then I thought it would be fun to look up how his name (William) would be written in Chinese (pictured above). And he tried his best to copy it.

We're now in Nehemiah in the bible, still reading Proverbs every day. And he can just about recite the Ten Commandments in its entirety by himself.

We're still working in the Rocket Readers Learn-to-Read bible. And, we're working on a Rocket Readers book nearly every day. We're almost finished with all the level 2 books we have, and then we'll move on to level 3. The neat thing with these last several books we've gone through is that it tells a little about Christians from the past--missionaries, orphanage operators, etc. People have included Corrie ten Boom, Samuel Morris, and Gladys Ahwahl. I'd like to take some time in the near future and read to him more about some of these people, b/c I've read about some of them in the past and really enjoyed it.

He's completed lesson 1 in Unit 3 of Complete Curriculum for Grade 1 for the Reading section. Of course, this includes practice on his writing, not just his reading, b/c he has to write answers to questions. He's also worked some in that in the math section. He worked on "more" and "fewer" today.

We've finished Unit 2 in Our Christian Heritage. We were able to work somewhat quickly through some of it, since it was mostly review for William--oceans, continents, etc. Unit 3 will discuss our flag, the Declaration of Independence, etc. We'll start that soon.

I bought one of those mini-notebooks that open from the top, and we're going to use that for recording things about our plant(s) that we'll soon be planting. Well, it/they will start as seed(s).

We talked about rainbows and, "What color is light?" We started a rainbow project, but things weren't working out as planned, so I'm going to try it a different way. My plan is to make a rainbow. Today, I just made a big mess. :-0

He learned for music: treble clef, bass clef, quarter note, half note, whole note, the rests, and a few others, and I discussed briefly what they meant and demonstrated. I will continue to go over the same things several times before we move on to more.

He's done art freely. He's painted some pictures. That's about it here lately, as far as art goes. Maybe we will do some art history soon.

And of course, this doesn't include whatever else has come up each day, as he's always full of questions.

As far as Trusten goes, he's saying more and more words. He's a little parrot. He says a few sentences, though probably not everybody would understand them. He says, "What are you doing," "Where did he/they go," "What is that?" Stuff like that. He's done that for awhile. I have hope that maybe he won't have the speech problems like Will has had. BUT, almost every day is a challenge with Trust. He's getting to be more fun, and I can't be more thrilled about that. He's also more snuggly. He's always kind of hated to be touched. Until not too long ago, I had to nurse him lying down and keep my hands off of him, or else he'd throw a fit. I've been able to hold him now, and yesterday he came up to me and laid his head in my lap and just wanted to snuggle. I've been getting more of that. :-) I'm glad, b/c I'm the type who thrives on that. He's also doing better about potty needs. I never had to potty train Will, really. He was used to going to the potty from the age of 2 months. At 17.5 months he'd both sign and say "potty" and then head off to the toilet and would climb it himself, when he needed to poop. He was doing all his peeing by his 2nd birthday. Trust will be 2 in late May. I hope he's trained by then. Ironically, he does better going to the potty to PEE than poop, which is really odd. It's usually the other way around. But, anyway, I'm thrilled that he's catching on, and I hope he finishes it soon. I'll be glad to be finished with diapers....for awhile, anyway.

Trust still doesn't like books much, but he's showing more on an interest.

Well, that's it for this post.

A Little Bit of This and a Little Bit of That

Well, things have certainly gone more like I like them to go. :-) I believe it was in my first post that I said I reserved the right to change things up. I made the hypothesis that a schedule like I'd made would not work too well for either William or me. Neither of us work very well with such. Both of us are the types where if we want to do or learn "A" one day, we will not get much out of anything else, and if we want to do "B" the next day, but "A" is scheduled, we're liable to pull our hair out.

That is one of the reasons public school is SUCH a turn off.

Okay, well, to update:

Last Tuesday an ice storm came through, and we were soon without electricity. We had to stay in a hotel Tuesday and Wednesday night. It had been a long time since we'd stayed in a hotel (we haven't traveled where a hotel is required, except for feast of tabernacles, and we always camp or rent a cabin), and the last time was too long ago for Will to remember. SO, he got to learn about hotels. We stayed at a nice one--the Embassy. Nathan talked them down to almost half price. He's very good at talking people down and negotiating. He's awesome. So, we got to stay somewhere nice and clean without having to pay what one normally would. Will loved the glass elevators. It was interesting, b/c it'd been just a few days prior that he was talking about elevators and asking me how they went up and down, and I had told him about the cables and all. SO, here I had the perfect opportunity to SHOW him. Oh, yeah, because on these elevators, you could SEE the cables. Great!!! So, he got to see it for himself. And one time when Nathan went to get the truck, we waited inside, and we walked over, and I pointed out to Will the cables and explained it all again. He said, "Ooh, that's kind of scary." (Meaning how the elevators are supported by the cables.)

We talked some about ice, since we were having an ice storm. We talked about glaciers and the Titanic.

We went with Nathan to one of his service calls on Wednesday. Then, later, the woman of the house for the OTHER service call (we didn't go on) said they wanted to pay Nathan more money, and they drove what would normally be probably 20 minutes or so, but through the ice it took probably twice that, all the way to the hotel to deliver more money. They were so thankful that he'd gone out in the weather to restore their heat. Nathan was about to get in the shower when she arrived, so I went down to meet her, and she told me what a nice man Nathan was. :-) People have paid Nathan more than what he's invoiced on several occasions, but never yet had anyone driven through ice to deliver it. What a blessing to hear good things about my husband. And it was good for William to see and hear Nathan and me talking about it.

Thursday the boys and I went farther south to stay with my parents for a few days. The electricity came back on that day, but I wanted to go down there, anyway, and Nathan needed more time to get caught up on his work. We got to see my dad and my uncle both sing karaoke that night. I think William enjoyed it. I went Friday with my dad to the horse races. My sister and bil and his parents were there, too. That was the first time I'd ever been. I almost took William, but I decided that it could wait until another time. I needed a break. My mom took William with her that morning to work. She is the tax assessor for that White County, Arkansas. It would have been great if she'd have explained some to him about what they did there, but I don't think she did. Anyway, we later dropped Trusten off there, and everyone in her office got to see him for the first time, and then they went to the park.

The only "book" work we've done every day over the past several days is our bible reading. Will did read a few Rocket Readers books to me over the past few days, and he's read some out of the RR Learn to Read bible. He's done some lessons in the Grade 1 Complete Curriculum book for Reading and Math. He's getting better at his upper digit numbers, and he's wanting to learn how to add and subtract, b/c he keeps asking what is such and such plus or minus such and such. So, we'll be moving on to that soon. On our trip there and back, he'd read some signs. And other things he'd spell and ask what they spelled.

We're back up through chapter 8 of Proverbs. We're almost finished with 2 Chronicles. We read more about righteous King Hezekiah, and we read about evil Manasseh, who at least humbly repented after being carried away to punishment, and then Manasseh's son Amon, who was very evil and was killed by his servants. I personally love whenever I read about the righteous God-fearing kings of Israel and Judah. I get upset when I read about the evil ones, and I ALWAYS end up thinking about modern Israel (specifically the United States but also the other nations of Israel) and modern Judah. I can't help but think of this and long for a humble repentance of our leaders and a nationwide repentance of our peoples. Wouldn't that be awesome if we as a nation would decide to return to God's sabbath day and feasts and leave Sunday-keeping, Christmas, Easter, Halloween, etc. in the dust? Wouldn't it be wonderful if we abolished abortion and punished adultery and homosexuality? Wouldn't it be grand if we tore down all the idolatrous images and statues throughout our land (like church obelisks, "statue of liberty," "Washington monument" [big obelisk], "virgin Mary" and "Jesus" statues? Wouldn't it be super if we reinstated prayer and bible reading in schools? Wouldn't it be fantastic if we banned wicked movies, tv shows, and music? Who else is deeply grieved by our nations' current state? (Yes, plural, as Britain, Israel, Canada, and the other Israelite nations have the same and similar sins.) I discuss this over and over with William, too. I want him to know that if we all lived God's way, the world wouldn't be as sad as he perceives it. It would be SO GOOD if we established TRUE FREEDOM, TRUE LIBERTY in this nation. "One nation under God" and "In God We Trust" are simply not understood by the masses. This nation, as a whole, does NOT trust God, and it is NOT a nation that is willingly putting itself "under God's" authority--under HIS law, the perfect "law of liberty" (James 1:25).

The bible is the earthling's instruction manual. Any person who does not have the knowledge of what is contained in the instruction manual is missing out on the perfect way to live in PEACE and CONTENTMENT and in good HEALTH and PROSPERITY.

We went over more social skills today: Following directions

Also, we read some out of the Christian Heritage book. We're in the geography section, on which he should do well, b/c he mostly knows already what is covered, so this will be a good review, if nothing else. He did learn the difference between a map and a globe. We then went back over the seven continents. That was pretty much it.

This morning, before we'd even eaten anything, he said something like, "Do you know that everybody has a sun? Like we have a sun, and Colorado has a sun. Everybody has a sun shining on them." I said something like, "Well, it's true that everybody has the sun shining on them every day, but we only have ONE sun." He: "No, there a lot of them." Gotta love kids. :-) SO, I refreshed him on how it's actually the earth that rotates around the sun daily and went over the sunrise/sunset stuff. We've talked about this a few times before. BUT, neither Nathan nor I have ever demonstrated this in a way where he could actually SEE. SO, I got an idea. I went to Will's closet and got out a golf ball and a soccer ball. The golf ball resembled the earth, and the soccer ball resembled the sun. I then held both and explained to him what happened. There was some sort of face on this particular golf ball, so I pretended that was the United States, and then I explained again (like we have before w/o the balls) how one side of the earth is always dark and the other is light, and how when we're dark, the other side is light and vice versa. I then showed him the pretend California, the pretend Colorado, the pretend Missouri, and the pretend Florida (he already knows where all the 50 states are, so this was easy for him to understand), and I explained how the Californians would get up at sunrise, then the Colorado people, etc. (Okay, so not all of us get up right at sunrise, but he didn't call me out on that! LOL) He was asking about time zones the other day. So, since we discussed the earth and sun this morning, I think I'll go more over the time zones tomorrow with him.

Well, that's pretty much it for now. I have to go finish dinner. I'll update this again at my choosing.