I found out on April 15 that I was pregnant...six weeks and a day pregnant at the time. Wow, this is my sixth pregnancy, and that was the latest in the pregnancy I've ever been before realizing I was pregnant. A BIG surprise, to say the least. We thought we were done. I had given away nearly all my baby stuff, so I'll have to buy most everything again. I'm just now getting over my shock and denial, because as bad as it may sound, I really didn't cope well with the news. All will be fine, though. :-) I'm starting to feel much better about it.
I kept Passover on the evening of April 17. I usually include the children in the footwashing, but it was all I could do to even participate in anything myself. I was so tired and a bit down about a lot of things. I solemnly partook of some unleavened bread (homemade tortillas) and unfermented grape juice this year, since I don't like to drink any alcohol during the first trimester of pregnancy. The next afternoon--the afternoon part of the Passover when Salvation died for our transgressions--the boys and I watched a movie that I bought about Salvation's (Jesus'/Yeshua's) life. I was so disappointed to discover that it was the exact movie that I did not want to see (The Greatest Story Ever Told). It was the movie we'd rented online last year, and I HATED it. It had so many things mixed up. Very misleading. I figured I may as well get The Passion of the Christ. I did, and so we watched that about a week later, but I didn't let Trusten see the violent parts. WHY does everyone have to portray Christ with long hair, though? Anyway, we kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread all that week, through 25th. I even made unleavened muffins a couple days for breakfast, and though they were small, they were tasty. The kids thought they were fun.
 |
| Tortillas, ugly but very tasty |
 |
| Delicious tortilla in the skillet |
I don't have much recorded from then until a few days into May. At some point during that time, I got Jaden William a spelling curriculum--Sequential Spelling. This is one of those things I really need to go give a good review on. I LOVE it! I've not seen any spelling curriculum with which I've been happy, so I've not been using such. The so-called Natural Speller book I have is anything but natural, in my opinion. I've pulled it off the shelf to give it a look several times, trying to see what people like so much about it, but I just failed to see it. I was a super speller in school, and still I'm the one my husband asks when they need to know the spelling of a word. It was my mother who always asked when I was growing up. Well, William just hasn't been a good speller. He excels at reading, though, so it's been confusing for me. SO, I was flipping through a Timber Doodle catalog one night, and I came across Sequential Spelling advertised as being perfect for those who excel at reading but struggle with spelling. William! I thought. I found quite a deal on Ebay for the whole set brand new, and I can't be happier that I bought them. It makes sense! It teaches spelling the exact same way I would do so. I actually used such a method before with William years ago, myself, but it was too soon for him to grasp. Sooo, if anyone reading this has a child with the same issue (or ANY child), I highly recommend this set of books. We've done fifteen days on it, and I've already been amazed at how it's working for him. It uses bases then includes words that all have the same base. JW writes the word in his workbook first, then I write the word, keeping the base in one color and the beginning, the prefixes, and suffixes in another color. He then corrects any mistake he may have made.
 |
| Sequential Spelling |
I also got a language arts book called Language Lessons. I got the book 1. So far I've been pleased with it. He's analyzed one picture so far, used logic to answer questions about it, wrote something about it, and the last few lessons he's done copy work, which is a poem. After that's finished, he'll learn about poetry, and then I'm not sure what. But eventually, there is another picture, and then the process is restarted to learn something else. It's pretty neat.
We've been working on JW's math almost daily. Right now we're doing addition and subtraction flashcards to help his memory and speed and working through his Grade 2 word problems book by Evan Moor, and he's almost finished with it. I'll then have him working on more worksheets I'll print off the Internet for more practice on 2- and 3-digit addition and subtraction, including borrowing and carrying and play School House Rock multiplication songs for him to learn those. After he's got that down a lot better, I'll start him on the Grade 3 word problems book we have. It's designed for a problem a day, but we do three pages a day, which usually equates to at least five word problems a day. Then there's the everyday life things, like learning measurements in the kitchen. He loves helping in the kitchen. :-)
We've started taking our nature walks, though for awhile I felt so tired and nauseous that I didn't want to do anything. We'll soon make it a regular thing again, and we'll start back up the plant project, adding more plants to our binder, and we'll be louping things, too. LOVE the loupes!
JW has asked about many things, as usual. He took apart a broken calculator one day and asked about the colored wires, which led to a discussion on positive, negative, ground (neutral), electrons, etc. We talked about static electricity and rubbing off electrons, etc.
We're considering now heavily moving to South America, probably Uruguay, possibly within the next couple of years. Nathan and I have talked on and off about moving out of the U.S. for five years or so, but lately we've talked about it more seriously. So we've been learning about other countries, and the boys are included in some of the learning. Nathan and I also took a week's long trip to the U.S. Virgin Islands (where we'd not live, but it was a nice getaway). We visited St. Thomas and St. John. Here are just a few pics of the things that I told the boys about so that they could learn:
 |
| The ocean view from our hotel on the beach (our room had the only balcony) |
 |
| A Laughing Gull |
 |
| Hermit Crab |
 |
| Neat rock Nathan found in the ocean, with various fossil and life features |
 |
| Woven hats and baskets; we saw the guy working on one nearby |
 |
| The hotel garden |
 |
| An iguana lizard who lived in the tree in front of our hotel balcony |
 |
| Coconut retrieval (early to harvest for its nutritious water) |
 |
| Man chopping open coconuts |
 | ||||||
| Some coral, shells, rock that I collected and brought to William |
I have many other pictures, and William was delighted to see (as I knew he would be) that I took a picture of brain coral that was growing in the ocean. He learned about brain coral from one of his Reading Rainbow dvds. We all also learned that the people drive on the left side of the road in the VI, as they do in Britain. (They also drive crazy.) Most of the people are very friendly there, though, unlike what people as a whole have become here in the States.
The last thing I'll mention in this post is the flooding we had. We recently learned about earthquakes, as you may remember. Now we talked more about flooding and witnessed it firsthand. The creek in front of our house flooded badly twice this spring. The last time it got so bad that Nathan did not make it back across when he came home from working. As a result, his truck was totaled.
 |
| The creek that borders our property on one side |
 |
| The road in front of our house and the view of where the creek crosses it |
 |
| Nathan's truck in the flooded creek |
I also have videos of the floods we've had this year. They can be found at the following links:
Second Flood, w/ the Truck
First Flood, High Water (Silent Audio)
(not as high as when the truck didn't make it)
First Flood, Lower Water (Sound Included, Longer Video)
Well, there's SO much more to cover, but I'll try to make another post to cover the rest sometime next week. :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment