1. Years ago when I had just one child, it was very easy to do just about everything every day of the week, do lots of science experiments and exploration, do arts and crafts and play with puzzles and Play-Doh, read many books, talk one-on-one, and keep the house spic and span, among other things...and still have ample free time for myself. That is not the case now. It has become quite complicated.
2. As for art specifically, while I did quite a few really fun projects with William when he was much younger, I've done very little art-wise with the children over the last few years. Although I used to do some neat things with Jaden William on a regular basis (like Play-Doh figures, painting rocks, nature collages, etc.), I'm not really an artsy person, and even when William was younger we didn't do a lot of coloring pages. So it shouldn't be any surprise that art stuff has been the biggest back burner area in our lifestyle of learning. So as shocking as it may seem to some, assigning the third day of each week as "Art, Music, and Poetry Day" will greatly increase the amount of art that we do, not decrease it.
3. We learn science, history, and geography stuff nearly every day, as well as cooking, health, environmental, musical, etc. things constantly. We truly live a lifestyle of learning, and I answer a lot of questions that the children pose to me on a daily basis, and I'm continually learning with them. When I don't know something, we investigate it. We live on 18 acres and are surrounded by many, many more acres of neighbors' land that we may freely access, as well as live in close proximity to several state or national forests and parks. There are many museums, caves, animal parks, etc. in our area. Our home has several bookcases full of books. We own many documentaries and university lectures, and I have an Amazon Prime membership that allows access to many educational documentaries for no extra charge. We also use Youtube, Wikipedia, and many other educational resources online. Jaden owns his own iPod that is restricted to allow for safe web surfing, and he plays educational word games. We have a microscope, a night sky in the country. I could go on and on. Even Nathan and I, in our own time together, continually seek to learn by sharing, observing, watching documentaries together, etc.
4. The reasons I have assigned the days with certain labels is because I've decided to give primary focus to those topics on those days. Reading is not listed, because we read something every day. It's a bad day if reading goes undone. Workbook work such as language and grammar, spelling, and math, as well as journaling and flash cards and other things are done almost daily...usually not all these things on most days, but if one things gets left out for days, then we make sure that is prioritized for a day or more rather than the others. Also this will make it easier for me to blog the highlights of our week. There's no way possible to record or share even close to everything we do and learn.
I won't be doing a day-by-day breakdown from now on. I'll just simply share the highlights from those labeled days in my weekly posts.
So now for the week of Nov. 25-Dec. 1:
From October 2012 issue of Big Backyard, we learned to draw a ring-tailed lemur. I drew one myself, as did Jaden. I helped Liv draw one, and I talked Trusten through drawing his. I assisted him with the body and with one of the triangles around its eyes. Trusten and I missed the third and fourth legs of our lemurs. I realized it much later. Oops!
 |
| How to draw a Ring-tailed Lemur; Trusten holding his finished product |
Jaden's "Drawing Landscapes" class concluded. Of the three art classes he's taken, this one was his least favorite, and he said he can't draw well at all. Well, I can't, either, so I told him not to worry about it. I'm not posting his framed picture but rather one of the others, which I personally like better. It does appear that he tired of drawing and just scribbled every which way on the path, but other than that, I thought it looked nice.
 |
| Jaden William's landscape drawing |
Just a few of the things we read during the week included Surviving Fights with Your Brothers and Sisters" by Joy Wilt (much-needed), a book passed down from Nathan; Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss (one of Trusten's favorites, because of all the rhyming, and yes, if you see it, I wrote "Turkey" in front of "Ham" many years ago when William was very little--LOL); and the October 2012 issue of Big Backyard.
 |
| Reading about lemurs, overcoming sibling rivalry, and rhyming with Dr. Seuss |
We played with the Inchimals again last week. Trusten cleverly started stacking Inchimals together in a way where they would all be level, so I took the opportunity to demonstrate how different numbers add up to equal the same end number.
 |
| 5+7, 11+1, 9+3, 12+0, and 8+4 all equal 12. |
While JW loves to often cook and bake things on his own in the kitchen, Trust and Liv often like to help me in the kitchen or just watch. Liv loves to sit on the kitchen counter to watch or help. I let her do things like put baking cups in the muffin pans for our breakfast muffins.
 |
| Liv putting baking cups in a muffin pan |
We learned about the Zhou Dynasty (pronounced JOE) in China from Mystery of History last week. We learned that it started about the same time Boaz and Ruth (from the bible) were getting married. We then went on to read a few more things about China in our recently-acquired Famous Places book. From that book we read some interesting things about the Great Wall of China, the Silk Road (we learned not long ago that China farmed silkworms for silk during the Shang Dynasty), and the hills of Guilin.
 |
| Jaden with his own "Great Wall" model, with little tower places. It's nearly three feet long (which doesn't account for the true length when curve(s) is/are accounted for, just as is the case with the Great Wall of China. Nathan called Jade's wall "The Great Wall of Willy." |
We read more about eyes and sight (and also did some fun things the week previous which I didn't mention, including optical illusions), and we read about ears and sound. We used God's Design series book The Human Body, as well as Judith Hann's book How Science Works and the Reader's Digest book Every Day Science to learn everything from what sound is, how the ear works, pitch/frequency, resonance, music, ultrasound, etc.
 |
| Felt board with eye and ear diagrams |
After nearly three years of using a dishwasher for dishes, I'm happy to announce I'm back to handwashing...and glad! I have always liked to hand-wash my dishes. We've lived several places where a dishwasher has been available for use, and I've still chosen to hand-wash our dishes. Shortly after Olivia was born I opted to use our dishwasher to save some time. One of my goals this year has been to go back to handwashing. I was so kindly reminded of my goal when the dishwasher started acting up. It still sort of works, but I'm sick of the thing, and the way I look at it, its messing up just makes my goal that easier to obtain. ;-) I now use the dishwasher as a dish drainer, as our counter dish drainer is not big enough now to hold all our dishes.
 |
| Trust and Liv were delighted to sign on as dishwashing helpers. Sometimes I do it alone, and sometimes Liv helps me. |
On the Sabbath the children's devotional was on spiritual food and how easy it is to get distracted by everything else. As I mentioned on a recent blog post, it's especially easy when one's routine gets thrown off, like it did during the FOT week when we had company (even though it was a religious festival week). I noticed on a friend's blog recently that she experienced the same trouble when she had company for the U.S. Thanksgiving week (which holiday we don't keep, as the FOT is our Thanksgiving).
They also watched a bible video of Saul being the physical nation of Israel's first king, how it was evil in God's sight for them to ask for a king to reign over them, because it rejects God as their authority. God warned them, but they still chose the king, then later Saul was rejected by God. How it is still the same today with the physical descendants of Israel. The United States, the descendants of Joseph's Manasseh still ask for a man to reign over them so that they can be like the other nations, rather than come together in humbleness to let God solely reign over them. It's due to a lack of faith and a rejection of his rule.
Trusten wanted to listen to some rap music, so I played "The Ten Commandments" by Truheat. His wife contacted me via email a few years ago, and since then she has sent me several copies of her husband's rap cd to give away. Even though they have a Christian message, and I also like some rap tunes (certainly not the majority of such that is played today...ugh!), I'm not hip on most of the songs, and the way he says his music name over and over at the intros to the songs just like mainstream rappists often do turns me off, but I do think the song about the Ten Commandments is ok. I like the beat, and I like the message. Just wish one could understand him better.
The week ended with a beautiful Sabbath day, and we had a very nice time outside to enjoy creation.
Until next time...
No comments:
Post a Comment