So the poster project I earlier spoke of for the Feast of Tabernacles that we did not do right before or during Feast of Tabernacles, but rather afterward, was basically a project getting us back on track with a better schedule...for everything. Last year, especially, so much fell apart. Plus, there have been some new ways I've wanted to try things. I wanted to take the seven-day week and talk about it with the children and then also talk about the 8th Day (which is a feast of God that immediately follows the seven-day Feast of Tabernacles) that symbolizes eternity, which is when--or should I rather say where--there is no time. Time comes from the same etymological root as the word temporary. The seven day cycle just continues on and on, and Jaden talks often with Nathan and me about how quickly the days and weeks go by, so this was a good lesson.
I also do not like to use names the Romans gave to the days of the week which are names of Roman and Nordic pagan gods. I still sometimes say those names to people outside the Body of Christ, but I'm very conscious of it. It doesn't seem right to me to say "Sunday" (Sun's day or day of the sun) or "Monday" (Moon's day or day of the moon), etc. It seems rather silly, if nothing else. When I speak to the children or to a dear brother or sister of the household of God, I typically say, "First day, second day, etc." and "Sabbath" for the seventh day, which is the only day of the week that the Eternal God sanctified and made holy.
Now you may have heard those in the Christianity religion trying to justify keeping "Sunday," the first day of the week, as the weekly holy day by saying it's the "8th day" and commemorates Christ's resurrection (which God never tells us to commemorate, anyway).
But we can't keep the 8th day as a weekly cycle. We are living in a death cycle in a temporary body. When people observe Easter (a feast that bears the name of pagan fertility goddess) and participate in their sunrise service, they are taking part in worshiping an ongoing temporary cycle of creation.
The only "8th day" we should be keeping is the annual Eighth Day feast that the Eternal has commanded us to keep which foreshadows the conclusion of the true plan of salvation and eternity.
So in this way I taught a spiritual lesson while also reinforcing the fact that we are given six days to do our work, and the seventh day is the holy Sabbath day. On the posterboard I named the days of week by number and assigned those days certain tasks, not just for learning (the picture shows a limited part of the whole), but for everything in our lives, including the day we get groceries, for example. Before making a chart for this, though, we used the one side of the poster board for brainstorming using a web, and this was their introduction to this. I used pencil, so it doesn't show up too well, but I wanted to use something we could easily erase and change, if need be. "Lifestyle of Learning" is the center hub.
There's much more to our 7-day chart, and even for our learning, there are certain things we do every day, like reading. But for main concentrations, we focus on:
Day 1: Survival skills, learning as a family day
Day 2: Math day
Day 3: Art, music, and poetry day
Day 4: History and geography day
Day 5: Science, health, and environment day
Day 6: Sabbath prep, extra reading and make-up day
Day 7: Sabbath--rest, extra bible study and prayer, family time
Then at the bottom in a space smaller than the other seven days (nice how that worked out perfectly like that; it was meant to be), I put an "8" and wrote that it doesn't exist in this world and that it's symbolic of eternity. I like how on the Sabbath day we can focus MORE on thinking about that now-non-existent day of the week, because it DOESN'T come the following day (but rather the first day of a new week), but we can MEDITATE on what 8th Day is truly coming, which is eternity when the Empire of God will have Kingdom headquarters on the new earth, and the Family of God will reign over the entire universe. We can MEDITATE on how good things will be when we no longer are living in this temporary world/age where the days fly by, and so many things are left undone, and so many things don't work out the way we want, and there is so much war and affliction, and, and, and...We can REST and MEDITATE and PRAY so that we can walk out our lives each day of the next temporary seven-day week cycle FOCUSED on the end goal, on entering the Kingdom of God that is foreshadowed by that little slot at the bottom of our posterboard with the "8" label.
So last week, the week of the Roman month of November 18-24, 2012:
Math day:
We had fun with the Inchimals. We worked out some addition problems in the book, and the kids decided to measure everyone's heights.
 |
| Liv getting measured by Inchimals |
Art, Music, and Poetry Day:
We started reading Look Again, a Childcraft book about art. Jaden also attended his third of four sessions of art class. This fall he took "Drawing Landscapes." He has not enjoyed it as much as his previous two classes ("Birdhouses in Clay" and "Mosaics") and has decided he cannot draw well (neither can I), but he did like going and did learn some things.
History and Geography Day:
Jaden did some testing and pretesting in Mystery of History. We read about Samson, the Israelite judge in the same book. We also resumed where we'd left off in A Street Through Time. Over the previous weeks we watched several documentaries that covered the eras that we'd already covered in that book. I did not keep a list written down, so I won't be posting it here.
Science, Health, and Environment Day:
We read about eyes in The Human Body science book from the God's Design... series. Then we read in Nature Got There First about how the eye inspired the invention of cameras and how there are different types of vision/eyes/cameras. Finally we read the October issue of Ranger Rick magazine, including a feature on animal eyes. We also read in the latter about various types of seeds and how they travel to reproduce. We then went outside and collected a few of the different types.
 |
| "The Eye" from The Human Body and "Eye to Camera" from Nature Got There First |
 |
| How eye position affects animals (Ranger Rick, October 2012 issue) |
 |
| Eye size and eye protection |
 |
| "Oddball Eyes" and "Know Your Pupils" from Ranger Rick (October 2012) |
 | |||||
| Top: "Seeds Get Around" from Ranger Rick magazine (October 2012 issue); Bottom: Seeds we collected from our yard and labeled |
Sabbath:
We read from the bible, listened and sang to hymns, and the children's devotional was on the subject of being special and how each is important to God. This was perfect, because I really have suspected some struggling from my children with feeling like their siblings are more important, feeling left out, etc. It's ironic how they can all feel that way about each other. I think this lesson really helped.
During a short family drive I had Nathan stop so I could hop out and collect some gorgeous berries from the shrub/small tree pictured below. I've identified the tree as Staghorn Suman (Rhus typhina).
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhus_typhina:
Some beekeepers use dried sumac bobs as a source of fuel for their smokers.
The fruit of sumacs can be collected, soaked and washed in cold water, strained, sweetened and made into a pink lemonade. This should not be done with the related plant, poison sumac. The leaves and berries of staghorn sumac have been mixed with tobacco and other herbs and smoked by Native American tribes. This practice continues to a small degree to this day.
All parts of the staghorn sumac, except the roots, can be used as both a natural dye and as a mordant. The plant is rich in tannins and can be added to other dye baths to improve light fastness. Harvest the leaves in the summer and the bark all year round.
 |
| Staghorn Sumac |
Some other pictures from the week:
 |
| A few of the books we got from Nathan's momma and stepdad when they came to visit us |
 |
| To this graph, Jaden exclaimed that the kids were foolish, that the environment (the issue with the fewest votes of what they thought was most important) should have been the MOST important, and I was SO PROUD of him and praised him greatly. I SO very much agree. What difference do all the other issues make if we can no longer even live here to work on the other issues?! |
 |
| Jade's newly acquired pistol bb gun (a gift from his "Papaw Ken"), about its workings he explained to me in great detail |
Until next time...
No comments:
Post a Comment