One Beautiful Morning
Happy girl has graduated from her looking window in our bedroom to the front storm door. She is walking more and more, and one of her favorite places to go now is the front door, where she knows how to open the storm door when we have the big door open (and the latch lock only requires a bigger push to open the door).
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| "I belong out THERE"...Elizabeth. |
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| "No, Baby Sister, you must stay in here," is the basic message conveyed by Liv. |
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| Trusten |
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| Jaden William |
Baby Eastern Phoebe
The Eastern Phoebe chicks graduated to flying. Jaden William was outside watching two of them trying to fly. He said one was on the ground, and he picked it up and put it back in the nest, but then it was able to fly away. He saw it fly across the yard and fall on the ground. It tried flying again as he tried to get it, but he ended up catching it. It's pictured below. I'm so glad he at least got to see them take off. We were concerned, because of our two killers, uh...cats might get them. Jaden finally said at one point that he thought they'd be ok. He saw one of them up in a tree at the edge of the woods (not far from the nest). He said they were flying ok.
We all got to experience the whole egg-to-flying-chick cycle, and it was great!
Life of Fred
We started the new math curriculum, Life of Fred. Trusten is starting with the first book called Apples. Jaden William is using the sixth book in the elementary collection called Farming.
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The first day I opened Apples, and I sat down with the boys. Jaden William acted very upset, because everything was "kiddie." Well, that caused Trusten to be ugly about it. After it all I ended up crying with Elizabeth in my bedroom (poor Happy was not happy that day, because she was cutting another tooth). I later told the boys they hurt my feelings and made me cry. Jade told me that he was just mad about that one book, but I explained to him that he didn't have to do that book. Trusten hugged me and apologized, too, and the next time we got the books out, both boys enjoyed it.
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| Sample chapter from Apples |
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| Continued. Every chapter ends with a "Your Turn to Play." |
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Yes, for anyone thinking I'm "stubborn" or any other such thing, yes, whatever. Yes, it's no wonder Nathan and I have "stubborn" or "hard-headed" children. Yes, we do. Would I have it any other way? Well, it would make life easier, I suppose, but in the end, if we can manage to do a decent job bringing them up, I believe they will be a great blessing. The fact of the matter is, I don't want kids who grow up and end up with a "do what I'm told" mindset. I want kids who aren't afraid to question authority or question the status quo. I want my kids to learn to trust God, because He has given them reason to trust Him. And if they are told by a man-run government to worship God in a certain way or told they must do anything else that they feel is wrong, I will be confident that they will disobey that government, even unto death (and trust me, at least two of mine, the "twins" Trust and Liv are willing to do their will unto death, so if their hearts are molded toward God and His will, they'll have no hard time taking all the punishment a wicked government metes out to them). All this does make my job much more difficult. When you absolutely have no way to get through to a child except through his or her heart, it takes work, but that's what we should ultimately want, anyway. We should want our children to obey us, because they want to obey.
If a person believes strongly enough in something, because they have strong evidence for it, then he or she should stand up for it, even if he or she is the only one (or thinks he or she is the only one). That's true for simple things like the "weekend" issue or for bigger things, like not keeping a government-mandated holiday even if not doing so means the death penalty. I believe a time is coming in the near future when the Western world will be expected to keep the holy days of "Sunday," "Easter," "Lent," "Holy Evening" (Halloween) and "All Saints Day," "Christmas," and others. Those who oppose keeping such days and choose to keep other days shall be subject to the death penalty. (There shall be more to the law of that government than the holidays kept, but that is another topic.)
There are some days where I feel like running away or giving up or literally pulling out my hair, but I pray, take some deep breaths, and remember to look at the long-term picture and be thankful that Father thought in His mind that I am capable of mothering such children (even though I admit there have been times I've asked what in the world was He thinking; I'm not nearly good enough).
Back to Life of Fred, I really love how the lessons are set up to get a child to think and how there are other lessons besides math to be learned. It's also entertaining. Forget about Horizons math or any other like it out there. I'm done with it all. Life of Fred, along with the real "lifestyle of learning" everyday things they learn about mathematics, I can now relax about math.
Baker Jaden
The latest thing Jaden William has been baking is our bread. He made it into various round loaves once. His first "regular" slicing loaf of bread collapsed. One of the kneading blades in the pan of the bread machine was not placed properly. It may be possible the bread had a bit too much yeast, but perhaps it was only due to the kneading blade problem. William somehow knew when it was kneading, that it was messed up. He said he fixed it with a spoon, but since he was outside at the time the bread was finished, I took it out, and the blade was buried in the bread. When I tried taking it out from the bottom of the loaf, it just kept sinking into the bread, so I had to dig it out from the top, which is why the huge incision exists in the bread as pictured. The kids all loved it, and it all went quickly both days. I tried some the first day, after forgetting that I wasn't supposed to be eating wheat.
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| Various-sized round loaves |
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| Collapsed loaf |
Linguistics: The Science of Language
William started listening to the course by Professor John McWhorter that I mentioned in my last post. He listened to three lectures in one day and hasn't yet listened to anymore. He listened to "What is Linguistics?", "The Sounds of Language—Consonants," and "The Other Sounds—Vowels."
He learned more about some of the things that simply don't make sense in the English language compared to other languages; how our alphabet is really no good for nothing but a cute little song, because the letters are not arranged in a way of showing how various letters are related to one another; which letters are related to others and how those consonants are basically the same sound made in different parts of the mouth (as seen below); and how the short 'a' sound is almost only existent in the English language (and one or more very small secluded groups of another language(s); among other things.
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| Learning the different letter sounds and where they are made in the mouth and showing how different letters are related. The 'j' is what we pronounce as 'y.' |
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| Vowel sounds |
The highlighted areas are where there were about to be something inserted. Not all squares are filled, though.
I'll let Jaden William listen to these as he chooses, if he chooses. He says some of it's boring, but he did sit through three lectures one morning. He might not want to listen again anytime soon, but I see that he has a great interest in language (which makes me smile greatly inside), so I'd almost be willing to bet he'll be all over these one day, if even in his teens. He'll remember we've got it.
New Baby Chicken
Jaden was successful with getting his favorite chicken Grace lay and incubate an egg for him so that he could have a chick. The resulting offspring of Bob Marley and Grace:
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| Hours old at the most |
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| I love this sweet little chick! |
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| Sweetness! |
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| Jaden and Liv with the little chick |
Jaden found the chicken on Sabbath morning of the 18th when he went to let the chickens out for the day. What a great surprise for us it was! I was so happy for him. I loved seeing his big smile and hearing the chick's peeping Jade walked into the back door with the chick. He's been taking care of it as a human daddy, giving it water, finding worms and insects for it and letting it walk in the grass to eat, snuggling it, and changing out the old cloths we are keeping on the heating pad for it. I loved the timing of the chick arriving, too, because it made for a good lesson for Pentecost, which I posted about on my other blog, Growing in Grace and Knowledge.
Liv's Painting
One day Liv disappeared, and I found her in my bathroom cabinet having so far put one small drop of herbal but bite gel into my contact lens case, and later in the day she found some dye of Jaden's outside (because he didn't bother putting it back in his candle supplies bag in the shed) and started painting herself. I decided I need to set her up at the easel with some paints.
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| All the colors I had available, but I also mixed some of the white and red to make pink. |
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| She used simple strokes of color. I gave her a piece of pink (her favorite color) construction paper and two or three pieces of white computer paper. Trusten said he wanted to paint, so I told him he could after she was finished, but he went and put the blue swirl on the left of Liv's picture. |
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| Sweet girl painting in the yard |
Groundhog
Nathan and Jaden successfully flushed a groundhog into a trap. It was neat to get to see the groundhog up so close. It was a young one. I came back from a short ride on the 4-wheeler on Sabbath to find them with the groundhog (which is why my bouquet I picked that I think I posted in the last post was so disheveled-looking, because I ran in, stuffed it into a vase, and ran outside with my phone).
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| Young groundhog |
My Sweet Climber
My sweet climber? Well, actually all of my kids have been big climbers. Elizabeth climbs up on the beanbags, then onto the couch, and she has even climbed over the couch onto the filing cabinet that sits behind it. Oh! Not exactly where I'd like her to go. She just grins really big when she sees that I see what she's done. She's gotten to where she can almost get onto the couch from the floor, but remember, she's still working on walking well, so...
To conclude this post, I leave you with a sweet picture of Happy:
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| She loves getting in front of the air conditioner. |
Until next time...
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