I like how things have been going...reminds me of how it used to be before Trusten was born. I've gone more slowly with the "going-in-order" books. Jade has about a month's worth of his first grade writing lessons left, and then we'll start on Complete Curriculum for Grade 2. In science, we just do whatever comes up on a certain day, and if nothing does, then I'll usually do a lesson in the animal science book, and then they watch related videos when it's Youtube time, and we may look at other books that share related material. I really like it this way. Same with history. We've finished the Drive Thru History dvd series. It won't be the only time they're watched. We haven't done any book history work on a regular basis for may months. We'll soon start Volume 1 of Mystery of History, which teaches world history in a way that the history recorded in the bible is taught chronologically alongside history in other parts of the world (like the Far East).
I just instituted a break from required written and almost all book work. I will just read to the boys each day the following: a chapter from Proverbs daily, a bible story from Bible Stories, a book that is Trust's pick of the day, and some chapters from Swiss Family Robinson. I would like to read at least five more chapters of the SFR to them over the next two weeks. Then we'll continue Prepare and Pray.
Some things we've done since the last update:
*Bible Stories: money changers, born again, Jesus sending out his disciples, the sower and the soils, Jesus teaching how to pray, John the Baptist's death, Jesus feeding the hungry crowd, and Jesus and Peter walking on the water
*Sabbath School lessons: "God's House" (respect in church, appropriate things to do on the sabbath, inappropriate things to do on the sabbath) and "God Created Non-Living Things"
*Explode the Code: Jade finished his fifth EtC book, Explode the Code 3. He finished that book with a 90% average, which is the same average he made on the other book. FANTASTIC! It's too bad that he could have done even better, as there were a couple lessons on which he fooled around and hurried through it. One of those he only scored a 71%. In case anyone is wondering, this is the only thing I grade, except for tests (and he's only had those in his science books so far). The stuff in Complete Curriculum I work on with him pretty closely. Everything he gets wrong on that stuff, I usually make him correct. Other things I may correct with my red pen, but I don't give him grades. The only grades I have ever given is on EtC and science tests.
*Bible Prayers for Bedtime: We dont' do these at bedtime but rather at reading time, after we read the bible. The lessons since the last update have been how to pray for safety/deliverance, how to pray when we need help with a problem, asking God what to do when someone argues with us, praying to know God, obeying God when God tells us to do something after prayer that may seem strange, and praying for a miracle.
*Ice experiment: We froze cubes of water and cubes of freshly juiced orange juice. I let the boys try to gently bite into the frozen water cubes and then the orange cubes to see which was harder. I asked them why they thought fruit juice popsicles are softer than plain water ice. Jade said because the juice had other things in it. I told him he was right and explained more specifically that the water froze in large crystals, but when the other components of juice were mixed in, that water froze in smaller ice crystals, resulting in softer ice. It's the right time of year for ice experiments. We even have snow on the ground now! :-) Jade has had a lot of fun in it. Trusten doesn't like to be out there for long. We all three spent some time out there today while Liv sat in her bouncer chair positioned so that she could look outside.
*Writing: verbs, adjectives, and pronouns
*Animals: in God's Design for Science we finished studying amphibians and started on reptiles and then read more about lizards and snakes. Jade even got on the floor to try moving in the four ways different snakes move across the ground.
*Youtube: benefits of coconut, whole foods vs. processed foods, top 10 worst foods, historical accuracy of the bible, Keith Hunt's part 1 of Matthew 24, snakes eating eggs and animals, rattlesnake attacking person on live television, lizard walking on water, gila monster, komodo dragon. Also I have found these "Crawford the Cat" 5-minute cartoons on Youtube. I've been showing the boys 1 or 2 a day. So far they have watched ones on: putting away toys, please and thank you, hand washing, tooth brushing, good table manners, and putting on a coat
Well, Jade and I have had a LOT of interesting conversations, and I sure can't remember them all. But, I've enjoyed the way we've been doing things for sure. He's learning what he wants to know, and I've had fun teaching him. Same goes for Trust, but Jade asks more things that require in-depth conversations. I've also started telling the bedtime stories again about Randolph the grasshopper and all his friends. He has had a wife for awhile now, Sasha. They just recently had children. The stories of late have focused a lot on the children, especially Daniel. R. and S. had 100 children. One of them was a foolish child who was killed and eaten by a bird, because he disobeyed his father's instructions not to go out onto the rocky places outside of the grass where he could be seen more easily by predators. Since that child had done that so many times before w/o being harmed, he didn't trust/believe his father. Well, one day his "luck" ran out. I explained that just because a person doesn't always get hurt from disobeying a parent's rules or may not even understand the reasoning for a rule, it doesn't mean the rule is invalid and that one day you may finally pay the consequences. I always relate things back to God's Law and the love it shows. We should always trust/belive and obey him. Many say they believe Him, but in works (by disobeying His Law) they deny Him. Whenever the boys disobey us, I ask them why they didn't believe us, why didn't they trust us enough to obey.
Daniel is discussed most often. He is a wise son, and he's very studious. He likes to visit the library and museums and explore nature. He loves to ask questions and has a good relationship with his parents. Daniel recently started studying reproduction among animals and how different animals reproduce in different ways. Daniel also recently visited with one of his friends, Adam a ladybug, and Adam tried selling him a pack of gum (all natural from the trees in the nearby forest) for cheap. Daniel asked where Adam got the gum, since he knew that gum sold in the marketplace for more money. He discovered that Adam stole the gum from an ant that Adam knew. Daniel refused to buy the stolen treat and told Adam he had better return it. Daniel told his parents what had happened, and they advised that Daniel should not be friends with Adam anymore, unless he repented of his misdeed. I asked the boys what they would do if a friend tried selling them something they knew was stolen. Jade said that was a hard question. I said, "Because it would be very tempting, wouldn't it, because you know you would not have to spend as much of your allowance as you would at the market." He said, "Yes, and because it would be a good treat." I then reminded him of what I call the silver rule (most know this as the "golden rule": do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but the golden rule TRULY is to do unto God the way He wants us to do). He said he would not want anyone to do that to him and so he would refuse the treat. :-)
Okay...well, I've run out of time, so that's it for now.
Showing posts with label Drive Thru History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Drive Thru History. Show all posts
Monday, January 4, 2010
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Prepare & Pray, Hygiene and Nutrition, and Let's Drive Thru History!
When I left off last time, Jaden was out doing a scavenger hunt. I gave him a list of things to find and some other items to assist him:
One of the things I had him do was take his digital camera out to take three pictures of things he finds interesting and to give me an explanation of why he finds them so. Well, he took a picture of a rock with a fossil, which also happened to be another thing on his list, and a picture of the woods. The third picture was of that plant from which he'd taken that neat ice that he showed me. You should remember the picture I posted on here before. Well, the actual plant with the ice on it was even neater, but we need a cable to upload his pictures.
Jade learned how to write a book report (a short one), learned how to compare and contrast, and learned how to classify things. He's done four Explode the Code lessons (he does one every 1st and 6th day of the week), and he's still doing well on those.
I bought a good used hardback copy of Swiss Family Robinson. I found it for a penny on Amazon, and with shipping it was just $4.00, which is still a great deal. I'm enjoying it so far, and I think Jaden is. Trusten doesn't have much of an attention span, so he probably doesn't know much about the story. I do read it to both of them. We've so far read two chapters, and we're going through the Prepare & Pray curriculum along with it. I like the Toddler Tales, which are extremely short stories aimed toward toddlers (like Trusten) which teach good lessons. We also discuss character qualities of the characters in Swiss Family Robinson and go over discussion questions. Now, there are a lot of things listed in the P&P curriculum to do, and I don't do them all. I pick and choose which ones I want us to do. The main reason I wanted to get the curriculum and the second half called Blessed Assurance is because I wanted a Christian-based family preparedness program of study.
There are a lot of things that Nathan and I both have wanted to learn so that we can be self-sustainable if the need arises. People in our society have lost so much knowledge and ability to do things without our modern mechanical and electrical servants and our modern economic system. We want our children to learn these things as well. This curriculum will help me have an order of things so that we systematically get to everything we need to learn how to do. Of course, like I said, there are things that I'm skipping. There is a LOT of material. It's actually compiled in such a way to be the main curriculum for a homeschooling family. It's not going to function that way for us. However, I've already discovered that their approach to learning things greatly compares to my own. Anyway, from this point on when I update this blog, I'll just talk about what we did according to the P&P curriculum, but it's only the stuff I chose to do.
So far in P&P and Swiss Family Robinson:
*We learned about levers. It was mentioned in the first chapter, where father of the shipwrecked family made use of a lever to help him lift his homemade boat made of casks out of the ship and into the water. It was too heavy for him to move on his own. I located the physical science book and introductory chapter on levers in our God's Design for Science curriculum and read that lesson. I also demonstrated the use of a lever with objects in our home--ruler, rock, and cup--and we went over the terms: lever, effort arm, fulcrum, resistance, effort
*We learned that sundown near the equator happens quickly, and upon Jaden asking about the equator, I showed it to him on the globe and talked about it briefly. We also went over the term "hogshead," and I showed him pictures on Google Images. Hogshead ended up being one of the vocabulary terms in P&P, but I'm not using the vocabulary lists in there as part of our learning experience...only those things asked about.
*And we sang "Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us," a song which I've long loved. I played the music for it online.
The first day of last week Nathan went out into the cold dreary day to dig holes in the cold, hard, and rocky ground so that he could plant my eleven baby flowering trees that I received from the Arbor Day Foundation. I'm so thankful to him, as I'm not to the point where I need to be doing hard work like digging yet, but I'd wanted the trees. I hope I do a good job of taking care of them, and I hope to have more beautiful trees in a few years. The boys watched Nathan dig the holes and plant and water the trees.
*Math: One day I worked with Jade on adding and subtracting using our cuisinart rods, and I worked with Trusten on counting. Another day I had Jaden count to 100 using all pennies, then all nickels, then dimes, and finally quarters. I asked him why he thought it was necessary to have different currencies and asked whether he would want to carry 100 pennies in his pocket to pay for something that cost a dollar. I also had him count out to 25 of each coin set (except dimes, of course, and we went over why he couldn't do that with only dimes). I taught Trusten the difference between pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters.
Jade and I played Bookworm (computer spelling game) one day while Trusten played with chalk on Jade's chalk board.
I'm doing United Church of God's sabbath school lessons with the boys again. I'd started to do that two years ago, but I stopped about as soon as I started. I like their format, though, so I will continue with this. I've done it two sabbaths in a row now. Each lesson includes a song, too, so I really like that. As far as bible-reading during the week, still a proverb daily. Jade sure knows the Proverbs well now. We've been reading them daily for around a year and a half now, I guess. For a long time I've stopped every so often in the reading so that he can fill in blanks (anywhere from a word to a whole verse), and he does so well. Trusten is now trying to fill in the blanks. I don't know whether I mentioned it the last time I posted, but I'm reading daily from Bible Stories to replace the bible reading (except Proverbs). That's working out quite well. I started this time in the new testament. We sometimes read from these other two new books Jade has at night before they go to bed. I almost always sing with them at bedtime: "This Little Light of Mine", "Jesus Loves the Little Children", and "Jesus Loves Me."
I'd been letting the boys watch a short bible video or other educational video during my prayer time (in another room where it's quiet w/o worrying about them getting into trouble), but they've watched almost everything we have, many of them numerous times, and my prayer time has been high-jacked over the past three or four months where it's not been so peaceful. Well, I decided I'd pick out something each day for them to watch on Youtube, and it may be something they've pondered about or if not, then something I choose. I was absolutely delighted to discover that you can make a playlist on Youtube and then set them all to play one after another (I didn't realize this before!). I love it! Last week the boys watched videos on levers, the atmosphere, hygiene, and fruits and vegetables nutrition. They learned, and I got peace!
I'd bought a couple dvds in the Drive Thru History series with Dave Stotts. They were on American History. Well, I liked them (actually haven't watched all the episodes), so I decided to buy more. I bought the four I know that he's done for world history: Ancient Greece, Rome if You Want To, Turkey, and East Meets the West. We've watched the entire video on Greece and two of the three episodes on Rome. I REALLY like these! Jade seems to think they're okay now...I'm hoping he'll like them more as he gets older. I'd been telling Nathan about the other two and said I thought he'd like them, too, so one afternoon he got home early, and we watched the Greece together. We watched most of the one on Rome yesterday. The apostle Paul was mentioned quite a bit, and I appreciated how Dave made the point that Paul was one of the most influential persons in history. Also, he made it clear that the bible should be the most trusted source of history. These videos are great; I highly recommend them.
Jade has just about worn out the chess-playing. He loves to play chess on the computer. He also loves this art site where there are so many activities to do. It's called The Art Zone. Between those two things and Clever Island (which I think has almost come to and end of serving its purpose for him), he gets plenty of computer time (but I do limit it!). It's time to get an Internet filter installed, we think. He can navigate the Internet himself, and I'm afraid of him accidentally getting somewhere he ought not to be.
Oh! I about forgot about all my flash cards. I was upset that Trusten had apparently thrown our alphabet flashcards out of the Jeep one day ( I found them one day at the side of the path in the woods, and they'd been ruined by rain). But, my mother in law had bought a whole set of different flash cards, and hey, there are some for the alphabet! Trusten still doesn't know his alphabet, which is no big deal, but he's showing signs that he really needs to know it, as then he'd understand things better. He learns most things later than Jade, but I think that's typical of the birth order. I'm excited, though, because there are flash cards on money and time and measure. Woo-hoo! I'm going to open those two this week or next to give them a try. I like flash cards.
That's it...for the kids, anyway. I'm always learning, and if I posted everything I'm learning on this blog...well, you wouldn't have time to read it. LOL! I'm sure most think these entries are too long as it is.
Jade learned how to write a book report (a short one), learned how to compare and contrast, and learned how to classify things. He's done four Explode the Code lessons (he does one every 1st and 6th day of the week), and he's still doing well on those.
I bought a good used hardback copy of Swiss Family Robinson. I found it for a penny on Amazon, and with shipping it was just $4.00, which is still a great deal. I'm enjoying it so far, and I think Jaden is. Trusten doesn't have much of an attention span, so he probably doesn't know much about the story. I do read it to both of them. We've so far read two chapters, and we're going through the Prepare & Pray curriculum along with it. I like the Toddler Tales, which are extremely short stories aimed toward toddlers (like Trusten) which teach good lessons. We also discuss character qualities of the characters in Swiss Family Robinson and go over discussion questions. Now, there are a lot of things listed in the P&P curriculum to do, and I don't do them all. I pick and choose which ones I want us to do. The main reason I wanted to get the curriculum and the second half called Blessed Assurance is because I wanted a Christian-based family preparedness program of study.
There are a lot of things that Nathan and I both have wanted to learn so that we can be self-sustainable if the need arises. People in our society have lost so much knowledge and ability to do things without our modern mechanical and electrical servants and our modern economic system. We want our children to learn these things as well. This curriculum will help me have an order of things so that we systematically get to everything we need to learn how to do. Of course, like I said, there are things that I'm skipping. There is a LOT of material. It's actually compiled in such a way to be the main curriculum for a homeschooling family. It's not going to function that way for us. However, I've already discovered that their approach to learning things greatly compares to my own. Anyway, from this point on when I update this blog, I'll just talk about what we did according to the P&P curriculum, but it's only the stuff I chose to do.
So far in P&P and Swiss Family Robinson:
*We learned about levers. It was mentioned in the first chapter, where father of the shipwrecked family made use of a lever to help him lift his homemade boat made of casks out of the ship and into the water. It was too heavy for him to move on his own. I located the physical science book and introductory chapter on levers in our God's Design for Science curriculum and read that lesson. I also demonstrated the use of a lever with objects in our home--ruler, rock, and cup--and we went over the terms: lever, effort arm, fulcrum, resistance, effort
*We learned that sundown near the equator happens quickly, and upon Jaden asking about the equator, I showed it to him on the globe and talked about it briefly. We also went over the term "hogshead," and I showed him pictures on Google Images. Hogshead ended up being one of the vocabulary terms in P&P, but I'm not using the vocabulary lists in there as part of our learning experience...only those things asked about.
*And we sang "Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us," a song which I've long loved. I played the music for it online.
The first day of last week Nathan went out into the cold dreary day to dig holes in the cold, hard, and rocky ground so that he could plant my eleven baby flowering trees that I received from the Arbor Day Foundation. I'm so thankful to him, as I'm not to the point where I need to be doing hard work like digging yet, but I'd wanted the trees. I hope I do a good job of taking care of them, and I hope to have more beautiful trees in a few years. The boys watched Nathan dig the holes and plant and water the trees.
*Math: One day I worked with Jade on adding and subtracting using our cuisinart rods, and I worked with Trusten on counting. Another day I had Jaden count to 100 using all pennies, then all nickels, then dimes, and finally quarters. I asked him why he thought it was necessary to have different currencies and asked whether he would want to carry 100 pennies in his pocket to pay for something that cost a dollar. I also had him count out to 25 of each coin set (except dimes, of course, and we went over why he couldn't do that with only dimes). I taught Trusten the difference between pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters.
Jade and I played Bookworm (computer spelling game) one day while Trusten played with chalk on Jade's chalk board.
I'm doing United Church of God's sabbath school lessons with the boys again. I'd started to do that two years ago, but I stopped about as soon as I started. I like their format, though, so I will continue with this. I've done it two sabbaths in a row now. Each lesson includes a song, too, so I really like that. As far as bible-reading during the week, still a proverb daily. Jade sure knows the Proverbs well now. We've been reading them daily for around a year and a half now, I guess. For a long time I've stopped every so often in the reading so that he can fill in blanks (anywhere from a word to a whole verse), and he does so well. Trusten is now trying to fill in the blanks. I don't know whether I mentioned it the last time I posted, but I'm reading daily from Bible Stories to replace the bible reading (except Proverbs). That's working out quite well. I started this time in the new testament. We sometimes read from these other two new books Jade has at night before they go to bed. I almost always sing with them at bedtime: "This Little Light of Mine", "Jesus Loves the Little Children", and "Jesus Loves Me."
I'd been letting the boys watch a short bible video or other educational video during my prayer time (in another room where it's quiet w/o worrying about them getting into trouble), but they've watched almost everything we have, many of them numerous times, and my prayer time has been high-jacked over the past three or four months where it's not been so peaceful. Well, I decided I'd pick out something each day for them to watch on Youtube, and it may be something they've pondered about or if not, then something I choose. I was absolutely delighted to discover that you can make a playlist on Youtube and then set them all to play one after another (I didn't realize this before!). I love it! Last week the boys watched videos on levers, the atmosphere, hygiene, and fruits and vegetables nutrition. They learned, and I got peace!
I'd bought a couple dvds in the Drive Thru History series with Dave Stotts. They were on American History. Well, I liked them (actually haven't watched all the episodes), so I decided to buy more. I bought the four I know that he's done for world history: Ancient Greece, Rome if You Want To, Turkey, and East Meets the West. We've watched the entire video on Greece and two of the three episodes on Rome. I REALLY like these! Jade seems to think they're okay now...I'm hoping he'll like them more as he gets older. I'd been telling Nathan about the other two and said I thought he'd like them, too, so one afternoon he got home early, and we watched the Greece together. We watched most of the one on Rome yesterday. The apostle Paul was mentioned quite a bit, and I appreciated how Dave made the point that Paul was one of the most influential persons in history. Also, he made it clear that the bible should be the most trusted source of history. These videos are great; I highly recommend them.
Jade has just about worn out the chess-playing. He loves to play chess on the computer. He also loves this art site where there are so many activities to do. It's called The Art Zone. Between those two things and Clever Island (which I think has almost come to and end of serving its purpose for him), he gets plenty of computer time (but I do limit it!). It's time to get an Internet filter installed, we think. He can navigate the Internet himself, and I'm afraid of him accidentally getting somewhere he ought not to be.
Oh! I about forgot about all my flash cards. I was upset that Trusten had apparently thrown our alphabet flashcards out of the Jeep one day ( I found them one day at the side of the path in the woods, and they'd been ruined by rain). But, my mother in law had bought a whole set of different flash cards, and hey, there are some for the alphabet! Trusten still doesn't know his alphabet, which is no big deal, but he's showing signs that he really needs to know it, as then he'd understand things better. He learns most things later than Jade, but I think that's typical of the birth order. I'm excited, though, because there are flash cards on money and time and measure. Woo-hoo! I'm going to open those two this week or next to give them a try. I like flash cards.
That's it...for the kids, anyway. I'm always learning, and if I posted everything I'm learning on this blog...well, you wouldn't have time to read it. LOL! I'm sure most think these entries are too long as it is.
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