Jaden:
Language arts was finished up for this year, except as how it will be used in his writing lessons. We worked on math money flash cards one day. Today we started on his writing lessons out of the Complete Curriculum book; he did three pages on nouns. And he did his two weekly Explode the Code lessons. Just one more lesson to go out of that book, and he'll just have two ETC books to go.
Trusten:
I've only done alphabet flashcards with him once since the last blog update, but I read him a book of his choosing every day, sometimes more.
Both boys:
*Daily chapter of Proverbs
*Daily reading from Bible Stories. Some of the things we've read over the past few days are about the "Sermon on the Mount," the healing of Jairus' daughter, the healing of the cenurion's servant, and more. I've had this book for several years now; I think it was a gift to both Nathan and me from my parents. I like it more than most bible story books, because it has real pictures off to the sides of the pages with captions telling about specific things mentioned in the stories. It gives facts about historical places, foods, and objects, for example.
*Annie's Manners: 2 pages of reading and coloring
*Social Studies: I tied a couple of the boys' play silks around their head to demonstrate how some African Americans wear turbans like their African familial ancestors.
*Prepare and Pray: We've read four chapters of Swiss Family Robinson now, and I've asked the discussion questions that P&P include for those. We dehydrated apples, made a solar clock using a stick and rocks. I really like the discussion questions. It has touched on things that Jaden has recently learned elsewhere. For example, he had to tell me about mammals. I also like going over the character qualities that are listed.
Swiss Family Robinson, for the most part, is good so far. My favorite things about it are the superb vocabulary (as most older books are....despite all the increased knowledge and technology of today, people overall sure are stupid now) and the morality. However, the family sure seems to delight in eating some abominable creatures like a penguin, bone marrow (it was insinuated that bone marrow had been sucked out by them in the past), and a gigantic lobster. Of course, if they were truly to the point of starving, I could see eating a penguin, but when there are coconuts and other things available, I don't see the necessity in eating such unhealthful (unclean) animals. So, it's kind of odd to me to read such high morale concerning some things while reading such abhorrent things mixed in. I really disliked reading about one of the big dogs (mastiff, if I remember correctly) chasing down a mother monkey and eating it and then being forced to give the baby monkey a ride on its back afterward!
*Bible Prayers for Bedtime: This book was also a gift; it was given to Jaden by my friend Keith. While we've read the similar book with bible stories, we'd not started this book about praying. I decided I wanted to start reading this right after my morning prayer with the boys. We started it today. It starts at the very beginning, discussing how Adam and Eve could talk to God, but after they were banished, people eventually started praying after seeing how doing all the wrong things was causing disharmony among people, so they needed to call out to God for help. It's going to go through and teach the different reasons for prayer and give examples throughout the bible.
*Youtube:
-how cat food is made, why most pet food is dangerous, how to make homemade cat food
-apple nutrition, breastfeeding benefits, antioxidants
-top 10 worst foods, whole foods vs. processed foods, digestive system problems and causes
*Gods Design for Life: The World of Animals: We started reading about amphibians.
Showing posts with label Prepare and Pray. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Prepare and Pray. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
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.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Plant Project, Dragons, WW2 Nazi Movies, and More
I'm moving very slowly through Jeremiah with the boys...or should I say William, since Trusten just can't sit still through it all, and I don't usually make him. I've mostly been reading just one chapter a day, but sometimes two. I imagine some of the prophetic material is a bit on the boring side for children. I do briefly explain what I can to Will, though. I want him to be prepared...
Yesterday was Plant Project day (Thursday). Will cut out two leaves that we had scanned, and he pasted five more index cards to five sheets of card stock, and he pasted the two leaves. I have to catch up on gathering info for what we have. I am hoping to do some of that today.
Oh, I'm still suffering through TSAP. I really would like to have something with spaghetti sauce. I wonder...am I addicted to tomatine, or do I just really like tomato sauce and am having a hard time finding much to eat that doesn't have tomato, potato, or some sort of pepper that is in the plant family of Solanaceae? I haven't had any physical withdrawals of which I'm aware. It's the hardest when I go to the grocery store. It's a bit frustrating. And then Nathan said he's sick of having chicken and dressing for our sabbath meal (I'm read to change, too, although it sure is good), and I'd like to fix lasagna (I make really good lasagna, too!), but I can't. I think I'm going to make chicken spaghetti for this evening's sabbath meal.
Yeah, notice how I said, "I think." Isn't that bad...I'm not sure what I'm going to fix! Oh, and I'd mentioned having a brisket for the Feast of Trumpets (what we usually eat for that day), and Nathan said he'd rather buy a tenderloin and cut up some filet mignon. This is probably a good idea, because it dawned on me that we always use barbecue sauce with the brisket, and it has tomato and cayenne in it. I let Will get a small bag of sea salt and vinegar potato chips from the deli when we go grocery shopping, and it's so hard to bear him and Trusten chomping away on them when I don't get any. I have just a little more than a month to go, not quite halfway through this torturous experiment.
Anyway, for quite a many months I've had the subject of dragons and seraphim in my mind a lot. Well, I verbally spoke to Nathan a couple of weeks ago that I still really wanted to know more about dragons and whether there were/are good and bad dragons and whether the seraphim order of angels are dragons (etymological and other biblical evidence suggests that they may be). Well, it just so happened a few days later (this often happens for me) that I got an email from the History Channel website telling me about a sale, so I went to see what they had on sale, and there was a video on dragon history, which is just what I was wanting. Well, I found it even cheaper on Amazon. I got it for around 10 bucks after shipping costs. So, we watched that about a week ago. The boys watched it with us (sort of, anyway). It was interesting. It was only 50 minutes worth, though. I still have more study to do on the topic. (It did mention Satan being referred to as a dragon and about leviathan in the sea, but it didn't talk about angels beyond that.)
Wednesday night we watched the movie Valkyrie. It is based on a true story set in the time of WWII, about a group trying to assassinate the wicked Hitler. It was a sad story. They failed, and I believe it said at the end that Operation Valkyrie was the 15th failed attempt by different persons/groups to assassinate the evil German ruler. They were so close, and then a change in plans--a change of a building in which Hitler was having a briefing--was enough to foil the whole thing. (You'll have to watch the movie yourself to see why. ;-) It hit me right then that it was the evil spirits working behind the scenes. That is my feeling on the matter. It didn't say why they moved the briefing over to the other building.
Anyway, Thursday night (last night) we watched Defiance. I haven't cried that much during a movie in a long time. And I have to write about it. I really need to watch the movie again today (we have it rented from Amazon for a 24-hour period) and take notes with my Smartpen. But, I just don't see how I have time, so I will either have to make the time to just write something the best I can with the memory of watching it once, or I'll just have to rent it again. The latter is probably what will happen. I don't want to leave anything important out that I want to talk about. Defiance is also based on a true story set in the time of WW2 and the Holocaust. It's about some Jews in Eastern Europe who flee from the German Nazis to the Belarusian forests to survive. They have all sorts of trouble go their way.
Their time of escape happened to be before winter, so they had time to build shelter ahead of time, but then right as winter was about to set in, they had to leave their camp and go establish a new one. This and so many other terrible events occurred. There was some military fighting, though they ended up for the most part just trying to survive and keep each other alive. They didn't trust God enough, though. There was a terrible lack of faith. I wonder how much better they would have fared if their attitudes had been different. There was one part where I cried with joy, and that was during a wedding feast. But, I cried so much more over all the death, fighting, division, heartlessness, sickness. Last night ended up being one of those nights where I just wept heavily because of the sins of humanity, beings made in the image of God Almighty and being treated like some sort of garbage by fellow humans also made in the image of God.
It was one of those times where my heart just melted in love and compassion for my fellow humans and yet at the same time burn with hatred toward evil hearts who bear the image of God unworthily and wonder how they could possibly hate and mistreat fellow human beings in such a horrible manner.
There was certainly much to learn from the movie. I caught a lot of things during both movies, but I especially did from the second one. I saw so many biblical parallels of past and future events. Will watched the movie, too, although I was reluctant in letting him (but Nathan said it was reality and so wasn't too concerned). It's rated R, and there is definitely plenty of violence. I was able to explain some things to Will, though.
Oh, and he's so smart. Toward the beginning of the movie, the two Jewish brothers who are the main characters were hiding at the edge of the woods and watching the Germans kill and haul off Jews. When they all left, they went back to their house to get their youngest brother out from hiding under the floor (their parents were killed) and gather some food and things and then headed back toward the woods, and Will said, "They're having to go survive now." :-( I told him that yes, it was true. One of the games he plays when he's outside is Surviving. He says, "I'm going to go survive." This is before we've really started teaching him survival skills, but that is our plans.
That is a big part of the reason why I'm doing the plant project so that we can learn all we need to know about different trees, wildflowers, and other plants--food and drug usage and building usage (shelter, baskets, etc.) We will soon be starting a long curriculum called Prepare and Pray. I bought the first and second set of the curriculum. The second set is called Blessed Assurance. I'm not sure whether we're going to start it when we end our school break in mid-September or whether we'll wait until the beginning of next year (the beginning of the next Roman calendar year, in January). He'll be so busy with reading, writing, and math (I have a lot of that planned) work that we might not have any time to do anything else (except the animal science I have planned) until January, especially since I'm about to have the baby this fall and that I have a time limit to finish the book I'm writing, God's Law of Love: The Perfect Law of Liberty. But, we'll definitely be starting the curriculum soon.
Nathan will be taking Will hunting this fall, and I'm sure Nathan will carefully teach him how to clean and cut up a deer.
Trusten mostly learns from observing the rest of us and from talking with us. He asks questions. I do various activities with him when I have time. I simply don't have the time to sit down with him as I did Will at that age. Will certainly had the firstborn advantage.
I finished the book The Firstborn Advantage. What a super book. I highly recommend it, especially to firstborns. I did appreciate that the author Dr. Kevin Leman explained how there can be more than one person in sibling group that possesses firstborn qualities/personalities and that the literal firstborn doesn't always act like a firstborn.
I understood this a bit before I read the book, based mostly on my biblical knowledge and how a firstborn son can lose his firstborn rights. This book didn't discuss rights, really, but it just explained that you can have a firstborn son and a firstborn daughter, both with firstborn traits; and that whenever you have five years or more between two siblings, you can consider those subfamilies and that the firstborn of that subfamily may have firstborn traits. I truly believe that. My husband was the second born of two sons, but he's ten years younger than the firstborn. My husband has more firstborn traits, but he also does have two or three lastborn traits (such as his great sense of humor and social skills and his fantastic salesman ability). He's mixed.
I am no doubt a firstborn. The book not only confirmed things I already knew but also taught me things I didn't really know. The book pointed out the good and the bad of being a firstborn and how to use the firstborn advantage to one's benefit and also to the benefit of others (especially when people tend to easily hate firstborns). I better understand now why I tend to be so very analytical, logical, and organized. These traits are typical of firstborns. I'd like to get a copy of Kevin's The Birth Order Book now. I am very much into the study of birth order. It's amazing! I believe, as Kevin said, that there's a need for every birth order in our society, because each birth order possesses different strengths.
Wow, I'm so impressed with William's various houses and other structures he builds with blocks. He loves to build. I think it will be very exciting when he can build good things out wood and nails (he practices this already). If he's anything like his daddy is, he'll do well.
Will also loves the Reading Rainbow dvds I bought for him. I think he's watched them all, and I know he'll watch them again. I'm so pleased. I'm glad I got them. I just LOVED RR when I was a kid. Kudos to Levar Burton, the host. It's so nice to see a decent black person who loves to learn and share with others. (And he was on Star Trek: The Next Generation, too, and I LOVED that show, too!) Will has learned a lot from the videos. Trusten watches, too. My boys are SO CUTE sitting on the couch together watching a video.
Okay, well I'm just rattling on now. The main point is that we are still happily learning, even during our "break." (But, hey, we're enjoying a lot of time outside, and I'm catching up on my reading. Yay!)
Oh, yeah...one more thing. Last sabbath, while the boys went for a ride with Nathan, I was walking around the yard, and I inspected a tree at the edge of the yard. There are bumps all over the trunk of the tree. I assumed it must be some sort of fungal growth but that perhaps the bark was just that way. I'm not sure what kind of tree it is. I have not identified it, yet. But, anyway...fast forward to just two or three days ago, and the boys and I were outside. I was sitting on the front porch reading, and Trusten pointed to a beetle of some sort that was crawling on the house. He asked me what it was. Well, I've seen that type a few times before, but I don't know what it is. I stepped inside to grab our insect field guide and started flipping through it and told Trusten I would try to figure it out.
Well, that particular beetle is not in there, so I still don't know what it is, however I came across something called "scale insects." They had fake pictures of several different kind but not the exact thing that was on that tree. But, I think that must be what those bumps are. Some of them are apparently microscopic, and I guess all of them have legs very tiny (I can't see any legs). That's what I told Will later on, when I brought it up to him. He and I walked out to the tree so that I could show him the strange things. He said that they didn't look like insects, and I said that's not what I would have thought either, since I thought insects had six legs. But, I pulled back out that book to show him, and it said they have legs...you just can't see them.
That's it for now! I've already written what's becoming a book.
Yesterday was Plant Project day (Thursday). Will cut out two leaves that we had scanned, and he pasted five more index cards to five sheets of card stock, and he pasted the two leaves. I have to catch up on gathering info for what we have. I am hoping to do some of that today.
Oh, I'm still suffering through TSAP. I really would like to have something with spaghetti sauce. I wonder...am I addicted to tomatine, or do I just really like tomato sauce and am having a hard time finding much to eat that doesn't have tomato, potato, or some sort of pepper that is in the plant family of Solanaceae? I haven't had any physical withdrawals of which I'm aware. It's the hardest when I go to the grocery store. It's a bit frustrating. And then Nathan said he's sick of having chicken and dressing for our sabbath meal (I'm read to change, too, although it sure is good), and I'd like to fix lasagna (I make really good lasagna, too!), but I can't. I think I'm going to make chicken spaghetti for this evening's sabbath meal.
Yeah, notice how I said, "I think." Isn't that bad...I'm not sure what I'm going to fix! Oh, and I'd mentioned having a brisket for the Feast of Trumpets (what we usually eat for that day), and Nathan said he'd rather buy a tenderloin and cut up some filet mignon. This is probably a good idea, because it dawned on me that we always use barbecue sauce with the brisket, and it has tomato and cayenne in it. I let Will get a small bag of sea salt and vinegar potato chips from the deli when we go grocery shopping, and it's so hard to bear him and Trusten chomping away on them when I don't get any. I have just a little more than a month to go, not quite halfway through this torturous experiment.
Anyway, for quite a many months I've had the subject of dragons and seraphim in my mind a lot. Well, I verbally spoke to Nathan a couple of weeks ago that I still really wanted to know more about dragons and whether there were/are good and bad dragons and whether the seraphim order of angels are dragons (etymological and other biblical evidence suggests that they may be). Well, it just so happened a few days later (this often happens for me) that I got an email from the History Channel website telling me about a sale, so I went to see what they had on sale, and there was a video on dragon history, which is just what I was wanting. Well, I found it even cheaper on Amazon. I got it for around 10 bucks after shipping costs. So, we watched that about a week ago. The boys watched it with us (sort of, anyway). It was interesting. It was only 50 minutes worth, though. I still have more study to do on the topic. (It did mention Satan being referred to as a dragon and about leviathan in the sea, but it didn't talk about angels beyond that.)
Wednesday night we watched the movie Valkyrie. It is based on a true story set in the time of WWII, about a group trying to assassinate the wicked Hitler. It was a sad story. They failed, and I believe it said at the end that Operation Valkyrie was the 15th failed attempt by different persons/groups to assassinate the evil German ruler. They were so close, and then a change in plans--a change of a building in which Hitler was having a briefing--was enough to foil the whole thing. (You'll have to watch the movie yourself to see why. ;-) It hit me right then that it was the evil spirits working behind the scenes. That is my feeling on the matter. It didn't say why they moved the briefing over to the other building.
Anyway, Thursday night (last night) we watched Defiance. I haven't cried that much during a movie in a long time. And I have to write about it. I really need to watch the movie again today (we have it rented from Amazon for a 24-hour period) and take notes with my Smartpen. But, I just don't see how I have time, so I will either have to make the time to just write something the best I can with the memory of watching it once, or I'll just have to rent it again. The latter is probably what will happen. I don't want to leave anything important out that I want to talk about. Defiance is also based on a true story set in the time of WW2 and the Holocaust. It's about some Jews in Eastern Europe who flee from the German Nazis to the Belarusian forests to survive. They have all sorts of trouble go their way.
Their time of escape happened to be before winter, so they had time to build shelter ahead of time, but then right as winter was about to set in, they had to leave their camp and go establish a new one. This and so many other terrible events occurred. There was some military fighting, though they ended up for the most part just trying to survive and keep each other alive. They didn't trust God enough, though. There was a terrible lack of faith. I wonder how much better they would have fared if their attitudes had been different. There was one part where I cried with joy, and that was during a wedding feast. But, I cried so much more over all the death, fighting, division, heartlessness, sickness. Last night ended up being one of those nights where I just wept heavily because of the sins of humanity, beings made in the image of God Almighty and being treated like some sort of garbage by fellow humans also made in the image of God.
It was one of those times where my heart just melted in love and compassion for my fellow humans and yet at the same time burn with hatred toward evil hearts who bear the image of God unworthily and wonder how they could possibly hate and mistreat fellow human beings in such a horrible manner.
There was certainly much to learn from the movie. I caught a lot of things during both movies, but I especially did from the second one. I saw so many biblical parallels of past and future events. Will watched the movie, too, although I was reluctant in letting him (but Nathan said it was reality and so wasn't too concerned). It's rated R, and there is definitely plenty of violence. I was able to explain some things to Will, though.
Oh, and he's so smart. Toward the beginning of the movie, the two Jewish brothers who are the main characters were hiding at the edge of the woods and watching the Germans kill and haul off Jews. When they all left, they went back to their house to get their youngest brother out from hiding under the floor (their parents were killed) and gather some food and things and then headed back toward the woods, and Will said, "They're having to go survive now." :-( I told him that yes, it was true. One of the games he plays when he's outside is Surviving. He says, "I'm going to go survive." This is before we've really started teaching him survival skills, but that is our plans.
That is a big part of the reason why I'm doing the plant project so that we can learn all we need to know about different trees, wildflowers, and other plants--food and drug usage and building usage (shelter, baskets, etc.) We will soon be starting a long curriculum called Prepare and Pray. I bought the first and second set of the curriculum. The second set is called Blessed Assurance. I'm not sure whether we're going to start it when we end our school break in mid-September or whether we'll wait until the beginning of next year (the beginning of the next Roman calendar year, in January). He'll be so busy with reading, writing, and math (I have a lot of that planned) work that we might not have any time to do anything else (except the animal science I have planned) until January, especially since I'm about to have the baby this fall and that I have a time limit to finish the book I'm writing, God's Law of Love: The Perfect Law of Liberty. But, we'll definitely be starting the curriculum soon.
Nathan will be taking Will hunting this fall, and I'm sure Nathan will carefully teach him how to clean and cut up a deer.
Trusten mostly learns from observing the rest of us and from talking with us. He asks questions. I do various activities with him when I have time. I simply don't have the time to sit down with him as I did Will at that age. Will certainly had the firstborn advantage.
I finished the book The Firstborn Advantage. What a super book. I highly recommend it, especially to firstborns. I did appreciate that the author Dr. Kevin Leman explained how there can be more than one person in sibling group that possesses firstborn qualities/personalities and that the literal firstborn doesn't always act like a firstborn.
I understood this a bit before I read the book, based mostly on my biblical knowledge and how a firstborn son can lose his firstborn rights. This book didn't discuss rights, really, but it just explained that you can have a firstborn son and a firstborn daughter, both with firstborn traits; and that whenever you have five years or more between two siblings, you can consider those subfamilies and that the firstborn of that subfamily may have firstborn traits. I truly believe that. My husband was the second born of two sons, but he's ten years younger than the firstborn. My husband has more firstborn traits, but he also does have two or three lastborn traits (such as his great sense of humor and social skills and his fantastic salesman ability). He's mixed.
I am no doubt a firstborn. The book not only confirmed things I already knew but also taught me things I didn't really know. The book pointed out the good and the bad of being a firstborn and how to use the firstborn advantage to one's benefit and also to the benefit of others (especially when people tend to easily hate firstborns). I better understand now why I tend to be so very analytical, logical, and organized. These traits are typical of firstborns. I'd like to get a copy of Kevin's The Birth Order Book now. I am very much into the study of birth order. It's amazing! I believe, as Kevin said, that there's a need for every birth order in our society, because each birth order possesses different strengths.
Wow, I'm so impressed with William's various houses and other structures he builds with blocks. He loves to build. I think it will be very exciting when he can build good things out wood and nails (he practices this already). If he's anything like his daddy is, he'll do well.
Will also loves the Reading Rainbow dvds I bought for him. I think he's watched them all, and I know he'll watch them again. I'm so pleased. I'm glad I got them. I just LOVED RR when I was a kid. Kudos to Levar Burton, the host. It's so nice to see a decent black person who loves to learn and share with others. (And he was on Star Trek: The Next Generation, too, and I LOVED that show, too!) Will has learned a lot from the videos. Trusten watches, too. My boys are SO CUTE sitting on the couch together watching a video.
Okay, well I'm just rattling on now. The main point is that we are still happily learning, even during our "break." (But, hey, we're enjoying a lot of time outside, and I'm catching up on my reading. Yay!)
Oh, yeah...one more thing. Last sabbath, while the boys went for a ride with Nathan, I was walking around the yard, and I inspected a tree at the edge of the yard. There are bumps all over the trunk of the tree. I assumed it must be some sort of fungal growth but that perhaps the bark was just that way. I'm not sure what kind of tree it is. I have not identified it, yet. But, anyway...fast forward to just two or three days ago, and the boys and I were outside. I was sitting on the front porch reading, and Trusten pointed to a beetle of some sort that was crawling on the house. He asked me what it was. Well, I've seen that type a few times before, but I don't know what it is. I stepped inside to grab our insect field guide and started flipping through it and told Trusten I would try to figure it out.
Well, that particular beetle is not in there, so I still don't know what it is, however I came across something called "scale insects." They had fake pictures of several different kind but not the exact thing that was on that tree. But, I think that must be what those bumps are. Some of them are apparently microscopic, and I guess all of them have legs very tiny (I can't see any legs). That's what I told Will later on, when I brought it up to him. He and I walked out to the tree so that I could show him the strange things. He said that they didn't look like insects, and I said that's not what I would have thought either, since I thought insects had six legs. But, I pulled back out that book to show him, and it said they have legs...you just can't see them.
That's it for now! I've already written what's becoming a book.
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