*Monday, March 15: Proverb and bible story. Jaden did 3 writing pages in the 1st Gr. CC, 2 math pages in 2nd Gr. CC, a reading lesson in 2nd Gr. CC, and we discussed time travel and watched that movie again. Well, I halfway watched it and halfway did some writing while Liv slept. The movie mainly played again for the boys, but it was distracting me.
Trusten identified felt pictures and put them on our flannel board. Here are some pics of the boys this day:
This evening was the new month and also the new year. Jaden blew the shofar, and we had brownies for dessert.
*Tuesday, March 16: Proverb and bible story. Jaden and Trusten started out the day watching a Reading Rainbow dvd about family, as I was not out of bed yet. Jade did 3 writing pages, 2 math pages, and a reading lesson. We talked about what a crisis pregnancy center does and then went to town to the nearest one.
*Wednesday, March 17: Proverb and bible story. I literally lectured the boys all day long, explaining to them proper family dynamics, focusing on the role of a firstborn son and the younger siblings. I want Jaden to be a loving ruler over his siblings, to teach them by example how they should act. I want him to be able to constructively find things for them to do together when we're having adult conversations or when I have other things I must do. I also reiterated to Jaden and do so every day--when needed, that he needs to treat Trusten how he wants his daddy to treat him. I'm sure Jade would not like it too much if Nathan pushed him onto the floor or grabbed him by his shirt and shook him around, but he has done Trust that way. He also provokes Trusten to anger; this is a major issue on which we're working. Another issue is his lip service that he is giving us. We can tell when he's sincere and when he's not.
Yet another issue is that hearing and acknowledging instruction just doesn't cut it. Hearing and understanding is not enough. DOING is important. It was unbelievable one day that I told him what he needed to be doing, and he said okay, and so I asked him to repeat it back to me so that I knew he had listened. Well, he repeated it back just fine. He heard me just fine. THEN, astoundingly, he walked over to what he had been doing and went back to doing it, NOT doing what I'd told him to do. Talk about jaw-dropping amazement! A hearer and not a doer! Knowing what the command is is good, if one does it. Not doing it when knowing he should is worse than not knowing it! I will be assigning him new scripture verses to memorize, and that will also comprise some of his writing.
*Thursday, March 18: Proverb and bible story. We went grocery shopping this day, and I don't remember what sorts of things we discussed during this day. I didn't note anything. I don't think Jaden did any book work, though. Aha! I know what we did. We watched an Ice Age "short" on Amazon called "No Time for Nuts," which was yet another time travel video! The boys love the Ice Age movies; they have the 1st and 3rd ones (they saw the 2nd online, and I didn't much care for it). I thought it was a full-time movie and had seen it at a glance a few days before when browsing. Well, it turned out to be around seven or eight minutes long, a "short," as I said, so I found a cheap full-length animated movie they could watch. I chose Gulliver's Travel. I'd never read the book or had seen any movie on that. I halfway kept up with it as I did laundry and such, while the boys watched it. Interesting. The graphics and animation were lacking, but the story had a good moral. An evil astrologer sorcerer was working for both sides of two peoples to keep them warring with each other. A ship-wrecked doctor by the surname of Gulliver ended up on an island with the one people, and he was a giant compared to the tiny Lilliputians. Anyway, in the end he helped make it possible for the two sides to find peace with each other. It was the end for the trouble-making evil man. I explained to the boys that some people were indeed like that and lived to keep trouble stirred up for others. That's the way the evil powers of the world are doing among our real nations, keeping wars going against each other. Very sick.
*Friday, March 19: Proverb and bible story. Jade did a reading lesson. I really like his reading lessons, because not only is he reading aloud to me and answering questions, but he's learning things from what he reads. Sometimes it's history. Sometimes it's a moral tale. They've all been good, though. Jade usually does an Explode the Code lesson on Fridays, but he was exempted today.
*Saturday, March 20: Proverb. I did a thankfulness lesson with the boys today from Choosing Thankfulness. It was just the lesson that needed to be taught, too, because it taught that complaining and finding fault were opposites of being thankful. Of course, it pointed out that at times it was needful to do these things. I think it was eye-opening to Jade. I've told him these things before, as he often complains when I do things for him, without a thank you. But, his seeing and hearing it from that lesson made it somehow more real for him. It snowed this day. It was the biggest snow yet. It had been warm the days before, and we'd gone out with short sleeves. I had to bring my plants in; I explained to Trust that the snow might kill them.
*Sunday March 21: Proverb and bible story. There were two killdeer birds in the driveway bobbing their heads around. They were fun to watch. I got out our bird guide and read about them to the boys. Then later we saw a Northern flicker drilling at a rotten stump in the back, on the hill. I didn't know what sort of woodpecker it was myself, so I had to id it in the guide. I took a couple pictures of it, and I also filmed it. I got it on film throwing dirt with its beak from the base of the stump. I read in the guide that they eat ants in the dirt, so that's what it must have been after. I also looked up pictures on Google images to make sure it was the right bird, since it was a different flicker that they had pictured in the guide's entry.
We all watched a movie that Nathan picked up: Amelia. It was a decent watch, and the boys learned some about a figure in history, namely Amelia Earhart.
Jaden did not do Explode the Code. He will start it back Friday.
We looked at pictures online of various nations, especially island nations, and read about them. We located some of them together on our globe. At the boys' bedtime, I pointed some of the places we'd discussed out on their fabric map on the wall in their bedroom.
*Monday, March 22: Proverb and bible story. Jaden did three writing pages and read a story as part of one of the writing assignments. He also did two math pages and his reading lesson. We talked about many things. We talked about people frog gigging and crawdad capturing and how people eat those things. The boys sure weren't impressed about that. Jaden asked whether I knew anyone who had eaten a horse, and the sad thing is, is that I do know of one person who told us he'd eaten horse, as well as opossum and raccoon, in addition to all the other usual suspects. I'll never forget that man telling me that the horse was really dry. What an abomination...
We talked about governments and religions and how corrupt all man's governments and religions are, including the dominating government and religion of the United States. We talked about nuclear weapons, because Jaden asked me about what they were and what they did. I reminded him of the animated atom video he watched a little while back on Youtube. I briefly explained that atom bombs were created by nuclear fission. I talked about the horrible damage they cause and also about radioactive fallout and how a person needed a lot of protection from that, preferably an underground shelter. I explained to him that simply being in the house doesn't give us much protection from the radiation pouring in and told him you'd have to have a lot of mass between you and the radiation.
Jaden asked about man's technology and whether they could make storms and make other weather catastrophes. I told him that there was evidence that they could but that I wasn't sure how much of the bad weather, earthquakes, etc. was due to man's causing it, because much of it is still going to happen naturally. He said, "And that's God's causing it." I said, "Well, yes, he made the earth in such a way, and those things naturally happen; it doesn't necessarily mean he deliberately says that he wants such-and-such to take place at such-and-such time and place, although he does have the power to do so. I reminded him again of how we are living in the last days when man's knowledge and technology is increased but it will never match God's. I told him there is no telling for sure what all "miraculous" things man will do with his knowledge before the end of this age. I think he asked this about the weather, because he must have been listening the day before when Nathan and I briefly talked about earthquakes and such and how man has the technology via EMP to cause earthquakes.
Jaden looked at my February/March Birds & Blooms magazine while I was busy. I asked him later what he'd read, and he said he'd read about how to build a bird house.
As Trusten munched on a snack of carrots, I took the opportunity to talk to the boys about vitamin A in the form of beta carotene, the latter of which is what gives carrots and pumpkins and sweet potatoes their orange color. I told them we needed vitamin A for healthy skin, hair, nails, and vision.
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Some Youtube videos watched by the boys lately: sea star locomotion, sea stars fighting over a scallop, snail eats a sea star, brittle star eating a clam, shark vs. octopus, atomic and nuclear bombs in action, Hiroshima after the bomb (sad), The Three Fishes (highly recommended animated moral story; I watched it myself after Jaden asked me to watch it, b/c it was good), The Father and the Donkey (another moral story that I also watched with them), How does the body use vitamin A? , and Omega 3's
