Our Owl Week October 25, 2009

What a fun week we had studying and learning the letter O and all that goes along with it! We did read a book this week but it’s not part of our curriculum list. It’s one I found in the library called “White Owl, Barn Owl” and just went along well with our O week.

The book gives a great explanation about barn owls, where they nest, what they eat, how they sound and feel. My son really liked it and asked almost first thing in the  morning for me to read it to him. There were some new words for him to learn – pellets, nesting box, vole – but I think he gleaned a lot from the story.

For our craft, we found a pre-printed pattern that used hearts to put together a heart-shaped owl. This correlated well to the story because the barn owl is described as having a heart-shaped face. My son mostly glued the owl together (he’s not real into crafts right now.)

We also live near a bird sanctuary at a local park and took a trip there for a our owl week . We got to see a few owls – a great barred owl and horned owl. They were pretty sleepy but a few had their eyes open. It wasn’t getting pictures through the cage but I managed.

Of course we had to have an owl snack so we made owl cookies! My friend made these with her daughter so I thought we’d try them. They were easy and turned out cute but didn’t taste all that sweet… next time I’ll change up the dough instead of following the recipe!

Our week wasn’t only about owls. Our O book included other O words – octopus, otters, ox, oatmeal, opal. We practiced counting, letter matching and cutting with scissors. We also had an “orange” day and searched for all the orange things we could find. We mixed red and yellow paint to make orange (a darker orange), and my son “practiced” painting the letter O!

I also chose to make our main word of the week “obey” and used fun flashcards to show the word to my son. I kept it at our kitchen table so he could always see it while eating. And we memorized a new verse, Ephesians 6:1, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right.” My son already knows it, thanks to his Bible songs CD. We talked about what it means to obey and this will be a lifetime lesson I believe! We read Bible stories about obedience – the prodigal son, Noah and how Jesus calmed the storm…even the winds and waves obey Him!

All About the Numbers October 25, 2009

Our “N” week was a little different. I took a break from an organized set of activities focused on a book and instead inundated my son with numbers as part of our N studies. He often calls numbers ‘letters’ so I thought it would be good to do all we could with numbers.We looked for  numbers everywhere we went – on gas station signs, speed limits, books, etc.

Our activities for the week were simple but fun – we read our book 10 in the Bed and counted down using acorns my son found at the park. Every time one of the animals fell out of the bed, my son took away an acorn and we practiced subtraction.

My son practiced his numbers with glue and sand – we made the numbers using glue and my son poured sand over the glue to make the numbers appear. Pretty simple!

We also played two fun Mickey games – one is a board game where my son matches the numbers on the board with the small game pieces that have numbers on them. He matched them all with  no problem.

The other game uses his Thomas the Train flash cards and Mickey pieces on loan from my sister-in-law. We put one card on the floor and place the corresponding number of Mickey pieces on top of the card.

We read our N book, which included words such as nut, nutcracker, nightingale and the numbers nine, ninety and ninety-nine. He made the letter N out of beans (no specific reason for using beans – I considered using glitter but it’s not very popular at our house!)

Our Bible story for the week was about Nicodemus and we practiced John 3:16 together. We also listened to my son’s CD of Bible songs in the car and he asked repeatedly to hear the one about “a man named Nicodemus.” On to letter O!

Mike and Mary Anne October 21, 2009

I’m a bit behind on my blog posts but that’s what a baby and a preschooler will do to you! We did our M week a couple weeks ago and had a ton of fun! The book we focused on was Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. This book is part of the Five in a Row reading list, which is designed for 5-8 year olds.

My son received this book as a gift from his uncle and since we have it we decided to do this one as it corresponds with M. It’s a fun story about how well Mike cares for his steam shovel, Mary Anne. My son actually has a miniature steam shovel pictured below and it happens to be read just like Mary Anne!

Our Bible lesson for M week was none other than Moses. We read the stories of Moses that are in my son’s Bible (Passover, the burning bush, the Ten Commandments) and designed our own burning bush. It’s my son’s hand traced onto construction paper with torn/cut pieces of orange and yellow tissue paper glued to the “bush.” Looks pretty good!

I also decided to focus our days around certain “subjects,” such as math, science, music/art, language arts and history/social studies. This has helped me do a few activities per day and gives me more order to what we do. Of course, some days activities overlap or happen on a different day but the guideline is there and helps! And music day was quite often as my son enjoys hitting his “drum” with his “drumsticks.”

For language arts, we practiced our letter M by finding objects that begin with the letter. My son is not interested in writing yet but we can practice how a letter is constructed by making it out of shapes! He made the letter M with macaroni and he played with the leftover macaroni in a bowl of water. He found that dried macaroni quickly turns soggy if left in water.

Other fun things we did this week: we made edible mud with yummy gummy worms! The ingredients: crushed Oreos, chocolate pudding and gummy worms. Tastes great and once you’re done eating, you can put a bulldozer in the goop and have a ball!

Our final M project was what I call fun folders – we created a folder collage of Mexico, the country where my husband is from. We found some pictures that represent Mexico and some other 3D items to put in the folder. My son calls it his Mexico Book and he looks at it often

My Little Lamb October 12, 2009

The Letter L week was a fun one for me and my son! We read The Little Lamb, which isn’t part of our Before Five in a Row curriculum exactly…the same author/photographer wrote The Little Bunny, which is on the list but since I don’t have the bunny book and just the lamb one, I decided to do lessons for my son about The Little Lamb. We also read My “l” Book in our ABC series and that included lambs in it so it worked out well.

The Little Lamb takes readers to the Weatherbee farm where new lambs have been born. One lamb, Timothy, wanders from the flock into the arms of a young girl who is allowed to care for him for a short time. My son loved reading the story and looking at the photographs, which we discussed have been different than the illustrated pictures in his other books. He has a white Beanie Baby lamb that we kept with us while reading the story and we named him Timothy.

We had a fun time acting out the scene in the book where Timothy knocked down a bushel of apples that went tumbling down the steps. I blew up balloons and we pretended they were apples. We put them in a laundry basket and my son knocked it over. He loves balloons! We also have a wooden birthday cake that we made a mess of to act out the scene where Timothy knocks over  a table at a birthday party and spills the cake.

We also began talking about Jesus being the Lamb of God and started memorizing John 1:29, which says, “The next day John saw Jesus coming and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’” We put it to song and my son has mostly all of it memorized. We made a cute lamb craft out of white buttons.

We also practiced letters and numbers this week, and talked about other animals that start with the letter L including lizards! It was a fun science lesson to watch lizards stuck to the outside of our bathroom window as they waited quietly for moths! The light from our window would attract the moths, which were gobbled up by the lizards! We’ve seen this several times and my son thinks it’s so fun…probably not for the moths! You can see three lizards below:

Most of all, this week’s lesson has reminded me that I am called to care for my son, my little lamb! Jesus asks Peter in John 21 to feed His sheep, care for His sheep – His people. The Lord is my son’s Shepherd and mine too, and for the time being I am responsible for caring for my son, and my baby girl, too. I pray that God gives me the strength to do this most awesome job!

Plenty of Pockets for Katy October 6, 2009

The other week my son and I focused on Letter K. We continued with his alphabet books and read My K Book and also read Katy No-Pocket, which is included in our Before Five in a Row curriculum. Fun story: I actually found the book below in a stash of old books my parents had kept. And this book belonged to my uncle! It’s in great condition for being at least 30 years old.

There are so many animals listed in Katy No-Pocket, the most obvious one being a kangaroo! My son and I went through the book counting the different types of animals, and used animal cards to match the pictures in the book. My son knew most of the animals on the cards. He was fond of the lizard for a reason I’ll explain in another blog post.

One of our crafts for the week was to paste pictures of animals onto a felt tree. The animals, including a koala, owl, squirrel and monkey, are ones that were found in Katy No-Pocket and/or live/climb in trees. Here’s his handiwork:

Katy No-Pocket also has a page devoted to tools – the man who gave Katy her “pockets” has an apron full of tools. My son loves tools so we used flash cards with pictures of tools to match with the pictures in the book. And I even made him his own “pockets” – a tool belt! It was a fun sewing project even though my son wasn’t interested in wearing the belt all that much until his daddy began working with tools.

Another fun activity we did was have a K snack – kiwi! My son loves kiwi so we made kiwi-shaped seaweed and white chocolate covered pretzel Goldfish. Very yummy!

We also spent time talking about kindness and being kind, and reading the story of Zacchaeus and how Jesus was kind to him when no one else was. We shared examples of how we can be kind to others and he remembered his previous Bible verse, “A friend loves at all times.” He recites his Bible verses with me every night before he goes to bed – and he does it on his own because he wants to! Praise God!

A Child’s Prayer September 27, 2009

The next book on our Before Five in a Row list was Prayer for a Child, a sweet story about a little girl’s prayer before bedtime. I wasn’t sure that my son was going to relate to the story since a little girl is the narrator but he liked it and focused more on the items prayed for rather than the one praying. He liked looking at the page that includes a picture of children from around the world illustrating the little girl’s prayer for other children.

We traced my son’s hands and made a set of “praying hands” out of construction paper. Inside, we wrote people to pray for and my son added some stickers. He’s already prayed a few times on his own, mostly before meals and he sounds really cute! I pray with him throughout the day while we’re together – I want him to know he can pray anytime for any reason and it’s definitely a reminder for me.

The most amazing thing was that while we were out in the backyard one day we found a praying mantis hanging on to our patio table! I took several pictures but only a few turned out well. I told my son it was “the coolest bug” and he kept saying, “I want to see the coolest bug!” We confirmed with my husband that it was a praying mantis after he saw the pictures (the bug is upside down in the pic below.) God sent us the bug to see up close and personal during our lesson on prayer!

This week was also our Letter J week so we talked about how Jesus prayed and the Lord’s Prayer. My son has most of it memorized. We read the story of Joseph, which my son really enjoys. We talked about how Joseph was probably afraid while in jail but God was with Him. We talked about how Joseph probably prayed to God, just like the little girl in our story did, and just like we do and can. We also read about Joshua and the story of Jericho.

Other J lessons included J animals – jaguar, jackal, jellyfish – and we did some jungle pictures. We also made a rain stick using rice and paper towel roll but my son wasn’t too interested in that. He preferred looking at the jungle book we checked out from the library. In it, we discovered that a Central American lizard is known as the Jesus Christ lizard for its ability to glide across water making it appear that it’s walking on water. Learning has been so much fun for us! Next week is Letter K and Katy No-Pocket!

Planting Carrot Seeds! September 14, 2009

We’re just trekking along with our little homeschool preschool and last week read The Carrot Seed, which is part of our book list. This was such a simple book about a young boy who has faith that his carrot seed will sprout while everyone around him tells him it won’t. My son loved it! I found it at the library and it’s an oldie – check out the pics below!

Of course, we spent time outside “gardening” and planting seeds. We did actually plant a few carrot seeds in a large pot I have but these take a while to grow. We’ll see if anything pops up. My son did choose to plant some flower seeds as well – he chose poppies. Funny story – after he planted the flower seeds in one pot, he decided all of that soil with the seeds belonged in the large pot that had the carrot seeds! Yikes! So, now we have little sprouts in the large carrot seed pot and I have a feeling those are the flowers. We’ll see in a few weeks.

We also cut off the top of a carrot that has a little sprout on top and put it cut side down in a bowl of water and watched the sprout grow – and it did!

Another fun activity was making letters out of carrot matchsticks! I wasn’t expecting my son to actually eat the skinny carrot sticks but after he made a few letters he did eat them and thought they were yummy! Fun food!

We’re still focusing on memorizing John 3:16 and we’ve created a catchy jingle to go along with it. My son has several of the words memorized already so I’m thinking within a month he’ll know the whole verse.  This week was also letter H week and we read our book about Little H and all the H words we could find – hair, hands, hat, hippo and of course helicopter. Anything the drives or flies and makes lots of noise is my son’s best friend! See you next week!

Homeschooling begins…or has it always been? August 21, 2009

Well, here we go! This past week, I started my first “official” week of homeschooling my 3-year-old son. He’s attending the Little Lamb Preschool and he’s the No. 1 student! I say that we’ve started the official week because I’m now documenting what we’re doing but since my son has been born I’ve been homeschooling him, in a sense. I’ve been teaching him all he needs to know at this age. At 2 years old, I took it a step further and introduced him to “school time” where we would spend time learning colors, shapes, numbers and his ABC’s. Our main focus has been reading a book focused on one letter of the alphabet and spending our week doing crafts, activities and games on that letter. We’re still doing that but we’ve added more to our “curriculum.”

What we’ve started is a program called Before Five in a Row which is so simple for preschoolers. We read one book per week for five days in a row, hence the name, and do crafts, activities and games focused on that book. Our first week, Aug. 17-21, was all about the book “Corduroy.” My son loves it! I’ll post some pictures of the activities in a separate blog post soon.

Overall, it’s been fun and easy to sit down and read with my son. He loves books. And the added benefit is that his baby sister, who will be 3 months old next week, listens in too! So, she’ll definitely be ready when it’s her turn. However, that’s where my homeschool hesitation comes in. Can I truly homeschool my son beyond the preschool years? And then continue with my daughter when they will be three years apart? I believe I’m looking too far into the future when I need to focus on my reasons for homeschooling now. And I have reasons, actually more of a desire that I believe is from God to educate my children at home.

Since my son was a baby and I was introduced to people who homeschooled, I became intrigued by the idea of teaching at home. I love to teach and what better students than your own children? I’ve blogged previously about my reasons for wanting to homeschool so I won’t go into much detail here but my No. 1 reason is to be able to incorporate Biblical lessons into my children’s education. How great for them to be able to start the day, continue the day and end the day with prayer? To be able to learn about their world from God’s worldview.

How much fun will it be to “do school” for a couple hours a day and then enjoy other activities whether it’s playing outside, playing instruments or sports, going on nature hikes, visiting with grandparents, etc. that will enhance their learning? Of course, they’ll have more time for these activities since they won’t be bogged down with homework.

Most of all, I’m looking forward to creating in them a desire to want to learn and to love learning in all aspects of life. Reciting our ABCs while playing in the sandbox, counting buttons on the floor, learning about fractions while measuring flour for cookies, understanding weather patterns by being in them and enjoying God’s creation by admiring the world around them.

So, we will embark upon this adventure at home and I hope to document most of our journey here at my blog (which I’ve neglected for some months after giving birth to baby #2!). Our successes, sometimes failures, joys and challenges will be included so others can learn and see that they too can succeed in teaching their children at home if that’s the desire God has placed in their hearts. Thanks for joining us!

Obama wants education for all children, but not life for each child February 19, 2008

I don’t think I need to spend a significant amount of time informing readers that one of the democratic presidential candidates, Barack Obama, has voted against the federal government’s partial-birth abortion ban.

The evidence is clear based on the Illinois senator’s voting record as well as statements he has made concerning the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the ban, which prevents pregnant women from aborting their babies in the second and third trimester (the fifth and sixth months of pregnancy.) The procedure typically occurs after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Here is Obama’s statement after the Supreme Court’s ruling in case you missed it:

“I strongly disagree with today’s Supreme Court ruling, which dramatically departs from previous precedents safeguarding the health of pregnant women. As Justice Ginsburg emphasized in her dissenting opinion, this ruling signals an alarming willingness on the part of the conservative majority to disregard its prior rulings respecting a woman’s medical concerns and the very personal decisions between a doctor and patient. I am extremely concerned that this ruling will embolden state legislatures to enact further measures to restrict a woman’s right to choose, and that the conservative Supreme Court justices will look for other opportunities to erode Roe v. Wade, which is established federal law and a matter of equal rights for women.”

Nice and fuzzy, I suppose. Obama wants to protect women’s health. Who doesn’t want to hear that? But interestingly enough, evidence among obstetricians and gynecologists, along with former Surgeon General Everett Koop, has shown that partial-birth abortions are not necessary to protect a mother’s health during the second and third trimesters.

In addition, the American Medical Association has stated that the procedure, in which a baby is partially delivered except for its head and is killed by a doctor who suctions out the baby’s brain from a hole in its head, is “generally not necessary for those purposes” which are protecting a mother’s health or life or for terminating a baby due to serious fetal anomalies (another bad reason for abortion.) The group goes on to say that “maternal health factors which demand termination of the pregnancy can be accommodated without sacrifice of the fetus.” Having a child of my own, I could not bear to look at the drawn images of a partial-birth abortion procedure more than once.

So, this is not news, right? You’re wondering why this is being brought up, perhaps again. Well, I was somewhat surprised by one of Obama’s campaign ads I saw on TV highlighting his plan for education, if elected as president. You can watch the ad here but I’ll include a key statement he made below:

The one thing I was able to get was a great education. We should give every child the same chances I had.

Again, another nice and fuzzy message. Children are our future so of course they deserve a “great education.” Do you know what other chance Obama had? He had the chance to live. He had the chance to be born. That was a good chance, for him, right?

How can someone defend the chance for a great education for children yet deny the chance for a baby to even become a young child worthy of an education? What about every child deserving a chance for LIFE? Is that not a good opportunity?

And how can a person sincerely and truthfully support a candidate who hypocritically advocates for partial-birth abortion, a disgusting and unethical procedure, while promotes equal educational opportunities for all children? Children who were once in the womb and made it out safely – thank God, I suppose.

I think a better question is how can a Christian support a candidate like this? I am a Christian and I can’t.

Homeschooling is like private school, but better January 9, 2008

As a follow-up to my previous blog post about homeschooling, I ended up attending that homeschooling intro meeting at my local library and was extremely overwhelmed.

Curricula were spouted off and names of forward-thinkers were listed, but I was just lost. Ironically, the leader of the meeting was a former member of my church so I chatted with her briefly afterwards. Her daughter was one of the brightest I’ve ever met and it could be because of homeschooling. Or maybe she is being homeschooled because she was bright at age 2?

Well, in any event, it appeared that only a handful of us at that meeting had no clue where to even start while others had done their research. Here’s what I learned:

- Homeschooling often teaches children to think and learn, rather than prepare specifically for tests or exams

- Homeschooling allows freedom in choosing curricula and how much time to spend on those lessons

- Homeschooling allows lessons to incorporate Christian doctrine and lessons as long as the five key areas required (reading, spelling, grammar, mathematics and a study of good citizenship) by law are being taught. I was surprised to see that science is not on listed (sorry hubby!)

- Homeschooling has worked for many children, and if parents want to homeschool they can. There are many support groups that can make this happen.

- Homeschoolers are protected by the law (check out a ton of information at the Texas Home School Coalition Web site.)

So, it appears that homeschooling could be a possibility for my son. I still have a few years to decide. But the one thing mentioned at the meeting that I thought was interesting is that homeschooling can be a bit pricey, from purchasing books, supplies and lessons yourself to supporting extracurricular activities your child might enjoy.

One of the leaders called homeschooling ‘just like private school” (due to the cost involved) and I would add only better (because parents have more control over lessons and content.)

So, my primary hesitations are that 1) it could be pricey; 2) how do I encourage my son to develop good social skills if he’s home with me most of the day (I do know there are playgroups and sports he can participate in so maybe this won’t be a problem); 3) will I be able to do this, still work part-time and possibly have a second child?

Priorities definitely need to be evaluated. But I’m relying on God to make all that clear for us when the time is right. For now, I’ll let my son be a toddler and continue having fun with him, teaching him what comes naturally, which is usually ‘No, don’t touch that, don’t eat that, don’t play with that, etc.” You get the point!