Author Archives: Deanna

My *plans* for Advent

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This week I’m scurrying about to finishing prepping for the Advent activities I have planned for December.  Since we put our Long Story Short devotions on hold before Thanksgiving and are planning to do Truth in the Tinsel starting next week, I was at a loss as far as how to fill our evening Bible Time this week.  Then, at long last, the answer arrived in the mail. Old Story New is Marty Machowski’s sequel to Long Story Short, going through 78 stories of the New Testament and pointing to the gospel through each one.  As an introduction to Advent, I decided to use the first week from Old Story New, on “The Birth of Jesus Foretold.”  (Then it will go on the shelf for another year or so while we finish up with Long Story Short.)  That should take us right through the last day of November, and then we’re diving in!

For the last couple years the boys have enjoyed opening the doors on our wooden Advent calendar and sticking the magnetic pieces on the picture of the stable.  This year I’m planning to do that each morning and to also read from Advent Storybook: 24 Stories to Share Before Christmas.  I also plan to make our Truth in the Tinsel ornaments during the day and then present them to Daddy each night, using the readings for Bible Time. (The boys can’t wait to start this. They’re enjoying falling asleep to the glow of the 4-foot tree with colored lights I set up in their room, and they’re eager to decorate it!)

Finally, we have SO many Christmas books, I was afraid they would all end up in a basket and we would never get to most of them because the boys would keep choosing only their favorites.  So I decided to present them with one each day, which we will read before putting it into our basket.  My sister-in-law’s family introduced me to the idea of cloth gift bags, so I plan use one to let them “unwrap” a book each day in December.  Many of our books coordinated with the topics from Truth in the Tinsel, so I wrote up a list of all twenty-four days and selected books that would be appropriate.  For some days there weren’t any good matches, so I used those as a chance to get in some favorites that wouldn’t fit anywhere else.  For a couple days I included two, either because they were simple board books or because I couldn’t decide.  (Yes, I am a bookaholic, though I only purchased a few this year.  Most were treasures I’d picked up at used book stores, gifts, books I bought last year, or oldies either from my childhood or passed on from Grandma’s Kindergarten after retirement.) I haven’t even read some of the new ones yet, but I’m excited to share them all with my children this year.  Here’s what we’ll be reading up through Christmas (books in parentheses have nothing to do with the topic of the day):

  1. Light – The Light of Christmas by Dandi Daley Mackall and A Star for Jesus by Crystal Bowman
  2. Kingdom – (The Legend of St. Nicholas: A Story of Christmas Giving by Dandi Daley Mackall)
  3. Zechariah – (The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree by Gloria Houston)
  4. Gabriel – (Mortimer’s Christmas Manger by Karma Wilson)
  5. Mary – Baby Jesus is Born by Juliet David
  6. Mary/Elizabeth – Mary’s Treasure Box by Carolyn Walz Kramlich
  7. Song – Song of the Stars by Sally Lloyd-Jones
  8. Sun – (The Light of Christmas by Richard Paul Evans)
  9. Joseph – Jacob’s Gift by Max Lucado
  10. Dream – (Mouskin’s Christmas Eve by Edna Miller)
  11. Jesus’ Name – Jesus, Me and My Christmas Tree by Crystal Bowman
  12. Census – The Innkeeper’s Daughter by Jill Briscoe
  13. Bethlehem – Oh Come, Little Children by Anita Reith Stohs
  14. Stable – This is the Stable by Cynthia Cotton and Tell Me the Christmas Story by Joni Walker
  15. Manger – Christmas in the Manger by Nola Buck and The Last Straw by Paula Palangi
  16. Clothes – “The Christmas Spider“ by Marguerite de Angeli, in an anthology called I Love Christmas (The spider’s web covers Baby Jesus. I think it’s a similar story to The Little Spider by Sigmund Brouwer)
  17. Sheep – The Crippled Lamb by Max Lucado
  18. Angels – Christmas Angels by Crystal Bowman
  19. Shepherd – The Littlest Shepherd by Ron Mehl, Jr.
  20. Temple – Angela and the Baby Jesus by Frank McCourt
  21. Star – The Christmas Star by Marcus Pfister
  22. Wise Men – We Three Kings traditional carol illustrated by Gennady Spirin
  23. Gifts – Baboushka and the Three Kings by Ruth Robbins
  24.  Cross – The Candymaker’s Gift: The Inspirational Legend of the Candy Cane by David and Helen Haidle and J is for Jesus by Crystal Bowman

Just as a final note: these are my plans.  This is pretty much all we’re doing for school through Christmas, aside from some Christmas music.  Knowing how things go, this probably won’t all happen the way I’m envisioning it.  But I have a plan, and that’s always a good place to start, right? 🙂

Merry Christmas!

UPDATE: Each year I’ve tweaked this list a little as I’ve found books that fit the daily themes better.  Also, as my kids got older, our library grew and I divided the books for older and younger ones.  For more age-specific suggestions, check out my posts “25 CHRISTmas Books for Preschooler” and “25 CHRISTmas books for Older Children.”

Posted in Bible lessons, Parenting Resources

Cranberry Thanksgiving

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Like many other Five in a Row families, we spent last week (actually more like the last two) with Cranberry Thanksgiving by Wende and Harry Devlin.  Ian really enjoyed the story and requested it to be read to him over and over.  For days he looked forward to making Grandmother’s cranberry bread, though he wasn’t too thrilled with the results.  (I think the problem was that our cranberries were so big and tart, you got a huge bite of sourness without enough bread.  He had opted for all cranberries instead of half raisins, so it was pretty intense.  All the adults loved it, but next time I think we’ll use the raisins and maybe use sweetened dried cranberries or at least cut the fresh ones in half.  )

  

We had a few of the discussions from the Five in a Row manual (Vol. 1), but mostly we just learned about cranberry bogs and the story of Thanksgiving.  We found Cranberries by Inez Snyder at the library and read it a few times.  Ian really enjoyed watching How It’s Made: Cranberries on YouTube. (A few years later, we went back to watch that, and also really enjoyed How Does It Grow? Cranberry and its follow-up episode.) We also watched the Reading Rainbow episode “Summer.”  As it described how the cranberries are harvested, it showed a picture of the air pockets inside the berries that cause them to float.  To follow up on that, we read The Magic Schoolbus Ups and Downs: A Books About Floating and Sinking.

We spent quite a while talking about the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving.  Last year at this time I was only a couple weeks away from delivering Arianna, so we didn’t do a whole lot, though I had collected a number of books and printed/ laminated some activities.  This year it was so nice to pull out my Thanksgiving file and have all sorts of things to do!  We enjoyed playing with Thanksgiving dominoes and memory cards from www.dltk-cards.com.  We also did some activities from the Thanksgiving Preschool Packs at 1+1+1=1 and Homeschool Creations and Pilgrim maze.

  

Combined with the Thanksgiving Devotional we did during Bible Time each evening (see this post for more on that), a basket full of books both from our family collection and the library, and a couple Thanksgiving movies (A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and William Bradford: The First Thanksgiving, both big hits that we watched over and over) I thought the boys got a pretty thorough Thanksgiving education!

To see what other FIAR books we’ve rowed, see my “Index of FIAR Posts.”  Also, a great place to see what other people have done with FIAR books is the FIAR Blog Roll at Delightful Learning.

Posted in FIAR, Literature Units, Preschool

Bible Time: Thanksgiving Devotional

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We’re taking a break from our normal nightly devotional and instead use our Bible Time to focus on the holidays through a Scriptural lens.  Last night we started using a Thanksgiving Devotional  I wrote for this week and thought I’d share it in case any other families could be blessed by it.  I only wrote up six days because I’m sure we’ll take one night off (we’re celebrating 2 nights in a row with different parts of the family).   It’s nothing fancy (maybe next year I’ll expand on it a little), but I’d thought I’d share  anyway.

In addition to Scripture passages, I used three books from our Thanksgiving collection (see below), but they’re not essential.  You could easily just use the Bible readings each night.  (I used the ESV, which uses “steadfast love” for the Hebrew word “chesed,” which we talked about the first night. Other than that, the translation shouldn’t matter too much.)  One night does talk a bit about the Pilgrims, but any basic book about their story (or just telling the story yourself) would work.

    

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Posted in Bible lessons, Parenting Resources

Long Story Short: Abraham is Tested

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It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted anything about our Bible lessons.  We’ve still been enjoying Long Story Shortby Marty Machowski, but I just really didn’t have anything additional to write about the weeks we spent on “God Rescues Lot” or “Isaac and Ishmael.”  I’m amazed at how much Ian (4 1/2) has been getting out of the nightly devotions.  Elijah (just turned 3) needs a little extra explanation, but even he has been learning a lot.  Every night as we pile on our bed for Bible time, Elijah gets a grin on his face and says, “Mommy, I know a Bible verse.”  I love the gleam in his eye as he says it.  He obviously realizes this is something important to me, and he’s excited to share.

The Gospel Story Bible: Discovering Jesus in the Old and New TestamentsI’ve mentioned before that we’re also using The Gospel Story Bible (also by Machowski).  To be honest, I wasn’t terribly impressed with it upon first glance, at least as a stand alone storybook.  However, I’ve come to really appreciate it as a part of our weekly routine.  The devotional readings in Long Story Short tend to break up the story over the course of the week.  We usually read from The Gospel Story Bible as an additional reading at the end of the week, and I love how it not only tells the whole story, but also incorporates the teaching about Jesus.  It provides a great summary and is the perfect way to close our week.

This week’s story was about Abraham being asked to sacrifice the beloved son he had waited 25 years to hold.  It led to some interesting conversations with Ian, especially about the idea of a parent loving God more than his child.  It’s easy to say this is our priority, but when we consider what God asked of Abraham we might have to do a heart check.  I know I did.  Children are such precious blessings, especially when they have been long anticipated.  I can only imagine the delight Abraham and Sarah took in watching Isaac go through each new stage as he grew up.  What amazing faith Abraham had as he set out to make the most costly sacrifice he’d ever offered to God!  (Imagine also what poor Sarah must have gone through when she heard the whole story!  I’m sure Abraham waited until after Isaac was safely home to fill her in on what God had commanded.)

As far as our lessons, we still haven’t added much as far as daytime activities other than watching two movies: Abraham and Isaac and Sodom and Gomorrah (which covers Abraham’s whole life).  We haven’t worked on any new memory verses or added anything to our Bible notebook.  Our schedule this fall just started feeling too full, but over the last week I’ve made some changes, and I’m looking forward to getting back into our regular groove.  Of course, with the holidays upon us it will probably be a while before things feel normal again.  This was actually our last week with Long Story Short until after Christmas.  Instead our Bible Time is going to be a chance to help our children view Thanksgiving and Christmas through a biblical lens.  We’ve already started talking a lot about the holidays, and I’m looking forward to spending the season soaking in the Scriptures!

Posted in Bible lessons, Long Story Short, Preschool, The Gospel Story

Composer Study: Antonio Vivaldi

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Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) | Composer | Biography, music and facts

There is an amazing amount of kid-friendly resources related to Antonio Vivaldi.  I thought I possessed a basic knowledge of Vivaldi before we began our composer study on him last month, but by the time we got through October, I had learned an incredible amount.  Ian enjoyed our time with Vivaldi so much he was reluctant to leave him behind, but since he felt the same way about Beethoven, I know it will pass.

Audio Resources

Of course the main part of any composer study is music.  We listened to a few pieces on their own, but mostly I just let the boys enjoy the pieces in the background to stories about the composer.  Here’s what was on our composer playlist:

  • Vivaldi’s Ring of Mystery from Classical Kids (This is a fictional story that incorporates many historical details, with lots of beautiful music accompanying the story.  Ian requested this at least once a day for the first week, and continued asking for it frequently the rest of the month.)
  • The Stories of Vivaldi and Corelli CD from our library (This one was a little dry for the boys, but it had lots of great music.  They never asked for it, but neither did they ask to turn it off.  It made great background listening while they played.)
  • Classics for Kids episodes on Vivaldi
  • “It’s Spring!” from Beethoven’s Wig 2: More Sing Along Symphonies

Video Resources

 Little Einsteins episodes that have music by Vivaldi (Elijah’s favorite show):

Books and Other Reading

Vivaldi spent several years working with the girls at an orphanage in Venice.  This setting has inspired numerous fictional works, both for children and adults.  Here are the children’s books we read about Vivaldi and some of the young musicians at the Pieta:

And for grown-ups:

I had so much fun this month doing my own study!  I read several novels about girls at the Pieta or just set in Venice around Vivaldi’s time. A few years ago the BBC produced a documentary called Vivaldi and the Women of the Pieta featuring a choir of all female voices (including the basses!), which I really enjoyed watching (preview first being watching with older kids–some sensitive content).  I also discovered a wonderful resource on our library’s website: documentaries you can watch online free just by entering your library card number!  I enjoyed watching two on Vivaldi and one on Venice (though I couldn’t find them on Amazon).  See if your library has videos available from Films On Demand.

As we entered into Vivaldi’s world through these books we wanted to find out more about the fascinating city of Venice.  So we “rowed” Papa Piccolo which is about a cat who lives in Venice.  I listed some of the movies and books we watched about the city in this post.  I think Venice will forever be in Ian’s mind, and I hope someday he’ll get a chance to visit Vivaldi’s city himself!

Posted in Charlotte Mason, Composer Study

Long Story Short: The Lord Appears to Abraham

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Last week in our journey through Long Story Short by Marty Machowski we continued with the story of Abraham, and we finally got to throw in a few of the “extras” we’d been having fun with in the first few weeks of this year’s Bible lessons.  We watched VeggieTales: Abe & the Amazing Promise (over and over!) and taught the boys how to sing “Father Abraham” with all the motions (a great tie-in to the night where the devotional talked about how Abraham’s promised descendants included not only his natural children, but also spiritual ones who share his faith).  They ask us to do the song almost every night during Bible time, but I can only handle such pre-bedtime craziness about once a week.

We also worked on a memory verse, summing up the last few weeks with a verse from Romans: “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” Romans 4:3.  We got back to our reading practice by using the Bible memory verse cards I described in this post.  We also finally added another page to our Bible notebook.  (On one of our extra nights that didn’t have a devotional reading, we did a “review” and the boys went through each page of their notebooks, telling us what they remembered about that story.  Ian was excited to discover he could read all of the memory verses and begged to add another page so he could have more to read.)  I got the idea from Christian Preschool Printables, and just added a frame image and used glitter star stickers. (I had some trouble with the link to the file from the regular CPP site, but I managed to do a search and found that the links from this page work.)

  

And of course, we spent a lot of time on our “Listening Lesson”:

It was a little shorter than usual, but we’re running thin on Abraham material!  Still, as we discovered during our “review” night, both boys have been retaining a LOT of details about Abraham’s story because of how long we’re spending on it.  So I’m not going to worry about “extras” so much as we get through the rest of the story.

Posted in Bible lessons, Long Story Short, Preschool, The Gospel Story

Papa Piccolo

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Over the last few weeks, we’ve been rowing Papa Piccolo by Carol Talley, which I chose to complement our composer study on Vivaldi (post coming soon).  Because of that, we focused on geography and spent a lot of time learning about Venice.

Papa Piccolo tells the story of a Venetian tomcat who finds two kittens who could use someone to watch over them and teach them how to take care of themselves.  The illustrations by Itoko Maeno are wonderful watercolor paintings of what many consider the most beautiful city in the world.  Both my boys were enchanted by the story and enjoyed reading it over and over.

Here are the things we did in addition to covering many of the activities in the Five in a Row manual (Vol. 1):

  • We talked about the main character’s name, looking at a picture of a piccolo and listening to Vivaldi’s Piccolo Concerto on the Daydreams and Lullabies CD from Classical Kids
  • We watched a Wonder Pets half-episode called “Save the Kitten” about a kitten in Venice (it’s the 2nd half of the episode, starting at 12:15 if you don’t want to watch the first one), available streaming on Netflix or Amazon Instant Video (free for Prime members).  The Little Einsteins episode “How We Became the Little Einsteins” features paintings of Venice. (They also visit Venice in “The Birthday Machine” on the Mission Celebration DVD.  (We also watched The Aristocats, which has nothing to do with Venice but was a fun story about tomcat who helps a group of kittens and their mother.)
  • Ian and I both enjoyed watching Ancient Mysteries – Miraculous Canals of Venice
    on Netflix as we folded laundry one morning.  (This was fascinating for me and would be great for older kids!)
  • We read Zoe Sophia’s Scrapbook: An Adventure in Venice by Claudia Mauner and Elisa Smalley, which has a lot of great information about Venice.  I also had a Kindle book called The Canals of Venice that I had picked up a few months back when it was free
  • Finally, Ian really enjoyed seeing pictures of a friend and me on our trip to Venice back in our single days.  I told him about how a pigeon pooped on my jacket in the Piazza San Marco (where Papa Piccolo likes to watch the birds), and he mentioned it every time we saw the square in books or videos after that.

  

There are several places to see gondolas in action around Southern California, and I had hoped to take the kids out one evening to see them, but then sickness hit and it just didn’t seem like a great idea to spend an evening outside.  Someday I hope we’ll get to do that, and when we do I know the kids will we looking out for Marco, Polo, and Papa Piccolo!

To see what other FIAR books we’ve rowed, see my “Index of FIAR Posts.”  Also, a great place to see what other people have done with FIAR books is the FIAR Blog Roll at Delightful Learning.

Posted in FIAR, Literature Units, Preschool

Long Story Short: God Gives Abram a New Name

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“Never imagine you have rightly grasped a biblical idea until you have reduced it to a corollary of the idea of covenant.”*  When I was in college, one of our mandatory classes was “Theology of Ministry.”  Everyone was required to memorize this quote, and though it’s been more than fifteen years, it was so drilled into my mind that I can still remember it almost word-for-word.  As we spent yet another week on Abraham this quote came to my mind.  God’s covenant with Abraham was one of the most important events in the Bible.  If I were to sum up the major events of God’s whole “Grand Story” as told through the Bible, I would put it this way:

  1. God created the world as a place for his masterpiece, mankind, with whom He wanted to live in relationship.
  2. Mankind rejected God’s authority, believed the lie of the Enemy, and consequently caused sin to enter the world.
  3. Although sin separated man from God, He had a plan to redeem His Creation: He promised that someday He would send a Savior to crush the Enemy.
  4. Out of a world now ruled by sin, God chose one man, Abraham, who trusted in Him.  Because of Abraham’s faith, God made a covenant with him, promising to bless his family and from them to bring forth the Savior through whom he would bless all the families of the earth.
  5. Abraham’s family became a nation, Israel, the first to be “God’s people.”  Although they did not always follow him faithfully, through His relationship with Israel God revealed His nature: slow to anger, abounding in love, rich in grace.
  6. When the time was right, God sent the Savior, Jesus, who conquered sin and death.  Those put their trust in Him are grafted into “God’s people.”
  7. Jesus ascended to heaven, but someday he will return to fully establish His kingdom, and there will be a new heaven and a new earth, where God’s original intention will be fulfilled, and His people will live with Him for all eternity.

The story looks bleak until God’s plan is put into action, when He makes His covenant with Abraham.  This week in Long Story Short by Marty Machowski we talked about God changing Abram’s name to Abraham, which means “father of a multitude,” telling him, “I have made you the father of a multitude of nations” (Genesis 17:5).  His wife, Sarai, who has spent decades lamenting her barrenness, is told that “she shall become nations; kings of peoples shall come from her” (Genesis 17:16). I wonder what it must have been like to be Abraham and Sarah.  God has promised them something so incredible: not just the baby they have ached for and long since accepted as an impossibility given their advanced ages, but a major role in the Grand Story, one that encompasses all of history, from Creation to eternity.  I think they must have borne their new names with a sense of humility and awe.

I love that Long Story Short is making me consider such things.  The covenant between God and Abraham is at the core of our faith.  While the slow pace through these chapters in Genesis is making me do something a little different with our lessons, I’m still glad we’re using it.  Next week I’m planning to go back to a few of the activities we’ve done before, but for now we’ve just used the lighter Bible lessons to start a math program, focus a little more on reading, and spend time enjoying our composer study.

Even our “Listening Lesson” is less than what it usually is, but here’s what was on our playlist this week:

* After seaching for this quote online, I see it is from Paul Ramsey, but I can’t find any more information on it than that.

Posted in Bible lessons, Long Story Short, Preschool, The Gospel Story

Our Foray into Math

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I know there are many homeschool families that hold off on any kind of formal math until the children are around 2nd or 3rd grade, instead using various math games and activities to lay a foundation.  At first I considered going this route, but over the last few months something “clicked” in Ian’s brain and he started becoming fascinated by numbers and counting.  It felt like a waste not to take advantage of his interest, so I’ve been slowly starting to spend more time on math concepts. As I started this new venture, there were two things I wanted to keep in mind:

  1. There are many facets of math, so I decided to use a curriculum to make sure I was hitting them all in a logical order.
  2. I want to be sure to lay a strong foundation of “number sense,” so that Ian is really grasping the concepts behind the symbols we use in math.  One of my favorite tools for this is a set of Cuisenaire rods.

My mom was a teacher, and growing up I used to spend every afternoon in her classroom waiting for her to finish getting things ready for the next day.  One of my favorite ways to entertain myself was playing with Cuisenaire rods.  There was something so satisfying to me about the way they were designed.  When I first became a teacher myself I was blessed with 2 sets of rods, and though I never used them with a large class, I knew they would be a valuable tool in homeschooling.  Over the last year I’ve gotten them out several times for the boys to play with, just to build familiarity.  As I started looking for a curriculum, I wanted to find one that would incorporate the rods in the early stages. Okay, I have to make a confession.  Ian is only 4, but I think I’ve been looking at curricula for at least 2 years.  I just like to know what’s out there, to read reviews, talk to other people about what they use, and have a decent idea of what’s available before I need to make a decision.  Early on in my search I came across the Miquon Math Lab series.  Because I didn’t need them right away, I put them all on my PaperBack Swap wishlist, and within a few months I had collected all 6 workbooks (in order: Orange, Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, and Purple) and the “Lab Sheet Annotations,” which is basically the teacher’s manual.  They’ve been sitting on my shelf waiting to get put to use, but I was a little hesitant to start an actual curriculum when Ian is still a few months shy of turning 5.  (Most of the books are available very inexpensively at Amazon.  You can also get the whole set from Rainbow Resource.) I decided to look online for activities I could do that were more structured than just playing with the blocks, but not quite as formal as a curriculum.  My favorite resource was the “Cuisenaire Activity and Exploration Book for Pre-Miqon Kids ” by Miranda Hughes, full of activities and games designed for her daughter to use before beginning the Miquon series and generously shared as a free pdf file.  I also liked Marcia Miller’s ideas at Unschooling Conversations.  There are a number of books available with more ideas, but these free resources will take you a long way (and get you started thinking of your ideas about how to use the rods). I love the “lab” nature of Miquon and these Cuisenaire rod activities, but to me they feel more like a supplement than a core math program (though I know some people have gone that route).  So even though I had been hesitant to start a curriculum, I changed my mind and decided to ease into one VERY slowly.  There are a number of good math curricula out there, and I think we’d be fine going with pretty much any of them.  However, I am all about cheap and convenient, and it’s hard to get cheaper than free or more convenient than having everything you need available online to print whenever you want.  That’s why I was drawn to the Mathematics Enhancement Programme (MEP) from the Center for Innovation in Mathematics Teaching in the UK.  It’s designed for classroom use but has been used by many homeschool families as well.  (There’s even a Yahoo group where you can connect with others using MEP at home.)  Incidentally, I know of many families who would chose MEP over other programs even if it weren’t free, so I’m not worried at all about compromising quality just to save some money. From what I understand, the “Reception” year is geared toward preschool-age children, and “Year 1” would be for Kindergarteners.  I kept considering starting Reception with Ian, but I was turned off by the format, which is different from the rest of the years.  It’s very conversational, which would be okay except that I found so much of the material to be too easy for Ian.  I didn’t want to bore him with things he already knew; nor did I want to spend the time picking through everything to find the things he really did need to learn.  So I decided to skip Reception and just dive into Year 1.  It’s a spiral curriculum so I figure any gaps will be filled in eventually as we move through the program.  So far Ian is doing fine with the material.  We use “Little People” when activities call for using children in the class (they also make great “counters”), and a set of “Thomas & Friends” number cards I found at the 99-Cent Store a while back (though you could easily make your own cards).  If you’re interested in using MEP, I highly recommend reading through this post by a mom who’s been using it for a while.  Reading this really simplified everything floating around in my mind and encouraged me to give it a shot. Because I spend a lot of time in Charlotte Mason circles, I have to say I feel almost guilty beginning any sort of curriculum with a child so young.  However, I am not a slave to any particular method, and Ian seems ready to begin some more structured learning, so here we are.  I’m not pushing him to keep up a quick pace.  My goal is to get through 2 MEP lessons a week.  In the month we’ve been doing this, we’ve sometimes done more, sometimes less, and I’m fine with that.  If a concept seems a little challenging for Ian, we spend a little extra time on it before moving on.  We’re also taking at least 1 day a week to do some “Math Lab” work.  Right now I’m using the pre-Miquon book I mentioned above, but after that we’ll start slowly working our way through The Miquon “Orange Book.”  (I’ve torn out the perforated pages and put them in page protectors.  Ian can work on them with dry-erase markers and then we can save them to use with the other kids.  Yes, the books are cheap, but I just can’t stand the waste of having him write in the book!) There’s one last thing I want to make note of, and that is Elijah’s reaction to all this.  He has watched Ian and I doing “Math,” and is eager to have his turn.  I try to adapt the lab activities and take a few minutes each session to have some one-on-one time with Elijah.  His brain is much more naturally geared toward order and numbers, so his eyes just sparkle with excitement as he does “work.”  I have a feeling we’ll be diving into those Cuisenaire activities with him before too long!

I wrote a follow up to this post, so be sure to check that out for more ideas on using Cuisenaire rods.

 

Posted in Homeschool Resources, Preschool

Long Story Short: God Makes a Covenant With Abram

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http://b2bwithrobi.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/35-abraham.jpg

I think I’ve found my first complaint against Long Story Short by Marty Machowski, and that is the fact that he spends a really long time on Abraham.  Though really, that’s only been a negative as far as our related schoolwork is concerned.  It’s hard to find things to go-along with just the tiny sliver of the story we’re working on each particular week.  However, as far as our nightly devotions it’s been great.  The slow pace and repetition I’ve provided during the day has really helped Ian to understand the main points of the story.  Plus, it’s such a crucial part of the overall story of the Bible, so it’s one I really want to emphasize.

Once again, we took it easy last week, so aside from reading about Abraham inThe Rhyme Bible Storybook and The Rhyme Bible Storybook for Toddlers, all we really did was our “Listening Lesson”:

Posted in Bible lessons, Long Story Short, Preschool, The Gospel Story
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