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Wrapping Up Week 25 (2015-16)

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Weekly Wrap Up 2015-16
 This week my goal was to get a solid start on our third term . . . before we head into a break. Our IEW class was cancelled, so we had to get through the lesson on our own. In some ways I liked walking through it with my boys, but in other ways it made me extremely thankful for the accountability given by being a part of a class.  I love the material (we’re using Fables, Myths and Fairy Tales: Writing Lessons in Structure & Style), and this week gave me a little taste of what it would be like to try to work through it on our own, which may be a path we take in the future.

Preschool

This week Arianna got to start trying out Math-U-See‘s Primer level.  She’s already whipped through 32 pages of the workbook, and all the kids have had fun getting familiar with the integer blocks, both the physical set and the “digital pack.”

MathUSee Collage

Read Alouds

My little ones were down with colds, so we spent a lot of time just reading at home this week.  We finished up Storytime With the Millers and moved onto Wisdom and the Millers: Proverbs for Children.

It was Ian’s turn to pick a chapter book, so we read Tree House Mystery (The Boxcar Children Mysteries #14) by Gertrude Chandler Warner.  I remember loving the Boxcar Children series as a child, but I’m not wild about some of the newer additions.  Thankfully, this was one of the books written by the original author, and we both enjoyed it.

For history, we got a jump on Johann Gutenberg (whom we’ll learn about when we come back from our break) with Fine Print by Joann Johansen Burch.  Ian was more interested than I had thought he would be, and we had no problem getting through the book in three days.

Finally, we started reading Matilda by Roald Dahl.  I’ve actually never read it before, but I enjoyed many of Dahl’s other books growing up, and after a friend mentioned this one I thought we’d give it a shot.

Wisdom Millers Tree House Mystery Fine Print Matilda

 A few final thoughts

Of course the boys kept working through their other subjects as well, but we didn’t do anything too exciting so I won’t bore you with the details.  Now we’re off to enjoy our break!

Upcoming Reviews

We’re enjoying several products right now, so watch for these reviews in the next few weeks:

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Wrapping Up Week 24 (2015-16)

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Weekly Wrap Up 2015-16
 Two down, one to go.  We are officially finished with our second term of this school year!  I feel like we’re not getting in a lot of school these days, but really when I look at it that’s because I’ve made the boys be so self-sufficient this year.  They do math, language arts, and Spanish all on their own on the computer, and I just make sure they’re getting through their checklists, help them with any assignments for their writing class, and read with them.  I’m trying to be okay with not having a lot of extras on a regular basis.

 

Elijah completing his MEP worksheet with the help of Cuisenaire rods.

 

Science

 This week we started Our Universe, the only book we’ve yet to go through in God’s Design for Heaven and Earth.  Ian was really interested in space a few years ago, but I think he got burnt out when we attempted to go through Exploring Creation With Astronomy from Apologia in Kindergarten.  We haven’t touched on the subject since, and I’m hoping we can rekindle some of that interest this term, using this book just as a launching pad for exploring specific things that interest him.

Astronomy 1I put on a DVD I bought that year but we had never watched called What You Aren’t Being Told About Astronomy Volume 1: Our Created Solar System.  It’s rather long (112 minutes), but Ian sat and watched the whole thing and didn’t want me to turn it off part way through.  (I thought it was a little dry and probably better for older kids, but Ian really learns well from things I think would be above the heads of most kids his age.)  I think it would be better used in smaller chunks, because it covers a lot of information.

Read Alouds

We continued reading Pollyanna by Eleanor Porter, just finishing it up this weekend.  I wasn’t sure how a book almost entirely about one little girl and the adults around her was going to go over, but it was a big hit all around.  Ian was constantly begging for more chapters, and Elijah and Arianna actually stayed and listened for most of it as well, which is unusual for them.

Dragon and the RavenWe also enjoyed stepping back in history with The Dragon and the Raven, the latest audio adventure from Heirloom Audio Productions.  Based on the G.A. Henty novel by the same name, it tells about the triumph of Alfred the Great over the Danes.  Ian learned about Alfred the Great in his Veritas Press history course a while back, so it was a fun chance to revisit his story.  (I’ll be posting a detailed review in a few weeks.)

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Wrapping Up Week 23 (2015-16)

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Weekly Wrap Up 2015-16
 Anyone concerned about homeschooling and socialization would have their fears alleviated by what our past week looked like:

  • Monday: play date
  • Tuesday: writing class, play date, and wrestling
  • Wednesday: ballet, church, TrailLife
  • Thursday: gymnastics and wrestling
  • Friday: music classes (choir, handchimes, composer study, and more)

I can definitely say I am NOT concerned about my children’s socialization.  Having all our activities in full swing has made it challenging to do any “extras” when it comes to school work, and then throwing in a couple play dates this week meant we really didn’t do much beyond the basics.

Science

We finished up Our Planet Earth this week, so we’re now two-thirds through the God’s Design for Heaven and Earth curriculum we’re using this year.  We learned a lot about caves during our visit to Carlsbad Caverns back in October, so we didn’t linger on that lesson, just reviewed what we’d seen there.  I also let the boys watch Buddy Davis’ Amazing Adventures: Extreme Caving, which is a great DVD for learning more about the subject from a biblical worldview.

Read Alouds

I must admit I rushed through Ian’s choice of chapter book (Stanley in Space from the Flat Stanley series by Jeff Brown).  Even as a kid, I liked books that were either pure fantasy (like Narnia) or could really happen, and this series blurs that line too much for my taste.  I was glad when we finished it and got to move on to my choice: Pollyanna by Eleanor Porter (no pun intended).  My old childhood copy was so tattered I decided to get a nice new one for our family library.  Ian’s been enjoying it more than I anticipated, and he begs me to read more each time.

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Math

I’m really happy with the decision to switch Elijah to Mathematics Enhancement Programme (MEP).  It’s just challenging enough to stretch him without being frustrated.  When I decided to use it with him I printed out all the practice book pages for the rest of the year (from lessons 96-175).  I’ve been stapling together 6-8 pages that I want him to try to get through in a week, and hopefully we’ll have no problem finishing out the year on time.

Ian is still thriving on Teaching Textbooks Math 3, making me glad that we have so many options to choose from to find a curriculum that works well for each child. They both continue to practice facts each day on xtramath.org.

A few final thoughts

We had a lot of good family time this week.  Our church is going through a study on the gospel of Mark, so we’re using our evening Bible time to go a little deeper.  We finally broke out our flannel board set, and the kids had a lot of fun using the pieces the tell the story of Jesus’ baptism.

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We also spent a couple evenings playing games together.  Daddy and the boys had fun with Sorry, and then the boys and I played several rounds of our new favorite, Qwirkle, which we also taught Daddy and Grandma.

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Upcoming Reviews

We’re enjoying several products right now, so watch for these reviews in the next few weeks:

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Wrapping Up Week 22 (2015-16)

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Weekly Wrap Up 2015-16
In last week’s wrap-up I commented how my plans for school had changed over the course of the week as we went deeper into exploring some of the topics that came up.  This week was pretty much the opposite, as plans got disrupted by a trip to the Arianna's chinemergency room to stitch up Arianna after she split her chin open on our patio, followed by a complete crash of the hard drive on the computer where Ian does his Teaching Textbooks, and a trip to the store to replace said computer.  By some miracle we did manage to get through everything on my lesson plans, but we didn’t exactly follow any rabbit trails this week!

Read Alouds

In our morning “circle time” I decided to introduce the younger kids to the Miller family books, so after our time in Jesus Calling: 365 Devotions For Kids and Scripture memory work, we went back and started reading Storytime With the Millers.  At first Ian protested because we hadn’t finished reading all the books before, but once we got back into it he didn’t seem to mind.  Our whole family enjoys these stories.

Ian’s been begging me to get back to reading chapter books with him, so I pulled out Mr. Popper’s Penguins.  He loved it!  We read several chapters at a time throughout the day and finished in two days.

We also read Joan of Arc by Diane Stanley to go along with Ian’s Veritas Press history lesson on the Hundred Years War.

Storytime With the Millers Mr. Popper's Penguins Joan of Arc

Math

I’ve yet to really settle into a good fit for math with Elijah.  He’s officially in Kindergarten this year, but he is such a little smarty-pants when it comes to numbers.  He enjoys pretty much everything, and he’s been jumping around various math curricula for the last few months.  Like Ian, he starts his lesson time each day with facts drills on xtramath.org.  After that, however, it depends.  Some days he wants to do CTCMath.com, where he’s almost done with the 2nd grade lessons.  Other days he does a lesson on Teaching Textbooks Math 3.  Since he’s working above grade level, I’m not really concerned, but I’d like to find something that’s a good fit and then stick with it.

DSCN1072xI think I may have found a good option.  I decided to go back to the curriculum I used with Ian for Kindergarten and most of first grade: Mathematics Enhancement Programme from the Centre for Innovation in Mathematics Teaching in the UK.  I’ve always loved this curriculum, but it was a little overwhelming for Ian.  It is incredible rich, with a depth and challenge I haven’t seen with the other math programs we’ve tried.  Ian does better with something a little lighter and more fun, but for Elijah the extra challenge is fun.  So I looked through the Year 1 curriculum to see where I wanted to place him, and then printed out a few practice book pages, starting at lesson 96.  He worked through 1-2 pages a day this week and it seems like a good fit.

I’m not doing the lesson plans, even though I do feel like they’re the heart of MEP.  Instead I’m helping Eli through the first problem or so of each section on the practice page and then letting him finish on his own.  So far it’s working well, and he’s finding great delight in the program, like he’s solving brain-teasers rather than doing work.

Extras

Egyptian coffinWe made our first visit to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.  Every year we get a membership to a local attraction where we can have fun learning as a family (i.e. zoos, children’s museums), and this was what we chose for 2016.  The kids really enjoyed exploring the special exhibit on mummies from Peru and Egypt, which we wanted to hurry to see before it closes on Monday.  I was impressed with how the older boys really stopped to read the signs and learn about what was on display.

We also visited the museum’s nature lab, where all four older kids we engrossed in learning about the world around us.  We were at the museum for over two hours and never even made it off the ground floor, only managing to see the mummies and part of the lab.  Ian asked if we could go back the next day, but we told him he’ll probably have to wait a couple weeks.  I’m really looking forward to taking our time this year exploring all that the museum has to offer!

Upcoming Reviews

We’ve been assigned our first Schoolhouse Review Crew products for the year, so watch for my reviews in the next few weeks:

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Wrapping Up Week 21(2015-16)

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Weekly Wrap Up 2015-16
 

This was a week for changing plans to “go with the flow.”  I had planned to ease our way back into school after the holiday break.  But then we were just having so much fun, we ended up doing more schoolwork than I think we’ve ever crammed into a week.

Bridge Unit

The core of my plans for the week was a bridge unit.  Both older boys are really into building right now, so I had given Elijah the K’NEX Education – Intro to Structures: Bridges set for Christmas.  Eli really prefers creative construction to following directions, but I wanted him to learn about specific building techniques that he could use, so we pulled out The Bridge Book to learn about different types of bridges, and each boy built one of the models in the K’NEX kit.

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However, my plans to further explore bridge construction were cast aside by other subjects as we got into our lessons, so that’s as far as we got.  I’m sure we’ll come back to bridges another time.

Circle Time

Jesus Calling for KidsI’ve missed the way we used to start our school days together, so I decided to begin cultivating the habit of “circle time” each morning once again.  We do our main family Bible study together with Daddy in the evenings (now that we’re through the Advent season, we’re back to Old Story New by Marty Machowski), so I didn’t really want to do Bible stories.  Instead I wanted to focus connecting with God in a personal way as we start our days.  Someone had given me a copy of Jesus Calling: 365 Devotions For Kids a while back, so I pulled it off the shelf and we started in with it.  Everyone seemed to listen an absorb it well, so I think we’ll stick with it for while.  The page introducing January featured Jeremiah 29:13, and all three older kids did a great job memorizing that verse over the course of the week.

Jeremiah 29 13
I originally planned to use this time for Five in a Row as well.  On Monday we read The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge by Hildegarde H. Swift and Lynd Ward, which Ian and I rowed a few years ago.  I thought it would be great to go along with our bridge unit.  However, our history lessons got us yearning for Venice and the Silk Road, so we ended reading a different picture book each day:

Little Red Lighthouse Papa Piccolo I Vivaldi Orphan Singer Single Pebble

History

This week Ian jumped back into his Veritas Press Self-Paced History Course on the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation with a week on Marco Polo.  Both boys were absolutely fascinated by the lessons, and we spent a lot of time exploring related subjects.

Venice

Marco Polo’s home town has long been a favorite around here, ever since we first “rowed” Papa Piccolo a few years ago.  We revisited some of our favorite books, CDs, and videos about Venice and the famous Venetian composer Vivaldi.  (See those posts for other ideas to go along with a study of Venice.)  The kids will be learning about Vivaldi in their composer class this semester, so it seemed like a good time to review what Ian had learned and introduce the others.

  • I, Vivaldi (Lovely picture book that tells the story of Vivaldi’s life)
  • The Orphan Singer (story about a girl who sings with at the Pieta school in Venice where Vivaldi worked.  Not completely accurate, but still gives a glimpse into this piece of history.)
  • Vivaldi’s Ring of Mystery (Audio CD) Ian has listened to this several times a year since we first found it.  I think it’s his favorite of all the titles in Volume 1 and Volume 2 of the Classical Kids Collection (though we’ve enjoyed them all).  I didn’t realize there’s also a book to go along with the story, so I just ordered it to surprise him.  (We have a couple of the others that complement the CDs in the series already and love them.)
  • Italy: My Palace In Venice (8-minute streaming video featuring a Venetian boy sharing about his home)
  • VENICE, Italy (25-minute streaming video that provides a good introduction to the city)
  • Ancient Mysteries – Miraculous Canals of Venice (This is a fascinating program about how Venice was built and the dangers facing it in modern times.  I watched it on Netflix years ago, but now that’s it’s no longer streaming I bought the DVD because it’s so interesting.)
The Silk Road

Last year my mom had visited a museum exhibit on the Silk Road and brought us several books as gifts, so we were glad to get a chance to pull them out this week.  The text of Marco Polo for Kids: His Marvelous Journey to China, is still a little too advanced for my kids this time around (though we probably could have done some of the projects), so we stuck with The Silk Route: 7,000 Miles of History, which has a great map in the front of it which I copied and laminated so the boys could follow along as I read the book (as well while we read A Single Pebble: A Story of the Silk Road during Circle Time one day).
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Marco Polo for Kids Silk Route
Silk Road map
We also started re-reading Peril in the Palace (AIO Imagination Station Books), in which Patick and Beth travel to the court of Kublai Khan and meet Marco Polo.  The biggest hit of the week, however, was a series I stumbled across on Netflix called The Adventures of the Young Marco Polo (which I couldn’t find listed on Amazon).  All the kids really enjoyed watching this show (Nico would beg for “Marco”), and the older boys liked checking our map to see where the characters were on their journey along the Silk Road.

Science

As if our history studies weren’t enough, we also had a fun time catching up on our lessons in Our Planet Earth from God’s Design for Heaven and Earth.  (I wanted to keep December light, so I decided to set it aside for a few weeks before the holidays.)  We actually got completely caught up by spending three days focusing on various topics:

Rocks and minerals (Lessons 15-18)

This was probably my favorite area of science as a child, so I have a small collection of geodes and other mineral samples that all the kids enjoyed getting to examine.

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Ian also wanted to do the curriculum worksheet on the twelve stones described in the priest’s breastplate in Exodus 28:17-20.  We found some disagreement between the stones listed on the worksheet (or the colors they described) and our Bibles and other books we looked in, but it led to some deeper study, so it didn’t really bother Ian.

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The two books he used for reference were the Stereogram Book of Rocks, Minerals, & Gems (old, but really helpful, and cool with the special viewing lenses) and Rocks & Minerals: A Gem of a Book, part of the Basher Science Books collection.

Earthquakes (Lessons 22-23)

Living in California has given us plenty of experience with earthquakes, so we didn’t do much besides read through these lessons in the book and discuss why building codes are different here than in other parts of the country that are more concerned with tornadoes or hurricanes.

Volcanoes (Lessons 24-26)

No, we didn’t build a volcano (though Ian certainly wanted to). We settled for reading the lessons and then watching several videos.

  • Introduction to Volcanoes (3-minute video to use to start a study of volcanoes)  All my kids loved it and we had to watch it twice.  In fact, it’s so fabulous I just have to share it here.

Final Thoughts

I didn’t even touch on some of the changes I made with math and language arts, but since there’s still some settling to do there, I think I’ll hold off on writing about those until I’ve got a little more figured out.

Upcoming Reviews

The Schoolhouse Review Crew is heading back to work, so we should have some new products to share about in the weeks to come!

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Wrapping Up Week 17 (2015-16)

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Weekly Wrap Up 2015-16
 

It’s amazing how much a little structure can change things.  When we moved back in June, we took down our Accountable Kids pegboards, and they’ve sat in a box ever since, just waiting to be put back to use.  Two weeks ago we finally got around to mounting them on the wall, and consequently the kids accomplished an amazing amount of things they’d neglected in the last few months, like practicing the piano, getting laundry regularly, and helping with the dishwasher.

I used some of the time that allowed me to get back into the DVDs from IEW’s Teaching Writing: Structure and Style seminar.  As the boys have progressed in their writing class (using Fables, Myths and Fairy Tales: Writing Lessons in Structure & Style) I find that I really need to know how the IEW system works to be able to help them.  They are both young to be attempting this material, and they definitely need some “scaffolding” to get through it, but I think they’re both getting a lot out of the class, and we’re just trying to introduce the ideas this year.  We find ourselves having lots of conversations about finding interesting words to describe the world around us.

“Conversational” is probably the best word to describe our whole week.  We got caught up through lesson 14 in Our Planet Earth (from God’s Design for Heaven and Earth), just reading the text and talking through the different kinds of rocks.

In math, I only had Ian do two lessons in Teaching Textbooks Math 3 and we spent a lot of time playing games to help the boys learn their multiplication facts (excluding 7’s, 8’s, and 9’s).

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We finished reading Marianna Mayer’s adaptation of Ivanhoe.  I think I’m going to quit on Pinocchio though.  I remember really enjoying it as a child, and perhaps if I’d been more intentional about finding time to read it we’d be more enthusiastic, but as it is, Ian’s not thrilled with it and we’re not terribly motivated to pick it up.  Perhaps I’ll come back to it with the younger children in a few years.  There are just so many wonderful books I want to read with all of the kids during Advent, so it’s time to just put Pinocchio away.

A few final thoughts

The older three children had their final choir performance for the semester on the Friday before Thanksgiving, which helped me really feel ready for the holidays to begin.  We wrapped up a few loose ends in history and writing this week (which is why I’m posting a week late), but now we’re just enjoying the holiday break and looking forward to the joyous anticipation of Advent.

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Wrapping Up Week 16 (2015-16)

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Weekly Wrap Up 2015-16
 Last week it finally felt like we were back to our routine (though since it’s taken me a couple extra days to write about it, I’m obviously not quite as top of things as I like to think).  Still, I was happy with what we managed to get through, especially since we took a day off for Elijah’s sixth birthday.  He takes great delight in building things, so most of his gifts followed that interest.  I may decide to have him work through the designs in Architecto as part of his school work.

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Preschool

Arianna is back into Reading Eggs and is doing really well as she repeats the first couple dozen lessons.  I’m really glad I set her progress back, because she has so much more confidence this time around and is working much more independently.  She really wants to be doing work on the computer like the boys, so I let her spend time both with Reading Eggs and with La La Logic [Edited to remove link as this online curriculum is no longer available] . which we’d taken a break from when we moved at the beginning of the summer and never started back up again.  Both she and Elijah spent quite a bit of time on it this past week.

Read Alouds

We finished up our King Arthur stories by reading The Kitchen Knight as retold by Margaret Hodges.  I had planned on reading more, but it just felt like time to stop.  I’m sure at some point in years to come, we’ll go back and read more stories about the knights of the round table, but the weeks we’ve spent on it this year have definitely given Ian (and Elijah, to the extent that he was following along) a good introduction.

  We started reading an adaptation of Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe by Marianna Mayer with beautiful illustrations by John Rush.  This version is highly simplified, but Ian enjoyed the story and spent a long time admiring the pictures.  It fit well with his history lessons as well.

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We also read a few more chapters in Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, though not as much as Ian would like.  (Since we’re taking turns choosing our non-history related chapter books, he’s anxious to get through my selection and onto his next choice.

Independent (Computer) Lessons

Math

Ian has reached multiplication in his Teaching Textbooks Math 3 lessons.  I’m not quite ready to start him on practicing his multiplication facts on xtramath.org, just because he’s got a few more subtraction facts to master.  Instead I’m slowing down our pace with Teaching Textbooks, doing just a couple lessons a week, and spending time with some fun games to help him (and Elijah) practice the facts as they’re introduced.  (So far aside from learning the rule for 0’s and 1’s he’s done the 10’s, 2’s, 5’s, and 4’s.)

For dessert one night I split the kids into teams: Ian and Nico vs. Elijah and Arianna.  (The little ones love shouting out numbers, even if they have no clue what the point is, but since Ian and Elijah are pretty evenly matched, the teams are as fair as I could make them).  We went through flashcards with all those fact families, giving M&M’s to each member of the team who got the correct answer first.  They got in some good practice and everyone ended up with a handful of candy by the time we finished.

History

I continue to be amazed by how much Ian is enjoying the Veritas Press Self-Paced History Course on the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation.  We had taken a week off for our road trip, so we’re behind where I had planned to be.  Still, I wanted to enjoy our week on cathedrals.  It was a bit of a review since we discussed them last year during a unit study, so I didn’t go too in depth.  I have Ian a choice of which video he wanted to re-watch, and he chose Building the Great Cathedrals, which my Kindergarten architect enjoyed a lot as well.

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Ian actually finished all the lessons for the week early, and then we I told him he didn’t have any more history to do, he dived into the next week’s lessons on the Crusades.  I’m hoping we’ll get caught up and back on schedule without doing history all the way up to Christmas.  It’s wonderful that he loves the program so much.  Elijah keeps asking me when he’ll be old enough to do history as well.  (He already watches Ian do his lessons every day and has the song memorized.)  I wish there were a way to purchase the Veritas Press online courses to use over and over again, because I just don’t see this being something we can afford every year, especially for multiple students.

A few final thoughts

I can’t believe how quickly this year is flying by.  On Friday the kids had their final music classes with the exception of choir, which will wrap up with a final performance this week.  Before we know it, Christmas will be upon us!

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Wrapping Up Week 15 (2015-16)

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Weekly Wrap Up 2015-16
 

Last week was mostly spent recovering from our road trip.  At home we focused mostly on math and history.  The boys also had their IEW class and all the kids were happy to be back to their Friday music classes.  I’m both looking forward to and dreading the holidays, because while a break is always nice, it’s hard for us to get back in the swing of things!

Sir GawainWe continued enjoying King Arthur stories by reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, as told by Michael Morpurgo and beautifully illustrated by Michael Foreman.  Ian enjoyed the book, though I found myself wondering if I should have skipped this one.  During part of the story, Gawain is tempted by the wife of his host, and I became a little uncomfortable.  We talked about the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, comparing the wisdom Joseph showed by fleeing with Gawain’s foolishness in allowing someone else’s wife to spend time alone with him and accepting her kisses.  It wasn’t exactly a discussion I would have planned for my 2nd grader, but once it had come up I didn’t want to just ignore the situation and give the impression that I was okay with such behavior.

Elijah really enjoyed mapping our trip and keeping track of which states we passed through, so I tried to give him time to practice the geography he had learned.  He really enjoyed looking at maps of the US and putting together a wooden puzzle of the states.  I love that we were able to make the map come alive for him, and I’m looking forward to exploring more of the country in the years to come!

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Upcoming Reviews

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When Lightning Struck! The Story of Martin Luther (Book Review)

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When Lightning Struck cover

If you’ve read more than one of my blog posts, you’ve probably caught onto the fact that I love history.  I love teaching it.  I love reading about it.  And I love finding great books to help my kids fall in love with it as well.

So when I heard about When Lightning Struck! The Story of Martin Luther, a new book by Danika Cooley, I knew I was going to have to check it out, especially since we’ll be covering the Reformation later this year.

Summary

When Lightning Struck! begins with his years at school studying law, followed by his dramatic decision to become a monk.  Martin feels the weight of sin acutely, but the teachings of the church do little to comfort him.  Determined to earn his salvation, he practices self-denial: starving himself, beating himself, and sleeping on the hard wooden floor (or even in the snow) to try to pay for his sins. Not only does Martin struggle with knowledge of his salvation, he is dismayed by the corruption and unbiblical practices he observes within the Church.

After receiving a Bible, Martin immerses himself in Scripture, and he at last comes to realize that Jesus has already paid for them. His lectures at the University draw grace-hungry crowds—and eventually the wrath of Rome.  Troubled by the Church’s practice of selling indulgences, Martin posts his now famous Ninety-Five Theses to open a public forum to discuss the matter, certain that the Pope and other wise religious leaders will change their position once they see the objections from Scripture laid out plainly.

The idea that theology should come from Scripture alone does not sit well with the powerful church leaders, and after Martin refuses to recant his position he is declared a heretic.  Others, however, are emboldened by Martin’s stand against the church, and a great Reformation sweeps through Germany and then other parts of Europe.  Martin spends the rest of his life trying to help maintain unity within the Protestant church, though at times he and other leaders are deeply divided over doctrine.

About the Book

Danika Cooley does not shy away from Martin Luther’s harsher side, but attempts to present an accurate portrait of the man known as the “Father of the Reformation.”  In no way does this book present Martin as a perfect man.  His temper flares often, and he stubbornly sets himself upon anyone whose interpretation of Scripture differs from his own.   I love what Cooley writes in her note at the end of the book:

Would Luther have been effective had he been a gentler, kinder soul in our contemporary estimation? No one can say. Martin Luther certainly didn’t think so. He believed God chose him because of his fiery spirit. We can trust that God is sovereign over history (p.233).

I was already familiar with Danika Cooley because of Bible Road Trip, her amazing Bible study curriculum for Preschool through grade 12.  My experience using BRT convinced me that she is a kindred spirit who shares my passion for teaching about both the Bible and what God has done in history, and that passion comes through in her presentation of Martin Luther’s life.  While the material has been painstakingly researched (as evidenced by abundant footnotes), Cooley makes sure that she tells an exciting story, with plenty of dialogue to move the story along through the entire 265-page book.

Her thorough research and enthusiasm for her subject matter are contagious, so I was excited that on her website you can find a unit study for grades 7-12 (free for subscribers) and a discussion guide (suitable for grades 3-12) to go along with When Lightning Struck! to help students get even more out of the story.

unit study   discussion guide

Final thoughts

I read through When Lightning Struck! on my own for this review in order to see if it was something I’d want to use later this year with Ian.  While I think he’d enjoy the story, I’ve decided to hold off on it for now.  I think he would have trouble understanding parts of it (such as the extreme measures Martin goes to in order to try to earn his salvation, and the issue of transubstantiation that gets Martin so upset in the later part of the story).  There are so many important discussions that can come out of this book, so I think I’m going to save it for a later study of the Reformation.  Then Elijah will be able to join us and we can enjoy deeper conversations about faith, grace, and the legacy of Martin Luther.

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Posted in Book reviews, Homeschool Resources

Wrapping Up Week 13 (2015-16)

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Weekly Wrap Up 2015-16
 We really eased back into school as we started up our second term, mostly because we decided to head out on a road trip for the next week and I didn’t want to get in too deep before that.

The only big change we had for this term was in science, as we moved onto Our Planet Earth, another of the three books in God’s Design for Heaven and Earth.  Ian read the first two lessons out loud to me as we drove, and then we had a great discussion about how everything we see originally came from materials God put on the earth.  Ian wanted to try to make his own cement (I wasn’t quite up to that), and we learned about how glass is made (with a clip from Some Assembly Required).

We got through a pretty normal week of school without any extras because we were getting ready for our trip.  Then we drove overnight from Southern California to Albuquerque, where we had a blast at the ABQ BioPark Zoo.  I was so impressed with the animals at the zoo (zoos that size around us don’t have any of the big feature animals, so I was pleasantly surprised to find elephants, giraffes, tigers, and so much more), and the kids were all SO excited to get so close them, especially Nico, who hasn’t been to a zoo since he was a tiny baby.  Then we walked through the aquarium marveling over more of God’s wonders, and finally wrapped up the day by exploring the amazing Children’s Fantasy Garden (part of the Botanic Garden).  It was an awesome day of learning all around, so I don’t feel too badly that I didn’t pack much school work for next week.  I’m anticipating lots of sun learning days.

ABQ BioPark 1 ABQ BioPark 2 ABQ BioPark 3 ABQ BioPark 4ABQ BioPark 5

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Posted in Weekly Wrap Up
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