School: Week 22

Gabe's week of school focused on the letter H, the number 14, and a study about horses. 

On one of the back roads to a friend's house, there are many horses in the yards and since we didn't go to a farm or anything to see horses, I joked that our field trip was driving down that road.  I don't think the kids were too impressed though.    

Gabe working on his pattern calendar

Gabe singing his vowel song.

Gabe and I played a game that showed how his memory words, "I obey right away" apply to horses and to him.  Horses obey right away when they are given commands by their master, and they stay on the right path. We also need to obey, both parents and escpecially God, to stay on the good path that God has for us.  For our game, I told him to go to various places in our house and the last place I told him to go was to the laundry room and look on the washing machine.  He liked what he found there.

And even better, when he saw that I had left four suckers there, he immediately wanted to share with his brothers and sister.  Sweet boy.

So, needless to say with a lot of children in our home, we have been using "I obey right away" to remind the kids regularly ever since we heard it the first time we used this kindergarten curriculum with Matthew.  We used counting to three before that because that's what everyone else seemed to be doing (and sadly, that seems to be how I used to parent) but after taking a parenting class by Chip Ingram with Chris, we realized that giving them three chances to obey is giving them two chances to disobey.  

We read the story of Jonah to see how Jonah disobeyed God and then God gave him a second chance and Jonah did obey.  Grace and mercy are such wonderful gifts to be given from God for all of our human imperfections. 

We did a few more activities, including watching Black Beauty.  We also read a book about a horse and a circus.  (Not that we go to circuses...we are trying to stay away from food and entertainment that involve animal cruelty.  And no, we are not vegan, but we do believe in treating animals with respect while they are alive.  There's some sad stuff going on out there when it comes to this subject.)  But back to Gabe's school...

picture taken by Matthew

And Gabe's finished school work from this week...

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The older boys are on week 22 of 34.  Right now, they are both memorizing Psalm 1 over several weeks.  That is in addition to their Awana Bible memorization.  Christopher had memorized Psalm 1 earlier this year for Awana, so he's already got it down for school.

The last section of memory work was Psalm 23. 

Christopher's on left, Matthew's on right

We've been reading through the Old Testament this year and we are in 1 Samuel right now, reading about King Saul and David.  I recently bought a Bible commentary that someone else recommended on their blog.  It is so helpful to me, since I just don't fully understand all that the Bible is trying to teach us.  We read it everyday with our Bible reading, which is usually one chapter per day.  It makes Bible time take much longer, but we get so much more out of it.  I have asked the boys what they think about reading it along with our Bible, and Christopher really likes it and Matthew doesn't really care.  He's the one that I'm working with to stop interrupting me while I'm reading aloud (patting my arm 50 times) to ask what he can eat.  Oy!

It is written in another translation than the NIV that we use, so we still read from my Bible back and forth with the commentary. 

And we still read the Victor Journey Trough the Bible after them both as well!  It is a lot of reading, but I know that we are getting so much more from God's Word than without them.

We have been reading The Children's Homer for a few weeks now.  It is written a bit in old style writing (with thee's and thy's and thou's) in some places, but the boys (mostly Christopher) are really enjoying it.  Christopher really wants to get to the part about the Trojan horse, so hopefully he'll still enjoy the book once that part has passed.

We took the week off from our history text books to read a few of David's Psalms.  I tried to put them to melody but I think I was doing a bad job because Christopher asked if I could just read them normal.

Christopher started ratios in math and is enjoying how simple it is so far and Matthew is doing some two digit plus two digit addition in math.  He's not quite so thrilled with his math.

We got off track with art for a while and are now doing a lesson from God and the History of Art everyday to catch up.  The boys like doing art so they don't mind doing it everyday at all.  The book is actually for ages 10 and up, so while I require Matthew and Christopher to do it (even though Matthew is seven), Gabriel has a choice.  If he doesn't do his page, then I got ahead and do it myself.  I could use any help I can get with drawing.

Christopher's work

Matthew's work

Gabe's work

Christopher does a few extra things that Matthew doesn't.  He starting a writing curriculum this year even though he has been writing short stories for a while (years).  I debated having him doing the extra work, even though it was reccomended by My Father's World for his grade, but I decided on it in the end because we could all use improvement in our writing.  I realize now with the lessons he is doing that he didn't have that much depth to individual parts of his stories.  Here is his latest.  He had to write a list of things that happened in his day and then elaborate on two of those things.

And while he knows cursive, he's pretty choppy when he writes with it, as opposed to being flowing.  So I'm having him work on it a bit with some Donna Young worksheets for practice.

And this little girl worked on her writing skills a little.  She's getting pretty good at these 'easy mazes'.  Thanks to her Daddy...

When I showed her with my finger how to do it, she couldn't figure it out and I thought we should just wait a while until she was older.  Chris was watching however and showed Leah how to do it by doing it himself and telling her to trace his crayon line.  Maybe Daddy should be doing some of this homeschooling teaching stuff!  (Actually, science used to be his department, maybe we should start that up again!)

And that's our week of school.  To see more of My Father's World users' weeks of school, go to MFW Homeschool Highlights.

Chocolate Ice Cream Faces

This blog entry could easily be told in pictures.

One nice breezy Tuesday evening, a mother who has been home with her five children all day remembers that just down the road, there is a nice little ice cream joint with $1 kids ice cream cones on Tuesdays.

She was all over that.

Because chocolate ice cream faces are some of my favorite things.

one of Anna's favorite faces to make these days

And the $1 cones were just the right size to give three little boys the burst of energy they needed to race up and down the breezeway of the shopping center.

And She Stands

Okay, so she's actually been doing this for over a month, but we have yet to actually take a picture of our sweet fifth child doing this...standing all by her little self.

She's been pulling up on the couch or whatever for months now, but she just started standing up from pushing up on the ground in the last month, and just standing around like it's a normal thing for her to do.  She just seems too little to be doing this stuff...even though at 14 months old, she's getting kind of on the 'late' side of it.  But she's my baby, and she's just so little.

And for the record, she's been taking steps for weeks now also.  She's doing it more and more often, but not enough to call her a "walker".  With spring having sprung, I'm ready for her to walk.  She just gets way too dirty crawling around outside. 

Taking a few steps!

And Leah is so cute; she still gets so excited when she sees Anna standing up and tells me, "Mommy, look, Anna's standing up!"  She's such a sweet big sister.

And I am so loving that Anna will play so well with her big brothers and sister so often!

God's Word Helps Me Grow

So I guess it's about time I talked about some homeschooling stuff, right?

Gabriel has finished exactly half of the alphabet lessons for his kindergarten curriculum in My Father's World.  We just finished lesson 13, C-c-Cow which is part of a unit study about farm animals, and the Bible words to remember are the title of this post...God's Word helps me grow.  As in cow milk helps us grow physically and the Bible helps us grow spiritually.  I dug out a bunch of our books about farm animals and it's so funny how I can start reading a book to one or two kids and the others come out from the different rooms in our house and gather around.  I love it.

Gabriel is doing so well with reading short vowel words and his school work is taking almost no time at all.  He enjoys it so much though and even though he breezes through it, it is just the right amount of work for him.  He doesn't get bored with it, but he is also excited to do it everyday.

On his counting worksheet (bottom left), the numbers are 13 and 2.  He's been doing this for a while now, where he has to draw that amount of objects and he decides to draw the number 11 that many times.  It's not very creative or exciting, but really, our boys are drawing constantly, these elaborate pictures, of which Super Mario Brothers made up worlds are the artwork of choice right now.  So I don't worry about the math worksheet.  I'll have to take a picture and show how crazy-detailed they get with their Wii World drawings sometime. 
And on the letter worksheet (bottom right), I write the letters that you see first and then Gabe's are second, just so you know.

He loves all this cutting and pasting.  A lot.  And Leah does too, which gets messy, but with all the practice she's been getting at age two, she'll be a pro by the time she's in kindergarten.

Okay, so here are a few more activities we did...we talked about cows and what yummy food products come from them, and we also read the Story of Ferdinand and drew our little picture about it.  (I drew Ferdinand (so you know the boys don't get their artistic skill from me!), Gabe drew the tree and made the flowers.)

And that's just about what his week of school looked like.  We did a few more activities, like acting out "Hey Diddle Diddle" with some stuffed animals, talking about the different dairy products we eat, but one thing we did before with this unit study, making butter, we haven't gotten to yet (I didn't get cream from the store...whoops).  We'll get to that though since the kids like it a lot.  And I'd love to take them to a dairy farm.  We buy fresh milk from a local dairy, but it is on the other side of San Antonio and milking time is during dinner so it's not very convenient to go to, but maybe on a weekend soon we will.

More school updates to come soon!

Another Birthday

So Chris kind of gets jipped for his birthday.  It's two days after Christopher's.  Even if it's not the biggest celebration, we still go out to dinner for him and most years we have another cake. 

Because you can never have too much cake.  And baking it is a good homeschooling lesson for the kids.

Happy Birthday to my sweet, wonderful, cute, smart, hardworking hubby.  I love you Chris!

And yes, the cake does have pink icing and little bunnies on it.  Hey, I just used what I had on hand.  And it's the thought that counts, right?

And this is the third and last time I can make fun of him for being an old man in his 30s. No offense to anyone else in their 30s. I'll be joining you this fall.  Not that the 30s are even as old as I joke it is.  I'll just shut my mouth now.  :oP

A Mommy for a Decade

Ten years ago, this sweet baby boy turned me into a mommy. 

6 weeks old

I can't believe it's been so long since that morning that he was born.  I was 19 and had no idea what I was in for, but somehow I knew it was all good. 

My relationship with God then wasn't even very close, but he still gave me comfort throughout my pregnancy and I didn't feel apprehensive or fearful or anything like I would expect a newly married teenager with a newborn to feel.  I felt like a mother and knew that this was meant to be.  It just felt natural.

God planned it an eternity ago.  It may have come about in a way that wasn't how he planned for babies to come, but he knew it would happen.

I can't imagine my children becoming parents so soon in their life, but now I can't imagine me not becoming a mom when I was so young.  There's nothing in my life I would enjoy more, at this moment, than being a mom to my children, raising them, training them up, spending so much of our lives together, having such a close relationship. 

And it all started with this little blessing.

Me, 20 years old & Christopher, 12 months

It probably helped that God brought me together with the greatest guy to be a dad to our child.  I don't know exactly what Chris was thinking when we found out we were expecting, but for me, he was a rock.  He was never not calm about it. He was 21 and it was the summer before his senior year in college.  I was really scared when we first found out, I was still 18, but that really didn't last that long and Chris was awesome then, and he has been such a great dad and husband ever since.

I look at my first born, my sweet son, and while I know that he must go through trials to grow into a godly man, I pray that he will be strong and faithful like his dad.  He's already on his way there.

Christopher, 3 years old

Christopher, 4 years old

Christopher, 5 years old

So we celebrated my sweet boy on his special day.

Starting with birthday balloons outside his bedroom door when he woke up.

And then birthday donuts!

And that evening we went out for dinner and dessert at the places of his choice...Denny's for dinner and Rainforest Cafe for dessert.

And then we headed home to open a couple of presents. 

And this sweet boy let his sister help him open his gifts!

Happy Birthday to the boy who made me a mommy.  I love you Christopher James!