Week 3

It's crazy how quickly these three weeks have gone by, but we are having fun. In ECC, we've started our travels of the United States. Exciting, huh? It'll get better once we travel outside of where we actually live. I suspected, but have now confirmed, that Christopher can label all 50 of the states on a blank US map. I remember taking a test like that in 4th grade and knowing maybe a third of the states! We are still learning more about how to read maps using hemispheres, latitude and longitude, and grids and different types of maps. Christopher is still really into all that stuff. This week was also spent learning about forests, most specifically deciduous forests since that's what grows in the U.S. mainly (trees that change color in the fall).

We've been reading a book called Kingdom Tales, which is a fantasy type book (I think) that's message is about God's kingdom. Christopher really did not like it at first, but we read a chapter everyday and I think he's getting more into it. Today was my favorite chapter and the message it had was that we are all our own greatest enemies. Explaining that to the kids was great, and they really understood, which is a plus!

We've also been reading a delightful book called Hero Tales that is non-fiction and has stories about Christians with an emphasis on character qualities. We've ready about Dwight Moody for a few days now and we all enjoy this book a lot. It's great to talk about character qualities with the kids.

We had to choose a North American craft from "Global Art", our art book and have decided on a homemade apple doll toy. Now, to set about actually making one (or three rather, since all the boys want one.) We are also a little behind with two science experiments for Matthew. This was my M.O. for science experiments last year and we always ended up catching up every few weeks.

One thing to note, I have a complication with my current pregnancy (subchorionic hemorrhage) that requires a lot of resting (to slow the chronic bleeding), so scheduled nature walks and other non-restful things have to be put off until Chris can do them with the kids. Not to mention it's so stinkin' hot down here still!

Christopher has completed his cursive writing lessons and will now move onto practice and hopefully he'll be writing his assignments in cursive soon.

Matthew's plugging along well in his first grade studies. We now do one reading/writing lesson a day and it's quite a bit of writing so Matthew isn't caring to work ahead anymore. He does do more than he has to for math still though. In reading, he is learning the long vowel sounds now. He is doing awesome and I can't believe how well this is going. I always expected it to be more frustrating for both of us. Christopher learned to read on his own when he was four years old and I'm so thankful that I didn't try to make Matthew follow suit, as I'm sure he was not ready then and is 100% ready now. These little minds amaze me. Christopher and Matthew are almost attached at the hip and are alike in many ways, but have a lot of wonderful differences also. It makes me sad for kids in school who are expected to learn these things on the school's schedule and not their own.

Anyways, we did get a bit thrown off this week with having our monthly MOPS meeting yesterday. Matthew and Christopher go to a homeschooling room and I did sent their math and some other assignments for Christopher to complete, but there's much more to the day than that. Luckily our Fridays are 'light' school days so it wasn't hard to catch up today.

Next week starts both Awana and Co-op on Wednesday evenings and Friday mornings respectively. The kids have done great with Matthew's "Proverb to Remember" this week (with the help of a chocolate chip for a good effort). We'll see how learning verses at both home and Awana works out for the kids, especially Matthew. Even Gabriel will be starting Cubbies this year. At home, I never know when he will cry over being asked to say the Bible verse, so I'm wondering also how he will do with learning one verse a week for Cubbies!

Co-op is an awesome program for home schoolers that is held at our church. I can't imagine a better run program. This is the first year that Christopher got to choose the classes he wants to take and his three choices are: Rocket Science, All About Bugs, and Money Sense. His classes will be a mix of 3rd through about 6th graders I believe. Matthew and Gabriel both stay with their own grade. Matthew's class this semester has the following subjects: Solar System, Patriotism, Music, Poetry, PE , and Show & Tell. He is very excited, especially with learning more about the Solar System, although I'm really not sure that he doesn't already know everything!
Gabriel's class this semester has the following subjects: Circle Time, Bible Lesson, Science, Playground, Show & Tell, Storytime, and Arts & Crafts. Yours truly is the science teacher for both Gabe's class and the 4/5 year olds class.
Leah will be hanging out with the other one year olds in her class, just chillin' or whatever it is that a group of one year olds do. Maybe all of the walkers will rub of on her. She's fifteen months now and is getting there, slowly but surely. (Many of you don't know that she had hip dysplasia as a newborn and was in a body cast until she was six months old...not so easy to learn physical abilities that way!)

The older two boys have also started Cub Scouts on Monday evenings. They had a great time this week, even after Christopher balked at having to go (he's not into trying new things).
I've started an every-other-Tuesday evening Bible study on the book of Daniel. I already know that I love it after the first week.

So our school year is picking up and hopefully it doesn't get too crazy for us. We also have OCF (Officer's Christian Fellowship) on Thursday evenings. At least everyone but me have off Tuesday evenings and the Cub Scouts and Awana don't require me to go this year. I usually help out, but hey, I'm making a baby here!