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...

********************************************************************************************

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.