School - Week 23

This week, Gabe has been learning about elephants and the letter "E". 

This is the first week that he has a little story to read.  We're supposed to cut it out and make it into a little book, we just hadn't gotten to that part yet.  He felt so proud after he read the whole thing by himself. 

Gabe with his words to remember.

We learned quite a bit about elephants this week.  For our map, we focused on the African elephant and some of his African friends.  We colored the continent of Africa based on whether it is desert, forest or grasslands and stuck the animals basically where they belonged.  We have a couple more animals to learn about in coming lessons before we'll take down our map of Africa.

Some cute little elephants we made from a toilet paper tube and this website.

 One of the books we read about elephants this week.

Our new simple supply caddy...$2.99 at the Container Store baby!

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Christopher and Matthew are continuing to memorize Psalm 1 and they pretty much have it down now.  Matthew needs a hint or two towards the end, but they've only copied four of the six verses, so he still has two more weeks to get it one hundred percent. 

We finished up reading about King Saul this week and moved on to when David was king. 
I read Unspoken: Bathsheba from the Lineage of Grace series by Francine Rivers a year or so ago, and while it ws an awesome book, it was the most I've ever read about David other than when he killed Goliath with his sling.  The book did not make me think that highly of David since it was from Bathsheba's perspective and I didn't quite understand why he is considered such a Godly man. 

Oh, is that why I should actually read straight from the source?  (That was sarcasm.)
 
We've spent the week reading about David, and how he did mess up and did sin, and some of his sins were very serious, but God knew his heart, and he knew that his heart was completely for HIM.  How great is it for me, that the same man in the Bible that God loved so much and blessed so much, was a sinner, just like me.  I always will be, but I can still love God with all my heart and he'll know that, and love me too.

I never thought that reading through this part of the Old Testament would be something I looked forward to doing, and I am pleasantly surprised.  (Goodness, I sound like a heathen mom, don't I!)  I get so excited telling the kids about the lessons we are learning and how it applies to our lives and I just truly hope that some of it will stick with them.

I wonder sometimes, because Matthew seems to have a bored, distant look on his face quite often, and like I've said before, he often seems more worried about his next snack or meal than about anything else.  Lucky him, he'll be going through this same curriculum again in five years.  :o)

So at the same time as we're reading through this period in the Old Testament (and some of David's Psalms), we've read about a civilizaion from Phoenicia.  The boys got to see what their writing looked like, and wrote their names using their alphabet at the bottom of the worksheet below.

Matthew's name written using the Phoenician alphbet and his summary of King Saul. 

Christopher's summary of King Saul and his name using the Phoenician alphabet.

Christopher adding King David to our timeline

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That's about been our week.

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