MFW EX1850: Week Four

I am so happy that I went with my husband's opinion (something I have trouble doing sometimes) and decided to start out with the full memorization of the book of James instead of just key verses.  We are up to verse 11 and it's not nearly as hard as I thought it would be for me.  I knew the kids could do it, but I doubted myself.  Considering what the first eight verses tell us, it's no surprise that God has given me the wisdom to do this when I simply ask and believe.

James 1:1-8

James, a servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes, scattered among the nations: Greetings.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.  Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.  If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all, without finding fault, and it will be given to him.  But he who asks must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed in the wind. That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man and unstable in all he does.

With that said, we have just started Awana, and so we will see how realistic it is to have the boys memorize the whole book of James along with their Awana books.  My two older boys are in the T&T (Truth and Training) level, which is pretty intense with the amount of memorization required.

In other school subjects...we are up to the Pilgrims in history...yay!  This seems to be one period of history that most kids remember learning about even into adulthood.  

Christopher's notebook page (some words are cut off so the end seems to not make sense)

Gabriel's notebook page

We've taken a break with our formal art book that we've used for the past three years, God and the History of Art (GATHOA). Instead, we'll be using Draw and Write through History when the time period applies, and I may try another art curriculum or go back to GOTHOA.  

This book is pretty much just step by step instruction on how to draw certain pictures.  It doesn't have any sort of art history in it, but there is a history notebook page to use as copy work, which we currently don't use.  I just wanted something fun and easy to give us a break from GATHOA.

Christopher's drawings

Gabriel's drawings

I don't usually supplement our curriculum, but I found a book, History Pockets:Life in Plymouth Colony, and I thought it looked like a fun, hands-on addition to learning about the Pilgrims.  It's meant to be used over a longer time span than we are using it, so we've been doing one "pocket" each day.  I did most of the prep work myself so the kids could just do the fun stuff and it's working out well.  They do a lot of it while I'm reading our history books, so it doesn't add too much time to our school day.  

We have a few more to finish up next week and I think I'll look and see what other time periods they have that will go well with what we study later.

I'm not sure how it's happened, but all three of my boys just "get" math. I always did well in math in school, but I think Chris was stronger in other subjects.  I'm just thrilled that hopefully they'll be able to do some dual enrollment college math courses in high school and save some money once they get to college!

We are 20 days into the school year, and Gabe has completed 51 lessons in his math book, as well as a couple review lessons.  Most of them he doesn't even come to me to ask how to do it and when I go to correct his work I see that oh, wow, today, he did four lessons.  I'm sure this is not the recommended way to do math, but Christopher did the same thing and five years later in pre-algebra, he is still doing well and learning most of it without help.  I just have to remind Gabe sometimes that maybe if he didn't do so much math in the morning, doing his history notebook pages wouldn't seem like so much writing.  

And that was our school week.

Have a great week!