Our home school day...

Micah and Andrew are playing with play-do right now so I have a few minutes before we eat lunch...

We started about 9:00 this morning and I read the boys our memory verse three times in a row and we talked about it. We are memorizing verses on honesty/truth right now. Psalm 15:1-3 is what we are memorizing now.

1Who may stay in God's temple
or live on the holy mountain
of the LORD?
2Only those who obey God
and do as they should.
They speak the truth
3and don't spread gossip;
they treat others fairly
and don't say cruel things.

I'm not sure how to teach them what this verse is saying at the same time the gospel: That we don't enter Heaven by works, ie by telling the truth, not gossiping, being fair and not being cruel. But rather through the work of Christ on our behalf on the cross. I guess I would say to the boys this verse is true: You can't enter Heaven unless you obey God's righteous requirements perfectly. But the truth is that you can't because you were born in sin. But God made a way! He sent his son Jesus to live the perect life for you and then pay the penalty for your sins on the cross! And now because we are so thankful for what God did for us we strive to obey his righteous laws but we depend on Jesus' sacrifice on our behalf to get us into Heaven!

So after that I read them a story from The Children's Book of Virtues in the honesty section. We read about Abe Lincoln and the story of when he accidently ruined a borrowed book and honestly took it back to it's owner and worked three days to pay for the book.

Than we read the story of David and Goliath as that is where we are at in our Bible Study and listened to the animated version using the Bible Comes Alive series by Your Story Hour. The boys drew pictures of David and Goliath to add to their bible time lines.

Than Micah played with Andrew while I worked with Isaac. We read from the book, "Those who Dare" about John Ray and English naturalist from the 17th century. Isaac wrote a written narration about him in our Book of Centuries. Than we went over his spelling from Spelling Wisdom. After that I went over what he needed to do in math, which we are currently going back over the past few lessons because I had gotten lazy and not been checking his math and when I finally did I realized he had made quite a few errors and wasn't understanding some of the concepts. So we are getting caught up to speed before we move forward! Then I sent Isaac to do his handwriting and his math corrections on his own. Which he took forever and than came to me with hardly anything done saying he couldn't concentrate!

So I told him he would have to now do his work during playtime and we were going to move on. I started a Winnie the Pooh video for Andrew and Micah and Isaac sat down at the table to do our together work.

We are studying US History and are up to the Westward expansion. We are starting a book called, "How I survived the Oregon Trail" which is basically a 10 year old boy's journal as he and his family journey from Iowa to Oregon. We made large map of the US, filling in important landmarks as we read. Each day we will mark each place that the family travels to as we read the journal.

We are done studying Asia and have started Africa. We began with Egypt using Window on the World to learn about the spiritual state of Egypt and what God is doing there. It followed the story of two kids that live in Garbage City, a slum just outside of Cairo, the capital city. We also looked some things up on the internet to see more pictures. Than the boys drew pictures of things they had learned about Egypt for our Book of Countries/Cultures. Isaac also got out the Book of Centuries to mark in 676 AD that the Arab's invaded Egypt and forced the Christians to become Muslims.

After this we pulled out the boys Science journals and reviewed Angiosperms. They both drew a picture of an angiosperm and added them to their journals.

I forgot to add that I did work with Andrew for a little bit somewhere along the way this morning. We just got out the farm animals and grouped them and I got him to name them and the sounds they make.

I also sat down with Micah to do his individual school. Par his request I read him a devotional story from "More Five-Minute devotions for Chidlren" which is full of stories of animals. The author relates these animals to Christian characteristics. Micah loves these stories. I then read to him from "One-minute stories of Great Americans". He loves this book! The stories are so short so they are great for an introduction to narration. Even with these short stories at first he was hesitant to narrate. But even when he would just give me a 5 word sentance narration I would give him a high five and tell him great job. Today he probably told me 4-5 different things he remembered so he is getting better! The person today we read about was Clara Barton. Than he did handwriting, just three lines of the letter f. The first line he traces the "f's" and the next two he does them himself. We are using handwriting without tears but I'm taking a break from the book to just have him do the upper-case and lower-case of each letter. Than we read a book from the library about the letter sound, short-a. And that was it with Micah. We aren't doing math right now. We were using Math-U-See but things were falling apart when it started having him add in the hundred's. And I thought this was too much for a 5 year old in Kindergarten. He does well in math so I'm comfortable being very relaxed with math until next year.

Basically my plan is to do kindergarten with him again next year. He will be 6 1/2.

I'll probably use Sonlight for him and Isaac next year. Not the complete curriculum but their history/geography.

All we have left to do school wise today is reading the story "The Little Match Girl" by Hans Christian Anderson and look at a picture in "Come Look with Me". We will do these things at lunch. Than I'm off to Publix to get some chicken to cook some things ahead for this week.

Okay, the boys are making "flap-jacks" out of play-do and the play do is being spread around the whole school room so I better go. And I'm starving!!!