Delightful Rabbit trails

First off, does anyone's school table get as cluttered and messy as ours does just in the first hour of schooling?????  Oh, how it drives me crazy, but it just seems to get out of control and we are usually on a roll and I can't stop to clean things up!  If Benjamin, our two year old, is happy, than I can't stop to clean up.  I have to take every available opportunity to get our schooling in!  BTW-See those cups of water on the school table?  Not a good idea.  Not sure how they got added.  They small red cup did eventually spill but thankfully it didn't get on anything.  Rather miraculous I'd say.

So, several times today we took some magnificent "rabbit trails".  Here is the first one.

We have been reading through this wonderful book that teaches us about God's many names.  Today we we were learning that one of his names is Judge of the Whole Earth.  One day we will all stand before his Great White Judgement Throne to give an accounting of our lives, the good and the bad.  And the Book of Life will be brought out to see if our name is in it.  Wow.  I'm so thankful for Jesus! 

At the end of the lesson it suggested we read about Heaven in Revelation chapter 21.

So we got out the Bible and I began to read John's vision of Heaven.  I realized that in our rock collection we might have some of the gems that the city of Heaven is made out of!!!

So out came our rock collection.

First we found Jasper! 

Next we found Agate.  This is not our Agate.  This is a photo from the web.  I cannot get my blog program to allow me to upload anymore pictures!  Thankfully, I got all of them except the Agate.

Anyway, it was so neat to be able to put our hands on the same materials that Heaven will be made out of.  Kind of made it more real I think.  It was neat to read that each gate in Heaven is made out of a single pearl.  Amazing.

Onto the next rabbit trail.

In geography we read about deltas.  I thought it would need to not just read them the definition but also read to them about a particular delta.  I went and found my thrifted book called "Great Rivers of the World".

I scanned the book for the word delta and found it in the chapter about the Yangtze river.

I didn't realize that the area surrounding the Yangtze River is actually (at the time of the writing of this book) home to 10 percent of the world's population!  Yangtze's delta is yellow because of silt the river picks up on its way down to the East China Sea.

We were all pretty amazed to here that through the difficult to traverse gorges, in the steep cliffs that no animal would dare to tread, little narrow pathways have been cut into the rock so that men can pull the boats through the turbulent water. 

Today was a good day.  Learning is so fun and I love spending this time with my boys!  So far for this school year we have read among other things, a biography of Mary Slessor, a biography of David Livingstone, a biography of Martin Luther, and we are about to finish a biography about George Washington Carver's childhood (I read two chapters at dinner tonight while the children ate and we all fought back tears.  If you haven't read a biography of George Washington Carver, get one...read it.  After reading I asked each boy what stuck out to them and it was so preciously perfect, Andrew said, "It was happy.  It was sad."  He summed it up so perfectly.  We had read about George getting to graduate highschool after much difficulty and perseverance and then two boys in his class of 10 refused to stand with him on the platform because he was black.  George prayed.  God changed hearts.  I fought tears.  I just love this man.  Whom I've not met.  Who lived long before I was born.  I can't wait to meet him in Heaven.)  This week we will also conclude a biography of John Calvin. 

We finished the White Stallion of Lipizza and are now reading Misty of Chincoteague.  Misty wasn't planned but we fell in love with Marguerite Henry and so we are going with our hearts. :)

I'm so grateful.  Homeschooling is a gift to us all.