His Treasure Seekers

I didn’t write a post about a “Word for 2017,” but if I had, my word this year would SAVOR.  It’s so easy to get caught up in trying to get everything done and the busy pace of life around us in Southern California, but this year more than ever before I have felt the Lord prompting me to savor the precious moments I have with my children.  Savor the last few months of Nathaniel being the youngest and soak up all the affection he lavishes upon us.  Savor those sweet hours by the fire reading to my older boys.  Savor the cuddles with Arianna as she reads her first words, and the constant serenading of Nico singing his ABCs and number songs.  Savor those little flutters getting stronger every day as my final pregnancy ticks away and we get closer to the arrival of our youngest child.

School happened this week.  Of course it did.  But since it was mostly just continuing on with everything I wrote about last week, I see no reason to cover the majority of what we did.  I’d rather spend the time doing some of that “savoring” and just jot down some notes for future reference about our time studying the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark expedition. (Hear the Classical Conversations families breaking into song?)

Books

• We continued learning about the story of our country by reading chapters 4 and 5 From Sea to Shining Sea for Young Readers.
• The boys both read Lewis and Clark: A Prairie Dog for the President, a fairly easy read about one of the many specimens the explorers collected on their journey.
• Our biography this week was Meriweather Lewis: Journey Across America from YWAM Publishing’s “Heroes for Young Readers” series. I was a little disappointed that there was no mention at all of Sacagawea.
• We covered her plenty though, finishing up Streams to the River, River to the Sea by Scott O’Dell.
• The boys also read The Value of Adventure: The Story of Sacagawea from the ValueTales series.

           

Videos

• The Lewis & Clark Expeditions on Amazon Prime (not terribly exciting, but a good 18 minute introduction to help visualize the path they took)
• St. Louis to Ft. Mandan (Part 1 of a 3 part series narrated from Sacagawea’s point of view)
• Over the Rockies to the Pacific (Part 2)
• Ft. Clatsop and the Journey Home (Part 3)
• (Incidentally, the above 3 videos are presented as one complete video entitled “Sacagawea” in the Women of Courage: Stories of Faith and Love DVD set, which we discovered on Friday when we went to watch it  Wish I’d known—that was the whole reason I bought the DVD!)
• Learn Our History: The Adventures of Lewis and Clark (I’m not big on the animation, but I appreciate the worldview of this series, and my kids LOVE them.)

Geography Activities

• We continued learning the states by adding those in the South and Northeast on this online geography activity
• The boys colored in the states in area of the Louisiana Purchase on our maps (following current state lines, so it’s not entirely accurate, but I just wanted them to get the general idea of how the nation was expanding over time).