The Salamander Room

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Last week we “rowed” The Salamander Room by Anne Mazer.  It was a cute story, and Ian really got into it, but we didn’t do a whole lot of extras.  We did some of the activities in the Five in a Row manual (Vol. 3), watched the Reading Rainbow episode that featured the book, and read About Amphibians by Cathryn Sill (love this series!).  There’s also a nice reading of the story on YouTube.

We also acquired a new pet, though it’s a reptile. Grandpa caught a gopher snake, and as with the bullfrogs we raised from tadpoles over the spring and summer, it’s proving to be quite the educational pet. Learning about our snake just as we were rowing this book provided a chance to talk about the differences between reptiles and amphibians. The boys are quite fascinated by “Rocky,” especially when it comes to watching him eat his weekly pinkies. (Having to buy live food also means trips to the pet store, so we got to see some live salamanders as well, which was a nice bonus.)  Ian was quite inspired by The Salamander Room and has enjoyed creating a little world for his snake.

To see what other FIAR books we’ve rowed, see my “Index of FIAR Posts.”  Also, a great place to see what other people have done with FIAR books is the FIAR Blog Roll at Delightful Learning.

Posted in FIAR, Literature Units, Preschool

Long Story Short: The Rainbow of God’s Promise

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Last week we continued in Long Story Short by Marty Machowski with the story of Noah’s ark, focusing on God’s promise, symbolized by the rainbow.  I love the connection between the ark and Jesus as the only way to be saved.   It’s taken me almost a week to write about it, and things are a bit hectic around here right now, so I’m afraid this is going to pretty much be the notes I jotted through the week just so I can get it all down for the record.

Go-Along Books

We kept out the books we read last week, as well as enjoying the story in The Rhyme Bible Storybook for Toddlers:

Reading Practice

  • The Young Reader’s Bible by Bonnie Bruno (Ian’s making progress on this but still isn’t quite ready to read it on his own.)
  • Cards to practice reading our memory verse: “Your steadfast love is great above the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.” Psalm 108:4

Bible Notebook

I used a picture from dltk-kids and put it on a page with our memory verse.  It was a good chance to talk about the colors of the rainbow, especially since the picture had room for every color in the spectrum!

Activities

We broke out our flannel board set for the first time in months, and the boys REALLY enjoyed retelling the story with it.  I can’t count how many times Elijah went over to it throughout the week and told the story, sometimes to one of us, but most of the time just to himself.  I LOVE having this out to “narrate” the Bible story.  It really shows how deeply they’re internalizing what they’re learning.

  

The boys had fun sailing the paper “arks” I folded for them.  (Ian tried, but it was too hard even for him.)

  

Multimedia

We watched VeggieTales: Minnesota Cuke And The Search For Noahs Umbrella (available streaming on Netflix).

Our “Listening Lesson” was the same as last week plus the addition of Genesis 8 with the end of the Noah story.

Wow, that’s a boring post.  I do apologize.

Posted in Bible lessons, Long Story Short, Preschool, The Gospel Story

Long Story Short: God Chooses Noah

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The story of Noah’s ark is possibly the best-known Bible story ever.  Seriously.  You can find books, toys, and even find nursery decor depicting the ark and the animals going “two-by-two.”  So I was certainly not at a loss for ways to fill our days with things related to our Bible study this week.  The challenge was choosing what to pick and helping impress the story upon my children’s hearts.  Our devotional, Long Story Short by Marty Machowski, spends two weeks on the account of Noah, so we’ll save some of my plans, though it may be difficult to top the fun we had this week.

As usual, we filled in two nights of Bible time on top of the five devotions in the book.  One night we read the story from The Gospel Story Bible, and another we chose one of our “Go-Alongs” and enjoyed the beautiful illustrations.

Go-Along Books

There are SO many books out there that retell this Bible story.  We had a couplealready, and I added a few to our library based on their illustrations or unusual perspective.

Reading Practice

Confession: I slacked in this department this week.  In my defense, I did succeed in getting Ian back into his Reading Eggs lessons.  (He’d gone through them so fast he got a bit ahead of his abilities and it was no longer fun, so I’ve been giving him a break while he caught up.)

We did practice reading with our Bible memory verse cards.  This week’s verse was short and easy: “Noah did all that the Lord had commanded him.”  Genesis 7:5.

Bible Notebook

I kept our Bible notebook page simple.  My original plan was using an image of the ark drawing from Jan Brett’s website and then having the boys put animal stickers around it.  However, when I went to my sticker collection I realized I didn’t have a very good selection.  So instead, we just used the Oriental Trading Company’s Make-a-Bible Story Stickers.  I was afraid it was going to be boring, but both boys really enjoyed making their pages.

Activities

We are still in the throes of summer heat, so I’m all about keeping cool these days, whether that means quiet indoor activities, water play, or air-conditioned field trips.  For Ian’s “workbook” I printed out DLTK-Bible’s Picture Clue Read and Trace pages, a “hidden pictures” page, a maze, and a dot-to-dot.  The boys had fun playing with their Playmobil Ark set in the wading pool one day.

  

The highlight of our week was our visit to the Noah’s Ark exhibit at the Skirball Cultural Center, which is kind of combination of a children’s museum, an indoor playground, and a playhouse.  All three kids were entertained for the full two hours we were there.  We went on Thursday, which meant free admission, so the only cost was the gas to get there.  Woohoo!

  

  

  

Because we hadn’t paid for the exhibit, I splurged in the gift shop on a 200-piece Noah’s Ark puzzle.  It’s a little too challenging for Ian to do on his own, but it gave us a fun activity together, and since he really enjoys puzzles I know it’s one we’ll pull out again and again as he gets older.

  

Multimedia

As you can see in the picture above, while Ian and I “puzzled,” Elijah was busy on the computer playing with the Noah’s ark activity from Charlie Church Mouse Preschool.

The boys really enjoyed our “Listening Lesson” this week:

As a final note, I’ve discovered that I enjoy our homeschooling experience even more when I enter into our lessons and try to learn something myself.  This week I indulged myself with a little “biblical fiction.” A few years ago while browsing at the library I found a book called The Heavens Before by Kacy Barnett-Gramckow, which is set at the time of the Flood.  I remembered enjoying it so I decided to get the whole Genesis Trilogy to read on my Kindle.  It has caused me to think about the biblical account in new ways, which is one of the things I appreciate about this genre.  I’m already into the second book, which takes place at the time of the tower of Babel.  I have a few other favorites and newly discovered novels from the Genesis time period waiting for me when I finish these!

Posted in Bible lessons, Long Story Short, Preschool, The Gospel Story

Nature Study: Ocean Life

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One of the reasons I blog is to keep a record for myself of various resources we use when homeschooling.  I hadn’t planned on writing about our vacation this past week, but we ended up having so many great learning experiences I decided to go ahead and write them all down.  So to those of you who subscribe to my blog, forgive me if this post doesn’t apply to you in any way.  I just wanted a record for myself, and this is the easiest place for me to keep track of it.

We spent the week in Dana Point, California, courtesy of generous grandparents who gifted us a week at their timeshare.  (Thanks, Mom and Dad!)  It was just a 5 minute drive from the Dana Point Harbor, where we ended up going almost every day for various reasons, including the fabulous “Baby Beach” with plenty of waveless shallow water and super soft sand.

Ocean Institute

One of the first things we did was visit the Ocean Institute, which is only open to the public on weekends (they do school field trips during the week).  Although much of it was over the heads of our preschoolers, there was still plenty to interest them:

  • whale skeleton
  • a tank with a lobster that had just shed its shell (and a number of empty shells to look at in another room)
  • a squid dissection (They refused to touch it, but they watched me work with another dad and his son to do most of it.  I know Ian learned a lot because he kept bring up things we had talked about during the dissection.)
  • discovery pools where they could touch sea stars
  • tanks with fish
  • microscopes with slides of various things, including krill (We had to drag Ian away from these.)
  • a wave machine that showed how shifting tectonic plates can cause tsunamis
  • a remote controlled underwater vehicle with a camera that they could maneuver in a tank

Ian kept asking to go back all week, but we told him it would have to wait for another trip.

  

Books

I meant to get to the library before we left, but it didn’t happen.  I really wanted the boys to have some context for what were looking at when we went whalewatching, so when we visited the Ocean Institute gift shop I splurged more on new books than I normally would do.  I’m glad I did.  The boys really enjoyed the books I picked out, and we read them over and over again throughout the week.  I was really impressed by how much Ian gleaned from them and really understood.  Here’s what we added to our family library:

Whalewatching

There are a number of different companies to go out with, but a few of them had age restrictions, so we went with Dana Wharf, though we purchased half-price tickets from Goldstar rather than going through their website.  Elijah did get seasick (lesson learned: don’t go inside in choppy water!), but other than that we all had a great time.  We even got to spend a lot of time watching a blue whale, the largest animal God ever created.  I’ve been whalewatching in the past, but this was the first time I’ve seen a blue whale.  (They’ve only been coming around this area for about the last 7 years.)  We prepared Ian by talking through most of the K-2 pre-trip information from these curriculum packets for all ages/grades that a friend recommended.  (They have material for K-12.  The post-trip pages were a little advanced for Ian.)

  

Tidepools

Ian really enjoyed exploring the tidepools behind the Ocean Institute.  (Eric and I each carried a little one in an Ergo because Elijah wouldn’t have been able to climb on the rocks very well.)  I found some helpful information about the different things we saw here.  I wish I’d remembered my camera!

Worksheets

I initially went looking for a few coloring/activity sheets to take with us on the whalewatching trip in case the boys were bored stiff.  As I went searching, however, I decided to make each boy a little book about whales, dolphins, and tidepool animals that they could work on throughout the week.  There’s no shortage of coloring pages available on the web, so I won’t bother posting links to those.  I found a couple other fun resources, though, and I wanted to take note of them here:

  • Busy Bee Kids Printables: Ocean Animals theme (I loved that I could choose different levels of mazes, dot-to-dots, word searches, and more.  They even had extremely simple mazes that Elijah could do.)
  • Color Mountain: whales (When you click on a picture, you can choose various ways to use it–copywork, math sheets, wordsearches, and lots of other choice.  I just did plain coloring pages for Elijah and then used the same pictures with a simple sentence for Ian to trace.)

I really hadn’t planned on turning our vacation into school time, but as you can see, we had a busy week full of learning.  Next time I’d also like to spend some time at the  Doheny State Beach Visitor Center (it was under renovation) to visit their aquariums and tidepool.  We’ll definitely be back!

Posted in Nature Study

Long Story Short: Cain and Abel

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When we originally decided to use Long Story Short by Marty Machowski for both our family devotions and the basis for our Bible lessons, my mind automatically went into “school mode” and I scheduled regular breaks as I plotted the months up until Christmas, the first one being last week when we were heading off on vacation.  However, the boys have been so enthusiastic about Bible time every evening that Eric and I realized there was no real reason not to bring the book along with us and continue on.  The story for the week was on Cain and Abel, and it wasn’t exactly one I had a lot of “extras” planned for anyway.  So it was a lighter week, but here’s what we did.

In addition to the 5 nights of devotions in the book, we spent one night reading the story out of The Gospel Story Bible (also by Marty Machowski), and another night discussing Ephesians 4:26, which in the English Standard Version reads, “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.”  I thought it was an important verse for us to discuss with our boys.  Even at their young ages, they struggle with how to respond to their anger appropriately.  From some of the books I’ve read on raising boys, this is going to be a constant battle as they grow up.  We had a really good talk that night.  I think it meant a lot to them to know that we acknowledged the way they feel toward each other at times, while helping them to learn how they should respond.  Cain may not have set a very good example, but sometimes we can learn best from other people’s mistakes.

Go-Along Books

The one book we read to go along with this story was Cain and Abel: Finding the Fruits of Peace by Sandy Eisenberg Sasso.  It expands on the biblical account by including some ideas from Hebrew midrash, and the illustrations are bold and colorful.

Reading Practice

Because we were away from home, I didn’t try to find any easy readers related to this story, but I did bring along word cards for our Bible memory verse so Ian could practice reading and both boys could work on memorizing Genesis 4:7.  I also set the words to the tune of “Are You Sleeping,” and after singing it a few times they had it down the first day:

Sin is crouching (sin is crouching) at the door (at the door)

It’s desire is for you, but you must rule over it. Genesis four verse seven

Bible Notebook

Have you watched any of the What’s in the Bible? DVDs?  They are a fabulous tool for teaching about the Bible!  Ian is just starting to get into them, so we watched Volume 1 – In the Beginning, which gives an overview of the structure of the Bible and starts teaching about Genesis.  When it talks about sin, it shows these funny little guys clinging to people’s backs.  I was a little unsure of that way of illustrating sin, but we talked about what sin really is, and when we discussed our memory verse it helped explain how to “rule over” sin.

When I taught the boys the memory verse I acted out each phrase, and when we got to that last part, we stomped our feet to show we were ruling over sin.  So for our Bible notebook page, it seemed appropriate to do a paint footprint.  We made “doors” out of construction paper that opened up on the footprint.

  

This verse made a big impression on the boys.  Every night Elijah has added, “Help me to rule over sin,” to his prayer, and Ian loves talking about how he should “stomp on sin.”

Multimedia

We didn’t spend as much time as usual on our “Listening Lesson” this week, but here’s what it contained:

The catechism questions left off on kind of a dark note, but we’ll get to the good news as we go along!

Posted in Bible lessons, Long Story Short, Preschool, The Gospel Story

We’re Going On a Bear Hunt

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We’ve been using Before Five in a Row for more than two years, but somehow we’ve only just now gotten to We’re Going On a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen.  I know from the Five in a Row Forum that this is a favorite in many families, and now we can count ourselves among them.  The boys both had a lot of fun with this book, and they especially enjoyed a YouTube video of author Michael Rosen telling the story.  The production is as simple as it could be (just Rosen in front of a white background), but he is such an expressive storyteller, the boys were immediately drawn in and found the whole thing hilarious.  They watched it several times throughout the week.

We found a book at the library called We’re Going on a Book Hunt by Pat Miller, which the boys insisted on reading every time we read Bear Hunt.  It’s a cute story about a class going to the library and picking out books, but I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as the boys.  Still, it was fun to see how the author copied the style of the original book.  There’s also a fun Dora the Explorer episode called “Berry Hunt” (Season 1, Episode 10 available streaming on Amazon Instant Video-free for Prime members) that follows a lot of the language from the story.

In addition to things in the Before Five in a Row manual (though we never got around to making a mud puddle, which I really wanted to do), we did a lot of extras from the Homeschool Creations printables, which I printed and laminated (along with a couple activities from other sources):

  • sort bears smallest to largest
  • memory match game

  

  • put caves in number order (Then I had him remove every other one and we talked about odd/even numbers.)

  

  • Bear hunt “board game” (having too much fun to take a picture)
  • pages in Ian’s workbook (which Elijah decided he was ready to try out)
  • sequencing cards from the lapbook at Homeschool Share

  

  • Graphing gummi bears using this free activity pack I found on Teachers Pay Teachers. Both boys did the first two pages (sorting and graphing), and then I also talked through the final page with Ian to have him read his graph and answer questions.

  

This was a great easy row for the week before we took off on vacation!

Posted in B4FIAR, Literature Units, Preschool

Long Story Short: Adam and Eve Disobey God

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Last week we talked about the first real pivotal story of the Bible: the Fall of man and the introduction of sin into God’s perfect Creation.  I continue to be impressed by our devotional, Long Story Short by Marty Machowski.  It is deep enough that Eric and I are getting something out of it, yet simple enough that Elijah (not quite 3) is learning as well.  Our nightly Bible time is a highlight of our day, and while we’re still working with the boys on how to be good listeners and not distract each other, both of them are eager to participate.  I especially like the prayer suggestions each day.  Every night Elijah continues to thank God for creating all the animals, and now after this lesson he’s been adding, “Thank you for hiding my sin.”  It always fascinates me to see what stands out to them.

Go-Along Books

Some of the books we had out for the lessons on Creation included the story of the Fall, so we kept those out for reading at looking at throughout the week:

Reading Practice

As far as books for Ian to read himself, we continued the same books from last week:

He also practiced with our Bible verse cards (see my last post for how I use them).  This week our verse was “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23.  We had a few songs to go along with it (see our “Listening Lesson” below), and both boys memorized it easily.

Bible Notebook

The word “sin” in both Hebrew and Greek means “to miss the mark.”  It was an archery term that described something off target.  God’s perfect law is the standard to which we are all held (“Sin is lawlessness.” 1 John 3:4), yet we all fail to hit that bullseye.  As our memory verse says, we all “fall short of the glory of God.”  For our notebook page, I had the boys glue concentric circles to make a target, then we put an X to the side to show we had missed the mark.

Activities

Beacause this year is Ian’s official “Pre-K” year (if there’s really anything “official” about Pre-K), I want to put together at least some sort of portfolio for him in addition to his Bible notebook.  My plan is to have him use the Bible ABC pages from Christian Preschool Printables as copy work.  By the end of the year he’ll have completed the whole alphabet.  This week the “A” page was perfect for our lesson.

I also printed and laminated sequencing cards from mini-book at Christian Preschool Printables.

Multimedia

As I said, this week’s story is a pivotal part of the overall gospel story, which means there are many crucial concepts to understand within this one chapter.  Consequently, our “Listening Lesson” this week continued to include a lot of catechism songs from the Questions With Answers series from Songs for Saplings. We’ll be continuing to listen to these for a while to plant these truths in the hearts of everyone in our family. Here was our iPod playlist for the week:

Posted in Bible lessons, Long Story Short, Preschool, The Gospel Story

Long Story Short: God Creates Man

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There is so much fundamental truth packed into the first book of the Bible.  Our devotional, Long Story Short by Marty Machowski, goes through the Old Testament in 78 stories; the first 26 are from Genesis.  That means it’s a pretty crucial book for understanding the overarching story of the gospel. This week took us through Genesis 2, and even just this one chapter contains so much. You’ve got God creating Adam from the dust and breathing into his nostrils the breath of life. Then there’s the Garden of Eden, including the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which will play prominently in the next chapter.  You also see Adam being alone and how it was the first thing about which God said, “It is not good.”  Then Adam named all the animals but none of them were right for being his helper, so God took one of Adam’s rib and created Eve from it.  And so the chapter ends with a picture of the first marriage.

The Gospel Story Bible: Discovering Jesus in the Old and New TestamentsOver the course of the week we read through the entire chapter during Bible time before the children went to bed.  The devotional covers 5 nights, which provides a lot of flexibility if we’re getting to bed too late one or two nights.  However, we want to try to keep the habit of doing Bible time every night we’re home at bedtime, so I’ve been jotting down ideas for additional readings when needed.  This week we needed to fill both extra nights, which we did by reading the corresponding story from The Gospel Story Bible (also by Marty Machowski) one night.  As I said last week, this one’s a little wordy for preschoolers, but it was really easy to read “conversationally” with the boys.  It’s not just a retelling of the story, but it also discusses some of the concepts that are in the devotional and helps point to Jesus.  I may or may not use it every week, but it definitely works well to fill in when we need another night of material.  Tonight we’ll finish out the week with Psalm 139:13-16.

My favorite part of using Long Story Short for our Bible curriculum is that even if all we do is our ten-minute devotions at night, the boys are getting solid teaching and growing in their knowledge of God.  Still, I try to take time during the day to reinforce the lesson with various activities.  Here’s what we did this week.

Go-Along Books

I’ve started collecting picture books that go with specific Bible stories. Some we read over and over, while others may only be flipped through.  My point is simply to keep the story in the forefront of our minds throughout the week.  We keep a basket of “school” books in a prominent spot in our living room and the boys pull things out to read several times a day.  A few of last week’s Creation books included this part of the story, so I kept those out:

I also added a new story:

  • Adam & Eve’s New Day by Sandy Eisenberg Sasso (not part of the biblical account, but a thought-provoking story from Hebrew midrash that makes you consider what things were really like for Adam and Eve)

Reading Practice

It seems to me that learning to read has a bit of a snowball effect.  The more success a child experiences, the more he wants to read, and all that practice makes him even more successful.  Ian has begun to pick up some momentum and is really excited about starting to be able to read on his own.  Here’s what we used this week for practice:

The Bible verse cards I made last week were so helpful in encouraging Ian in his reading, I decided to make them a regular part of our lesson each week.  I wasn’t sure if they’d be as successful this time, since the verse was unfamiliar to him until this week.  (“It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Genesis 2:18) I followed the same steps, however, and I was amazed how well he did.

  1. I laid all the cards out in order and read them to Ian, pointing to each one.
  2. He read them out loud as he pointed.
  3. I mixed them up and had him find the words in order.  I didn’t read any of the cards for him, but I would recite the verse if he couldn’t remember what came next.
  4. He mixed them up and put them back in order all by himself.

Going through these steps meant reciting the verse over and over to himself, which was great reinforcement.  He was having so much fun Elijah wanted to join in, and Ian enthusiastically read words for him and helped him participate.  It was a great learning experience for both of them.

  

Bible Notebook

I’ve been working on Ian with his drawing skills (until recently I couldn’t get much other than a scribble out of him), so I decided to do a little lesson on drawing people (well, stick people).  He did really well with it, but this was definitely a week where our notebook page was beyond Elijah.  I just drew his people for him (don’t laugh, I was drawing upside down).  Ian got really into to and decided to draw some plants (roots and all), since they were in the Garden of Eden.

  

Activities

I usally try to print out a few activity pages for Ian’s “workbook,” but this week the only thing I found was a maze.  We found plenty of other things to do though!  I printed and laminated the “Adam Names the Animals” file folder game from Christian Preschool Printables, though I skipped the folder to make it work with my storage system.  Ian blew me away with his reading ability on this game.   I didn’t read a single word for him.  (Looking at his picture when he’d completed his board, you can see he was almost as proud as Mama!)  I laid out all the animal names and both boards and told him to find the matches.  After he’d completed his board he helped his brother by reading the card and then letting Elijah find the correct picture.  It has been great to see such cooperative learning this week.  It helps boost Ian’s confidence and it drives Elijah to want to learn more to keep up.

  

This story offered lots of chances to learn a little about our bodies.  The opening activity from the devotional involved feeling for our pulse. Neither boy was familiar with the word “nostrils” when we read it, so we talked about that and then reviewed it through the week as we re-read the story.  The creation of Eve also led us to a discussion about our ribs. I found a cute picture from Little Blots to illustrate.

One night our devotion talked about husbands and wives, marriage, and creating a family unit.  We pulled out our wedding pictures and enjoyed looking through them, talking about what a special day it was and what it means to be married.  We’ve been to two weddings this summer, so Ian especially enjoyed seeing the pictures with us in the leading roles.

Our favorite activity, however, was making gingerbread couples.  There’s a delicious recipe at dltk-kids.com. (I substituted 2/3 whole wheat flour and used organic whole cane sugar instead of brown sugar, and they were still the best gingerbread cookies anyone in our family could remember.) We called the flour “dust” and formed our gingerbread people.  (We added “hair” to some of them to create girls.)  Ian went a little crazy decorating them (definitely not “naked” like the real Adam and Eve).  He loved every step of the process and kept asking, ” Can we do this again sometime?”

  

Multimedia

Last week as I was planning this lesson I stumbled across a CD called Questions With Answers Vol. 1: God and Creation.  I was just looking for something to go along with our memory verse but I ended up downloading the entire album.  It’s formatted like a catechism, with a question posed and then answers that are usually directly quote from Scripture.  (Chords and lyrics are available on the Songs for Saplings website.) After listening just once I fell in love.  What a great way to introduce important theological concepts to children!  I was afraid the boys wouldn’t be into it, but instead they kept asking to “do that one again” after every song.  I wish we’d had the album last week, because it seemed a little overwhelming to put all of it on our iPod playlist this time around and many of the songs would have been a good fit with that story.  I chose a few songs to include with our current lesson, and I’m sure we’ll listen to the rest another time.

Our “Listening Lesson” this week:

Posted in Bible lessons, Long Story Short, Preschool, The Gospel Story

The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge

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We’re getting ready for a week’s vacation on the coast, so I decided to “row” The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge by Hildegarde H. Swift and Lynd Ward (even though there won’t be any lighthouses where we’re going).  Ian was reluctant to read the book with me on Monday morning, but by the end of the story he wanted me to read it again and enthusiastically joined me for reading it the rest of the week.

We did a lot of the discussions from the Five in a Row manual (Vol. 2).  It a good chance to talk again about personification, (which I’m still not sure he understands, but I figure multiple exposures will help it click eventually).  We also had interesting talk about the rivers in our area–where they start, where they end, etc.).  I’m not always consistent about using the story disks, but this was one I didn’t want to skip.  Ian really enjoys looking at maps, so it was nice to give him a connection to New York since it’s always just been another state in his USA puzzle.

I loved the two book recommendations in the manual.  Ian was fascinated by the pictures in My New York by Kathy Jakobsen. Oh, how I wish I’d read this book before I visited New York!  I’ve only been twice, and it’s been about 15 years since the last trip, but I feel like I know more about the city from reading this book than from both of those visits.  I would have gotten so much more out of them if I’d read this first.  Even if Iantake anything away from the book besides enjoying the sights and hearing the names of some of the landmarks for the first time, it’s a great addition to our home library.  I’m sure it will come out every time we read a book set in Manhattan, and hopefully someday we’ll get to explore the city itself.

I was also really impressed with The Bridge Book by Polly Carter.  It had a ton of information about the different types of bridges, how they’re made, what materials are used, and lots more.  Yet it managed to be simple enough that Ian was able to sit through while I read the whole thing.  He was drawn to it throughout the week.  I think as the boys get older it’s something that will interest them even more as they get more sophisticated in their block and Lego building.

The only other “go-along” book we used was one we had around the house called Who Sees the Lighthouse? by Ann Fearrington. It has beautiful illustrations based on real lighthouses in the United States, and for me it was worth flipping through just for those. The story leaves a lot to be desired, but Ian enjoyed counting the objects on each page.

Captain JanuaryIan loves Reading Rainbow, so we watched the episode “Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie,” which not only talks about this story at the end, but has some fun information on lighthouses and making a “ship-in-a-bottle.”  Ian watched it twice, along with Captain January, an old Shirley Temple film about a girl who lives in a lighthouse with a lightkeeper who loses his job when they put in an automated light.  Parts of it were slow for the boys, but other parts had them rolling on the floor with laughter.

There’s some helpful information about the real Little Red Lighthouse at nycgocparks.org and lighthouseinn-ct.com (some beautiful pictures of it on this site).  Looking at these sites and reading this story made me want to go back to New York and experience it all over.  And next time I go, we’ll definitely try to take some time to visit the lighthouse at Jeffery’s Hook!

Little Red Lighthouse & Great Grey Bridge DSC_8296  

To see what other FIAR books we’ve rowed, see my “Index of FIAR Posts.”  Also, a great place to see what other people have done with FIAR books is the FIAR Blog Roll at Delightful Learning.

Posted in FIAR, Literature Units, Preschool

Long Story Short: God Creates the World

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Well, here we are, back at the beginning!  I started this blog right after Ian turned 3, when we began going through the Bible lessons in the ABC Jesus Loves MeThree-Year Old Curriculum, which took us on a chronological journey through many of the best-known stories in the Old and New Testaments.  This past spring I wrote a post about what our next step should be, and I’m so excited about the route we’ve chosen.  This week we started going through a fantastic family devotional called Long Story Short by Marty Machowski. (Seriously, read the reviews at Amazon or Timberdoodle and you won’t be able to resist either).

The book is broken up into 78 weeks of stories from the Old Testament (the New Testament is covered in the sequel, Old Story New (scheduled to be released this Fall), which also has 78 stories, so together it will take us at least three years to get through all the material, probably more since I’m scheduling in breaks around holidays and vacations).  Each week consists of 5 ten-minute devotions designed to be used with kids from preschool through high school.  While the main story may be from the Old Testament, each week you also look at how it is part of the overall “Gospel Story,” so there are New Testament passages to read as well.  I wasn’t sure if our children were quite old enough for it, but if this week is any indication of how things are going to go, I think they’re going to get a lot out of it.  And maybe in the future we’ll go through it again and they can process things at a deeper level.

This week’s lesson covered Genesis 1.  We started Sunday night so that we could dive into some school activities on Monday.  Daddy read the Bible passage while I helped Ian follow along in his ESV Seek and Find Bible.  Then I walked us through the questions.  If the question was too hard, I just shared the answer as part of our discussion.  Then I told them what the suggested prayer topic was and asked who wanted to pray.  Usually we just had the boys pray, but sometimes Daddy or I would pray as well. They boys really enjoyed this nightly “Bible time,” and they were sad the two nights we didn’t do it.  There are only 5 per week, but it worked out really well because we were out late at a Bible study one night and playing miniature golf as a family another night, so it would have been hard to get more than 5 done.  On weeks when we’re not out late, I’ll use The Gospel Story Bible (also by Machowski) or a related Scripture to carry us through the end of the week.*)

After the first night, our Bible story was constantly on the boys’ minds.  All day on Monday they kept exclaiming, “God made ______ [dirt, trees, cows, the sky, etc].”  When we had lunch, I prayed, “Thank you, God for making grapes,” which led them to ask about the other foods, which taught them that even if God didn’t make something in the form we see it, He did creat the materials for it.  So then they started saying, “God made the stuff to make ___.”  This continued throughout the week!

The first night it was a little difficult to keep Elijah engaged, so after that I tried to come up with ways to keep everyone listening.  For example, when we read through the days of creation, I asked the boys to raise their hands every time they heard “God said…”  We talked about how even though only God can create by speaking, we also can create things.  We just have to start with paint, playdough, or some other sort of material.  (And then, of course, we had to get out our paints and spend one morning creating our own masterpieces.)

  

Go-Along Books

We have several Bible storybooks, but since there are lots of other fun books related to Creation, I decided to set those aside for this lesson.  Here are some of the books we read or looked through this week:

Reading Practice

I want to help Ian practice his reading skills by finding things at his level related to our Bible lessons.  This week I had two good resources:

  • We Learn About God from Rod and Staff Publishers (a beginning “reader” that’s right at Ian’s level)
  • The Young Reader’s Bible by Bonnie Bruno (still a little too hard for Ian to read on his own, but he got good practice following along as I read.)

The other thing I did was print out our Bible verse and then cut up the individual words.  (I laminated the cards to keep in my Creation file, but that’s just so I can use them again with the other children).  I did something similar to the reading lesson Charlotte Mason described in Home Eduction (Volume 1 in the Original Homeschooling Series) Part V, chapter 4 “Reading“.  He was already familiar with Genesis 1:1, and he knew a few of the words by sight already, so I didn’t read it in order to him the way I would have with something new.  Instead I just mixed all the cards up and asked him to put them in the right order.  I helped him recite the verse so he’d know where to start, but then I was amazed how quickly he laid out the whole verse.  After he was done, I had him read it to me, pointing to each word as he read.  He was so proud of himself and immediately mixed them up and did it again.  He also took great pride in repeating the feat for Daddy that evening.  When we did “Bible time” before bed, he turned turned to the first page of Genesis in his ESV Bible and read the first verse as he pointed to the words.  He was a little confused why it didn’t say “Genesis 1:1” after “earth,” which opened up the door for talking about chapters and verses.  I pointed out the title “Genesis” and the big and small numbers, and soon he understood.

  

Bible Notebook

I really liked making a notebook as a record of our journey through the Bible the last time around, so I decided to do it again.  This time I’ll be doing them with both boys, so I’m going to try to do different activities than I did with Ian the first time. This week I printed out out the mini-book from Christian Preschool Printables to use for the boys’ Bible Notebooks.  I made up a page that had the Bible verse and a number for each day.  For Elijah, I cut out only the pictures and had him glue them next to the number on the page.  I had Ian trace the words and numbers for the day before gluing them over the printed numbers. (He’s been asking how to write letters a lot lately, so I want to start having some sort of “copywork” for him each week.  This seemed like a great starting place.)  It was nice being able to make the same activity developmentally appropriate for each boy.  They were both incredibly proud of their work, especially Elijah (“Grandma, I glued!”), since it’s the first official “schoolwork” he’s done.

  

Activities

There are lots of wonderful activities from Christian Preschool Printables, but I didn’t want to overwhelm the boys, so I tried to restrain myself.  I printed and laminated the Memory Match Game.  The boys did a good job just matching them up, but we never got quite confident enough to play “memory.”  We also each colored a Creation Wheel from Oriental Trading Company, which Ian loved turning to reveal each day.  Elijah only colored the top page and then lost interest.  I was a little irritated that they put a rainbow on it, since that’s a prominent part of the story of Noah, but we talked about how God created that too, just later on.

  

I really wanted to give the boys a chance to observe some animals, but with temperatures in the triple digits I just didn’t feel up to a trip to the zoo.  Instead, we took a field trip to a local pet store, where we saw cats, dogs, rats, hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits, turtles, snakes, iguanas, and lots of varieties of fish (and even got to pet most of the mammals).  Both boys loved it, and they soon were back to their gleeful exclamations of, “God made ___!”

Multimedia

I found several resources online that Ian enjoyed playing around with:

Our “Listening Lesson” had a few more items on it than the last time we discussed creation.  This year I want to start being intentional about learning both traditional hymns and also some of the worship songs we sing in our Sunday services.  This was an easy lesson to incorporate a number of such songs into our iPod playlist:

I’m so excited to be starting this journey!  By the third night, Ian was begging for “more Bible time!”  By fourth night, both boys were eagerly volunteering to pray at the end of our time (when both have been extremely reluctant in the past).  Okay, so Elijah’s prayers in any setting are now about thanking Jesus for rocks, and the sky, and every animal he can think of, but I love that he’s excited about prayer!  “Bible time” is now something we all look forward to at the end of the day, and I love that they’re going to bed treasuring God’s Word in their hearts and minds.

—

*Here are a couple of ideas I came up with for filling in extra nights:

  • Psalm 19:1-6
  • Psalm 95:1-7
  • Romans 1:19-20
  • Psalm 104 (for older kids)
  • Job 38-39 (for older kids)
Posted in Bible lessons, Charlotte Mason, Long Story Short, Preschool, The Gospel Story
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