The Runaway Bunny

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The Runaway Bunny

This week we “rowed” The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown.  It’s been a long time since we did anything from Before Five in a Row, and I’ve had most of our activities planned for weeks, so I was ready to jump back in.  Coincidentally, this also happened to be the book of the week in the ABC Jesus Loves Me Week 13 lesson plan we were using for our Bible story.  I pretty much stuck with the activities in the B4FIAR manual, as well as a couple things from HomeschoolShare.com.

After reading through the story once just to enjoy it, the next time I pointed out to Ian that some of the pictures were black-and-white and some were full color.  I didn’t mention the pattern, but I did ask him to predict what we’d see when we turned each page.  At first he was just guessing randomly, but then he started getting it right.  He never commented on the pattern, but I’m wondering if he’d caught on.

Ian’s had a little trouble grasping the whole concept of patterns.  On several occasions over the last year I’ve introduced simple ABAB patterns without any spark of understanding from him.  It’s been one of those frustrating things where I just can’t figure out why he doesn’t get it (as in I just want to say, “Come on!  Isn’t it obvious what comes next?”  Obviously I restrain myself.)  I didn’t want push him though, so I’d just drop it, knowing he’d catch on eventually after other gentle exposures.  So I was glad the one of the activities (the “rabbit sequence strips”) from the lapbook at HomeschoolShare touched on patterns.  (As I’ve shared before I’m not big on lapbooks, but I do like printing and laminating components that can be used as separate activities.  I keep everything filed away by book so I can pull them out again when I go through B4FIAR and other special books with my younger children.)

The sequencing activity was extremely simple, but maybe that’s why Ian was successful.  I liked the way it established the pattern, but I wish I’d printed out another copy to cut up so he could keep going.  (He asked me where the next one was.)

The other activity I used from HSS was the “rabbit perception puzzle.”  I actually thought this was going to be too challenging for Ian, but he surprised me by matching all the pictures (some of them were very similar and you had to look really carefully to notice the differences).  He was quite pleased with himself when he finished and wanted to do it again.

    

We also made bunny masks.  I’d seen it on several other B4FIAR blogs, and to be honest it always seemed kind of silly to me.  It certainly wasn’t on my plan for the week, but while working on our Bible notebook page for this week’s lesson, Ian took the piece of construction paper left from a cut-out and started pretending it was a mask.  So I grabbed a few paper plates and made bunny masks for both boys.

    

Elijah liked it until I tried to put a rubber band on his and then it just made him mad, even after I took it off.  Ian, however, wore his around for a while, put it on his stuffed bear, and dragged it around with him for the rest of the day.  Each to his own.

Finally, we played the Goodnight Moon game again, though this time we tried a harder level and matched the color cards to the black and white gameboards.

    

I tried this is Ian a few months back and he couldn’t do it, but this time he whipped through all four gameboards matching every picture without any help at all.  So fun to watch them grow!

A few weeks after we “rowed” this book, someone passed along a link to these great storytelling pieces.  I’m planning to print them out to use when we re-row this later down the road!

Posted in B4FIAR, Literature Units, Preschool

Free is GOOD!

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Just thought I’d take a minute to pass along a few of my favorite spots online for finding FREE ways to enrich our homeschool experience.

Freelyeducate.com  is a wonderful blog that daily posts free resources for homeschoolers.  If I see something that interests me, even if it’s too advanced for my children, I usually go ahead and download it to have available in the future.

Sometimes those freebies are from CurrClick.com, but I like to check that site out directly as well.  I’ve found several fun ideas here, some for preschool, some for later on.

HomeschoolShare.com is probably the site I use most regularly at the stage we’re in (and I anticipate it remaining so for the next couple years as we continue using Five in a Row).  It’s a great place for unit study resources, especially those that are literature based.

As far as curriculum, obviously we get tons of great preschool ideas from ABCJesusLovesMe.com, but I also love AmblesideOnline (as I’ve written about before).  Most of it is geared toward kids older than mine (elementary on up), but the preschool/Kindergarten booklist and suggestions are a wonderful resource.  Learning about the Charlotte Mason method has also really helped shape my vision for our homeschooling journey. I realize not everyone is as nuts about books as I am and AO is definitely not a “school at home” type of curriculum.  Check out this post from freelyeducate.com that discusses several options available for free online.

I know there’s a lot more out there, but these are sites I access regularly for great free ideas, so I thought I’d pass them along 🙂

Posted in Homeschool Resources

Karen and Kids Podcast

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If you’re like me, you’re always looking for fun new ways to plant Scriptural truths in your children’s hearts.  One of the fun ways I’ve found to to this is through a podcast (fronm a radio program) called Karen & Kids, which I stumbled across on iTunes last year.  Ian LOVES it!  Each episode is about 14 minutes long, including songs and discussion between Karen Mortimer (a songwriter) and a group of children about a Bible story or particular spiritual principle.  The songs are also available on CD, but the discussion is something you just don’t find very often, so I really appreciate the whole show.

My favorite thing about Karen & Kids is the way she speaks to the kids at their level without being the least bit condescending.  She’s always very respectful, and I love hearing the kids’ thoughts on the stories.  The one thing I would change about the show is the song choice.  Karen has written many fun songs for kids, some of them about the Bible and spiritual matters, others about random things (like the Chesapeake Bay, a wiggly tooth,  and a “Ladybug Picnic”).  The songs are fun, but they often don’t relate to the main topic of the day, and since we’re listening mainly for the Christian content I tend to get impatient for those songs to be over.  Still, they do help convey the message that spiritual matters are not to be segregated from the rest of our lives, so I keep my thoughts on those songs to myself and just let the boys enjoy listening.

One final thought.  I download every episode and save them so I can use them in my iPod playlists as they correspond to our Bible lessons.  Just adds a little something special to our week!

Posted in Parenting Resources

Gideon: Mighty Warrior!

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“The Lord is with you, mighty warrior,” says the angel of the Lord to the man cowering in a winepress as he threshes wheat to protect it from the enemies who have impoverished his people. (See Judges 6)  Mighty warrior.  I love how God sees the potential in us, because I’m certainly not feeling anywhere near mighty these days.  I have, however, learned a lot about having grace for myself.  I actually started writing this post about 6 weeks ago, when I was initially planning to teach Ian about the story of Gideon from Judges 7.  But more than a month of sickness, a week in the hospital, a family funeral, relatives in town, another death in the family, and a trip across the country for a family reunion all contributed to a less than stellar homeschool experience.  I shouldn’t say that.  After all, we’ve been learning a lot about life.  We just didn’t get to our Bible lesson very much.  And I can accept that.  We didn’t do even half of what we normally do for a Bible story, but you know what?  It’s time to move on.  Ian learned the story.  We’ll hit it again down the road.  Grace, Deanna, grace.  Here’s what we did manage to do:

This week Over the last 6 weeks, we talked about the story of Gideon from the ABC Jesus Loves Me Week 12 lesson plan–not one of the most popular Bible stories, but a fun one nonetheless.  The first thing we did (once I actually managed to start) was to read the story from Judges 7 during bedtime Bible stories.  I’m not sure Ian remembered much of it, so the next Monday we started as usual with our flannelboard.  I whittled Gideon’s army down to just three men, rather than three hundred, both to show the point that God won the battle with only a few men (we talked about how many there really were) and also so we could give each man a trumpet, a torch, and a jar.

Ian really liked the story and wanted to do it again, this time helping me pass out the items to each man.  He couldn’t figure out why they had the jars, so to demonstrate how loud it must have been when the men broke them we went out to the garage and I shook our glass recycling box.  It definitely made an impression.  The boys wanted to grab the jars and smash them on the concrete, but thankfully they were quick to accept my explanation of why that would NOT be a good idea!

And that was pretty much all we did for Gideon.  Never read it in a children’s Bible.  No iPod playlist.  No Bible notebook page.  No memory verse.

But lots of grace and love flowing in our home.  So thank you, Lord.

Posted in ABCJesusLovesMe, Bible lessons, Preschool

And the walls came tumbling down!

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I finally managed to be intentional about including Before Five in a Row in our week’s plan, and the book I’d scheduled months ago just happened to be the book of the week in ABC Jesus Loves Me Week 11 lesson plan.  So Monday was all about Goodnight Moon (see my post about our week with GM here).  On Tuesday I introduced our Bible story for the week: the Battle of Jericho!

As usual, the first thing we did was tell the story with our flannel board set.

Ian was curious about the picture of the covered ark.  I explained what it was and told him they were carrying it on poles because it was so special/holy no one was supposed to touch it.  Of course a minute later he took one of the men who had his hand raised and made him “touch” the ark.  I told him the story of Uzzah from 2 Samuel 6:6-7, who died after disobeying God by touching the ark.  He liked the way I took the man and threw him on down on the table to show he was “dead”, so of course then he just wanted to make men touch the ark and die.  I think he understood the story since we also read it in the old version of The Beginner’s Bible (see this post for more about the Bible story books I like), but I decided we should stop Bible time before that was all he got out of it.

The flannelboard pieces only depicted the story from in the distance, which missed all the excitement.  So on Thursday we built a “city” wall and marched around it seven times, trying really hard to refrain from blowing our trumpet until the last time.  Then we put on  “Be Strong” from Scripture Rock Vol. 2 (I decided to use “Be strong and courageous” Joshua 1:9 as our memory verse this week.)

Unfortunately, our walls didn’t fall down with a mighty shout.  Thankfully, Ian was more than willing to help with that part of the story.  He enjoyed it so much we had to rebuild the walls and do it again, this time with Elijah joining in the destructive fun!  And long after the blocks were cleaned up and the trumpet put away, he kept asking to do it again.  Glad it was a hit!

I had trouble finding a ready-made activity for our Bible notebook.  Everything seemed to be either just a coloring page or else something 3-D which obviously woudn’t suit our purposes.  So I made one up.  I have lots of color strips from trimming construction paper down to notebook size, so I chopped those into “bricks,” which Ian then glued onto the wall I had sketched onto his paper.

I searched Google images for pictures of the battle of Jericho, found a couple I liked, and printed them out.  Then I cut the figures out and we glued them in front of our “wall.”  I wish I’d shrunk them a bit, but oh well.  Ian liked them. (And again, he kept trying to make someone touch the ark so the would die.  Oh dear.)

We watched two videos related to our story: Veggie Tales: Josh and the Big Wall (available streaming on Netflix) and Greatest Heroes and Legends of the Bible: Joshua and the Battle of Jericho.  He also really enjoyed listening to our iPod playlist this week:

He kept asking me to put on the “Jericho song” so he could march around with his trumpet.  I’m just glad he got something out of the story this week besides killing off men who touched the ark!

Posted in ABCJesusLovesMe, Bible lessons, Preschool

Goodnight Moon

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It’s been a few months now since we started doing the Bible lessons from the ABC Jesus Loves Me Three-Year Old curriculum.  Because I really want to focus on the Bible, I haven’t really put any effort into any other kind of lesson.  However, now that we’re pretty much in the swing of things, I’ve been wanting to start up again with Before Five in a Row.  I began introducing the books as soon as Ian turned two, and while he loved them, neither of us was ready to do any more than just read the stories.  All along I’ve planned on “re-rowing” each title, this time doing a few activities as we go.  I’ve been meaning to get started with that for the last few weeks, but for various reasons it just has not happened.  Until this week…

Months ago I had written out a calendar of what books I wanted to cover each month (not just B4FIAR but a few others as well, mostly those with activities I found at HomeschoolShare.com).  This week I had scheduled Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, and as it was also listed as the book of the week on the ABC Jesus Loves Me Week 11 lesson plan, I figured it was a great time to dive in.

We started (of course) by reading Goodnight Moon.  When we got to the part of GM that talks about the cow jumping over the moon, he reminded me of the nursery rhyme “Hey Diddle Diddle,” (which we talked about the last time we rowed this book) and I had to recite it several times.  We also read My World (a companion book by the same author and illustrator).  I’m not crazy about My World, but Ian really seems to enjoy it, especially the illustrations.

We played the easiest version of the Goodnight Moon game, finding the picture cards to match the pictures on each color game board.

Okay, so that’s Elijah playing with it, not Ian (he likes the pictures too!)  But Ian really enjoys this game, and even this easiest level makes him think.  Sometimes we play it together, but it’s also a great activity for him to keep himself entertained if I’m busy.

To do the “animal classification” activity described in the Before Five in a Row manual, I printed up the cards from HomeschoolShare, though I added rabbit, kitten, and giraffe to those they had in their set:

After all, the rabbit is pretty prominent in the story, and the kittens are mentioned more than once.  I couldn’t figure out why they didn’t have cards in the set but the elephant did.  (I had to go back to the book to figure out why the elephant was there, and then when I found it I wondered why they hadn’t included the giraffe as well, so I remedied that.)  Because it’s the first time we’ve done this activity, I kept the classification simple: big and small.  As we add cards with future books, we’ll see what other groupings we can come up with.  (I printed them on cardstock and laminated them, because we’ll probably use them quite a bit as we go through the rest of the books).

Since I had the laminator heated up (I LOVE that thing!), I thought I’d put it to good use.  Ian hasn’t been able to grasp the concept of rhymes yet, so I made these rhyme cards using pictures from Harper Collin’s Margaret Wise Brown activities and HomeschoolShare’s Goodnight Moon Lapbook components.

He enjoyed making matches with my help, but even after playing several times throughout the week, he just didn’t get it.  I had no idea this was such an advanced concept.  It seems so obvious, doesn’t it?  But it’s just not clicking.  Not that I’m worried–someday he’ll get it!

We talked a little bit about the phases of the moon. (We’ve observed the differences in the appearance of the moon with Ian a lot at night, but never really talked about why it changes.)  I liked the idea I found  here, but we didn’t just do it, just talked through it without using Oreo cookies.  That will have to wait until he’s old enough to really get it.  I really liked the instruction sheet though, and printed it out to refer to when the boys are older.

One last small thing we did was the counting activity from HarperCollins Margaret Wise Brown page.  I also thought about making cornmeal “mush,” but Ian’s such a picky eater these days, I doubted he would want to try it even if he helped make it.  (And since I’m still getting through morning sickness, I knew I wouldn’t want to finish what was left either.)

Posted in B4FIAR, Literature Units, Preschool

Learning as we play…and drive…and live

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I recently realized that so much of our day could qualify as “school,” but I don’t necessarily think of it as such because it’s just life for us.  I’m talking about the audiobooks and read-alouds that Ian listens to throughout his day.  Yes, we listen to the iPod playlists I put together for our Bible lessons, and sometimes he requests other Bible stories too.  But I realized I had the opportunity to introduce some quality children’s literature through my iPod as well.

It started when I stumbled upon some recordings of A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner.  I have always loved the stories and thought I’d see if Ian would enjoy listening to them while he played as much as watching the movies.  (He’d found my old VHS tapes and was asking to watch them far more than I wanted to have the TV on.)  They were a big hit from the start.  He started listening to them at bedtime.  And in the car.  And playtime.  Everyday.  I liked the initial recordings I’d found, but they were a dramatization, rather than a true reading of the book.  Different actors (big names like Stephen Fry, Judi Dench, all fabulously talented!) read the parts of the different characters and they were so much fun to listen to, but I missed the full flavor of Milne’s writing.  So I bought a complete set of A.A. Milne’s Pooh Classics recorded by Peter Dennis.  They are everything I hoped they would be, and even now after a year of listening to both sets of recordings, I’m still not tired of Pooh.

I did want to expand Ian’s horizons a bit, however, so I started introducing him to other stories as well.  I found some fun CDs at the library, such as Stellaluna, Thumbelina, and other classics like The Three Billy Goats Gruff (from a wonderful collection read by actors like Ben Kingsley and Holly Hunter).  I knew there were tons of classic books out there that I wanted to share with my kids and I didn’t want to be limited by our library selection or my wallet, so I started looking at free recordings of books in the public domain.  There are so many great books available at librivox.org! That’s where I downloaded Old Mother West Wind by Thornton Burgess.  (I’d never read anything by Burgess, but some of his books are part of the Ambleside Online curriculum I’m planning to use later on, and someone had said their 3-year old enjoyed these stories, so I thought we’d give them shot.  I was surprised at how even after one listening Ian recalled details of the stories and requested them for bedtime that night.)  There are several books of “Mother West Wind” stories (all about the escapades of various little animals), so I downloaded some others as well.  I tried Uncle Remus stories (remember Br’er Rabbit?), but the dialect was a little hard for Ian to follow and he didn’t get into them.  I decided to save those until he’s older and his grammar is better established anyway.  I’m going to try him on some of the Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy stories once we need a break from the animals in the Mother West Wind books.

The other free site I like for audiobooks is Lit2Go.  They don’t have as wide a selection, but I like they way they put their info at the end of the book rather than the beginning.  Sometimes Ian has lost interest before we even start a new story because he had to listen to the long promo for librivox.  This is where I got a great collection of Beatrix Potter stories (like “The Tale of Peter Rabbit”).  Podcasts are also a great source for children’s stories.  I really like Tales from the Forest, but there are a number of good ones available on iTunes.

We rarely drive anywhere without listening to stories.  As the boys play in the living room, Ian usually asks for stories.  And every naptime and bedtime he likes to listen to stories before he falls asleep.  Is he a little too addicted?  Yes, probably.  Especially since we also read picture books throughout the day.  He (and Elijah, who is constantly bringing me books to read) is proving to be a lot like his mama when it comes to a love of books.

Still, I think all this listening has been SO good for Ian’s language development.  I catch him using words and phrases he can only have picked up from the stories he’s heard.  It gives us so many new things to discuss (though sometimes I have to clue Daddy and others into what on earth he’s talking about!)  In addition to our audiobooks, I’ve started adding chapter books to our bedtime routine.  We’ve always spent time reading a few picture books before bed, but now we read a chapter from whatever novel we’re going through as well.  We started with Beverly Cleary’s Ralph Mouse books.  I thought the first one The Mouse and the Motorcycle would capture Ian’s attention because of the subject matter, and boy was I right.  As soon as we finished it, he wanted to keep going, so we moved on to Runaway Ralph the next night.  Now we’re a little more than halfway through Ralph S. Mouse.  I think we’ll try Stuart Little or Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White for a change of author.

So now you know our secret.  Our days are not just Ian, Elijah, and Mommy hanging out alone at home.  We have lots of friends like Pooh, Peter, and Ralph who share life with us throughout each day!

Posted in Ambleside Online, Homeschool Resources, Our Vision

Train up a Child (10 Commandments Pt.2)

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This week we did ABC Jesus Loves Me Week 10 on the Ten Commandments.  (We skipped Week 9, which was a review, since we’re really just focusing on the Bible part of the curriculum.)  It seems like we had more discipline issues than normal this week, so we found lots of opportunities for talking about various commandments.  I decided not to do a specific “memory verse” this week because I cared more about Ian becoming familiar with all the commandments, but “Honor your father and your mother,” (which was the suggested verse) did come up a lot over the last few days!

In keeping with my objective of building familiarity with all the commandments, our Bible Notebook work centered around short summaries of each one.  I really like the website BibleStoryPrintables.com (and its sister sites).  Momma C from ABC Jesus Loves Me sent us there to find a few different ideas for activities.  I had trouble making up my mind, so I ended up choosing two (a little reinforcement never hurt anyone!)

First we did this 10 Commandments train craft.  I wanted to put them all on one page, so I shrank the images down.  Ian’s not very into coloring, but he paid close attention as I talked about each commandment and added it to the train.  (In case the “Thomas” jammies didn’t give it away, he LOVES trains!)  The engine has Proverbs 22:6 on it: “Train up a child in the way he should go.  And when he is old he will not depart from it.”  I loved this idea!

For some reason I don’t think we’ve ever talked about the fact that we have ten fingers.  (How did I miss this???)  So I thought I’d work on associating 10 fingers with 10 commandments.  I got out Ian’s fingerpaint set and just let him have fun.  Once his hands were covered, I helped him make handprints.We’ve been trying to work on numerals and counting, so I printed up these 10 commandments cards.  The cards were meant to be full page images to use on a bulletin board, but like the train cars, I shrank them down so we could put them all on one page.  Again, we talked through each commandment (and number) as we glued the cards on.  (Ian and I both liked the little pictures that went along with each one.  He spent a long time looking at each one and wanted to read through the whole page several times.)

I put together an iPod playlist for the first time in a couple weeks, and it was really nice to have something to listen to that went along with our story.  Here’s what we played throughout the week:

Once again, I intended to do a Before Five in a Row book, but I just didn’t get to it other than one read through.  I’m trying to give myself grace.  After all, I’m battling the nausea and fatigue of the first trimester, so my life is all about priorities right now.  Ian’s only three.  As long as we do our Bible lesson, I’ll consider myself on top of things!  🙂

Posted in ABCJesusLovesMe, Bible lessons, Preschool

A little treasure (10 Commandments, part 1)

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Your word I have treasured in my heart, that I may not sin against You.  Proverbs 119:11 (NASB)

My number one goal in raising my children is to “make disciples.”  To accomplish this, I think the most important thing I can do while they’re little (aside from letting them see my own walk with God) is to build a foundation of knowing God’s Word, both stories and memory verses.  Hence the beginning of our homeschool journey.  Ian’s been enjoying our Bible story time each week, and he seems to be remembering the verses we’ve done, but I wasn’t sure until this morning. We had a sweet moment that showed me he really is understanding what I’m trying to share with him.

This week we’re learning about the Ten Commandments.  Yesterday at church I came across a little board book called The Story of the Ten Commandments that provided a good introduction for us.  (I’ve read a couple of books in this series.  For the most part I like them, but many of them talk about “school.”  Since I’m not planning to send my kids to school, I don’t want to confuse them or create an image in their minds of this wonderful place they won’t get to see.  So I edited the book a little as we read it, since following rules at school isn’t really an essential part of understanding the 10 Commandments.)

Anyway…

This morning I got our flannel board set and let Ian and Elijah play with the pieces for the week as I reviewed the story we talked about yesterday.  When I got to the part about God meeting the people at Mt. Sinai, I told them the Israelites were very scared. (“So it came about on the third day, when it was morning, that there were thunder and lightning flashes and a thick cloud upon the mountain and a very loud trumpet sound, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled.” Exodus 19:16)  Ian made all the people hide under the mountain and told me, “Sing ‘Keep me safe, my God…’,” which had been our memory verse during the week we talked about Noah’s ark.  I had chosen that verse, Psalm 16:1 “Keep me safe my God, for in you I take refuge,” because I figured a three-year old could relate to being scared, as Noah and his family must surely have felt.  I wanted him to have a verse in his heart that would comfort him in such moments.  I LOVE that he thought of it when I talked about the people being scared.

Okay, so the Israelites didn’t really hide under the mountain.  We’ll work on the details of the story throughout the week.  What’s important to me right now is that he’s applying what he’s already learned.  I loved those moments as a teacher, and it’s one of the main reasons I looked forward to homeschooling my own children.  I just love it when they “get” it!

Posted in Bible lessons, Our Vision, Preschool

The Parting of the Red Sea (part 2)

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It felt good to be getting back in the swing of things, though I didn’t do the greatest job of it.  Monday slipped by before I knew it.  On Tuesday we told the story of Moses leading the Israelites through the Red Sea in a number of different ways (as I talked about in my last post).  We started with the flannel board, read in several Bible storybooks, and ended with a clip from the Prince of Egypt.  Later that day Ian watch VeggieTales: Moe and the Big Exit, but I’m not sure if he saw any connection.  We talked a little bit about the story over the next couple days, but life was busy, and not until today (Friday) did we get back into it.  And really all we did was talk about the story a little as we worked on the page for our Bible notebook.

We started with this craft from DTLK-bible.com.  Ian glued the pieces on cardstock (some of our pages have proved to be too flimsy, so I think that’s what I’ll use from here on out) and let Ian add some fish stickers we had lying around.  Then for a special touch, we painted over the water sections with blue glitter paint.

We did the verse from the ABC Jesus Loves Me week 8 lesson: “My God will supply all your needs.” Philippians 4:19.  As suggested in the lesson plan, I sang it to the tune of “London Bridge.” I sang it over and over while we worked on our craft, since I’ve neglected it since Tuesday!

“My God will supply all your needs, supply all your needs, supply all your needs. My God will supply all your needs.  Philippians 4:19.”

Luckily we’ll review it every week when we read through our Bible notebook, so I know he’ll get it eventually.  This was definitely a minimal week.  For some reason iTunes wouldn’t open for me and I never got around to reinstalling it.  So we didn’t have a playlist to listen to.  I had a Before Five in a Row book picked out to do along with our Bible story (and even had an activity planned) and we never once opened it.  On the other hand, we had some great “nature study” yesterday.  We went to a park with a lake, watched the ducks and some turtles, even found the dead body of some small crustacean that just fascinated Ian.  I’d love to be more intentional about including nature study in our schedule.  Ever since reading Charlotte Mason’s Home Education*, I’ve been determined to make it a part of my children’s education.  All that to say that our days without Bible lessons weren’t a total loss!  Weeks like this make me really thankful we’ve started trying to get into the “school” habit long before we need to worry about “officially” homeschooling.  It’s definitely going to take a while to make it a more solid part of our schedule!

* You can find the text for all Charlotte Mason’s writings for free online at Ambleside Online.  I downloaded the modern paraphrase and then read it on my Kindle.

Posted in ABCJesusLovesMe, Ambleside Online, Bible lessons, Charlotte Mason, Preschool
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