Coins and their Value

No worksheets today.  We emptied the penny bank and discussed the name and value of each coin. We also used pennies to represent the cents of each coin to help understand their values. As he picked up the coins and returned them to the penny bank, he had to tell me each coin's name. This is just an introduction and we will continue to build on it.

Our Halloween View

I remember when I was young, asking what Halloween was and wondering what we were celebrating.  The atmosphere struck me as strange even at probably 8 years old.  Whole neighborhoods were decorated in dark and gloom and had an evil essence about them.  The answer I received was an unsure one but why would it have been questioned anyway?  It was celebrated by our entire community and had been celebrated all our lives as a day to dress up and get candy. 

When I married my husband, I remember going to work one day together in October and driving through a highly Halloween decorated community.  I mentioned to my husband that I thought Halloween was such a strange holiday and I didn't understand what it was.  He explained to me a little bit about what he learned the history to be.  This was the first time I had ever heard Halloween painted in a dark light but it all made sense to me then.  I began researching it and have had nothing to do with the day since that time.

My son is 5.  People may think we are depriving him of just a really fun day to spend with community.  I find it to be more complex than that.  The interesting thing is, he sees it as a dark and scary day.  He does not like how all the houses are decorated.  I would have to talk him into Halloween if we were going to partake.  I'm not saying he wouldn't have fun after starting if he were assured by us it's ok but he would need some coercing to get him to go up to a door with jackolanterns, spider webs, and ghosts on the porch.

So what explanation have I given my son about this day that our church program was canceled and all his friends are talking about their costumes and trick or treating?  I have told him that we do not think we would be glorifying God by participating in this day.  I explained what the people believed who started this holiday and he has not questioned it at all that we do not celebrate.  The bigger problem is how to answer the questions of why others who are our Christian family are celebrating. 

Following is an explanation of the history of Halloween.  There are many more out there that are more detailed, I just chose one that had the basics in it and presented facts opposed to opinions.  Be advised, if you do not want to be convicted or have a struggle over the matter, don't learn of the day's history http://www.halloweenhistory.org/

Now, if you don't know what the day stands for and you're just going along in good fun, perhaps that's ok with God, I honestly don't know and don't choose to judge or condemn anyone out there who particpates in the day.  As for me and my house, we try to live our life with purpose.  We want to honor and glorify God in all that we do and we try to see a big picture of who we are serving with our actions. 

H is for Heaven

Revelation 21:4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

I have always enjoyed discussing heaven with Asher.  I love to see him excited about heaven and am quite humored by his angst when he asks about his toys, his bed, his dog, his bunny, his video games, and you can imagine that list goes on and on.  Of course, it is very hard to convince a 5 year old that heaven will be so amazing and wonderful that he would never miss anything he has here on earth.

To begin our discussion on heaven, I read from Revelation 21-22 to Asher being careful to draw his attention to exciting and interesting points.  Afterward, I asked him to draw me a picture of heaven and the picture above is his vision of heaven.

I asked him to explain it to me and I will do my best to relay his description:  The red line on the bottom is the ground, the yellow line is a golden street.  The red wavy line is a city and above that is the lake of fire.  The pink dots are "bad people" who are going to be in the lake of fire and above that in yellow is the "new city" and all the wavy lines are gates.  The figure in the middle is a frog (don't know where that came from) and the other black figure is a butterfly.

This told me a lot about what things stood out to him and what things he has a clear understanding of.  The most important thing I think we can get out of teaching our kids about heaven is that they are rightfully excited and my son is yet he has a healthy respect for death and losing somebody from our presence here on earth.  He also has a deep sadness for people who will spend eternity in hell.

Revelation 21:8 was alarming to him but I'm glad he asked about it.  When he gathered that liars would go to hell, he was concerned that he would go to hell if (or when) he lies.  I explained that people who don't know Jesus have no sadness for breaking God's laws and they are not forgiven for their sins and will go to hell.  I explained that if he loves Jesus and accepts God's gift of salvation, he is forgiven for all of his sins even lies and will go to heaven.  I concluded that if he loves God, he will try not to lie because he wants to do things that are pleasing to God. 

G is for Grace

G race

Ephesians 2:5  It is by grace you have been saved.  When I come to each letter of the alphabet,  I take opportunity to give my son a lesson that will impact his life and his heart. Learning about grace is certainly one of those instances.  How do you teach a 5 year old about grace?  I find it hard to understand, myself but we went at it together.  Here was where we started;   Ephesians 2:8-10  ⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God  ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast. ¹⁰ For we are God’s handiwork,  created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. 

I found it interesting that when I browsed through the internet on the matter, I found the question all over, “What is grace?”  It is described as a synonym to forgiveness and related to favor.  Many Christians answered the question explaining it to be a gift from God that we do not deserve but He wants us to have it.  There were many ideas of what grace is and what it means to different people. 

God is the ultimate example of grace.  He sent His son to die for our sins so that we may have eternal life.  We do not deserve heaven but we have been saved by grace.  We cannot earn our salvation, it is a gift.  God wants us to have this gift. 

I stuck to elaborating more on grace by discussing examples of people who showed grace by forgiving others who perhaps, did not deserve it.  Joseph was one of those examples.  He was full of grace as he forgave his brothers for selling him to the Egyptians.  If you take the story of Joseph, I love how his life completely parallels to Ephesians 2:8-10.  All of his works, he credited to God including the deciphering of dreams.  He did not boast of his abilities to organize and lead.  He was God’s handiwork and did such good works even saving God’s people from famine all which were prepared for him (as he was also being prepared) by God in advance.   

F is for Fall

We made this with an oatmeal container covered in canvas.  I hot glued straw around the bottom and top rim.  Using potato halves I created stamps by cutting away the excess of the shape.  Keep in mind that for letters, you have to make the stamp backward so it will appear correctly on the stamped surface.    I squirted acrylic fall paint colors on paper plates and with my assistance, Asher got to stamp into the paint and then onto the fabric.  Don't rinse off your stamp before changing colors if you want the multicolored leaf look.  Glue on all kinds of fancies and have a great time  Being a "use what ya got" kind of gal, I used canvas but burlap would be awesome.  I'm sure some mums or some prettier foliage would also be  nice but these are just leftover stems from wreaths that I've made in the past.  Asher enjoyed it and loves having things placed around the house that he has done.

E is for Emergency

I discovered that my dry erase board from contact paper also serves as a surface for reusable stickers.  The emergency vehicles are those stickers.  How funny it is that in making a phone for my son, I wanted to draw a traditional phone and realized that he probably would not associate that very well considering it's possible he's never seen a phone other than a cell phone.  So I conformed to the modern world with this phone reference.  We went over situations that he may need to call 911 and what he would need to tell the dispatcher.  We are going to continue working on his address.  Image #2 is the front and back of an index card.  Something concrete to practice dialing numbers and to reference that important information that he will hopefully never need.

Hopscotch

On the second day of Fall, we are having an absolutely beautiflul day here in Wichita.  While going through the very long story of God's people being rescued from Egypt, the girls were playing out in the back yard.  So once our story was complete, we opted for some hopscotch outside.  We are working on some teen numbers.  10 through 20 has been a slower process.  Tomorrow we get to writing the number 20 and then focusing on smooth counting and recognition up to 20.

For our hopscotch game, I would call out a number and he would jump to that number.  We would also switch places and he could call a number and I would jump to it.  For some reason, he felt he needed a whistle and that was just fine with me.

Deliverance from Egypt

E is for Egypt.  This is a lot of scripture to get a 5 year old to sit and listen to but he has seen movies and read stories and I did not feel like the importance of the story had really unfolded for him.  I opted to read it and pause for illustrations while discussing the plagues.  I do feel like there was a better understanding of the story after this lesson.  Until today, the most he understood from the story was Moses' staff turning into a snake.

We began recapping why the Isrealites were in Egypt, recalling the story of Joseph and stating that Joseph had since died and he and God's wonders were forgotten in Egypt.  Asher understood the evil of Pharoah by his order to kill all the male Hebrew babies and the desperation of the cries of the people to God. 

With the dry erase board on the right, Moses and Aron are approaching Pharoah as commanded by God.  You can point back to this image after each plague.  We went through each of the plagues on the chalk board taking time to discuss the awful effects those things would have on a people.  Back on the right is the deliverance by God being led by a pillar of a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night and reaching the Red Sea where the waters were parted and the Isrealites went through ending the story with the waves crashing down on all of Pharoah's army.

May not be the best illustrations but something about me drawing them and drawing them quickly kept him sitting and interested.

D is for Distractions

D is for DISTRACTIONS.  Our D week was quite lax as we had my dad visiting from out of state.  What a blessing homeschool is when we can make education a second priority to much cherished time with Papa. 

Still, we got the basics in and it was a good week overall.  We are still on schedule with letters and numbers.  We covered David and Goliath in more detail than we have in the past and included the movie from the series of "The Greatest Heroes and Legends of the Bible" hosted by Charlton Heston.  We will finish up the week with Daniel and the Lions Den and also have a movie from that series to follow.  Asher has seen these all a hundred times but I love to watch the focus and interest he has after we have read about it and talked about it.

Our memory verse is Pillipians 4:13 I can do all things through Him who gives me strength.  This verse was chosen to be driven home by a couple of God's great heroes that Asher loves, David and Daniel. 

We review a lot and I have been impressed to see how much he has retained and can recall all we have learned in four weeks.  This is truly an absolute joy to take part in this experience with him.  I am beginning to LOVE homeschool well beyond what I saw as a duty.

# 10 (Ten Commandments)

I love this idea!  This came from pinterest from www.histreasureseekers.com.  The printables were from www.biblestoryprintables.com.  There is very little that my son really hangs on to if we don't do some sort of a craft or illustration to accompany it.  This worked well although some of the commandments are tougher for him to understand at 5 years old, he still was able to retain all of them at least to some degree.

C is for Cross

C is for Cross.  In C week, we are learning what it means to be a Christian.  We made a cross with a piece of trim and some brad nails.  First Asher used blue string to symbolize the sadness of sin, followed by red string to symbolize the blood of Jesus, then the white string symbolizing being washed clean.  Our memory verse is John 3:16.  Because he is 5  and this verse is long, we are focusing more on the content of this verse than memorizing it but surprisingly, he is very close to memorizing it anyway.  He's got one more day at this point before we move on to another one.

 A bright year has just barely begun for this bright boy of mine. Week 2 was kicked off with picture day and he is so good for pictures.  We have a little secret about this picture though that maybe only another homeschooler would be able to guess what it is ;)

Creative Creation Story

Starting off with a homerun!  Asher loved creation the story done on the projector.  I printed off 2 creation story mini booklets from ChristianPreschoolPrintables.com.  I cut the small pictures out of 1 to fit in my projector and affixed them to blank white papers.  Each was stacked so you could begin from the beginning and remove the top sheet without moving the projector to flow through the story.  I added numbers 1-7 between each day.  He liked guessing which day was next before I pulled the page.  I began with the lights on reading Genesis 1:1 (also our memory verse for the week).  In verse 2, it says the earth was formless and empty and DARKNESS (cue for lights out and read with flash light) was over the surface of the deep.  And the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.  3 God said let there be light. (turn on the projector to a blank white page.

When you get to the separating of light and dark, remove the blank page to reveal the picture with light and dark divided then removing that picture to reveal the #1 when the bible says that was the first day.  Continue that same way all the way through day 7, the blessed day of rest.  If you want hands free to run your projector and to have less light in the room, you could use an audio bible reading.  

Afterwards, he got to make his own creation story booklet by tracing the days and putting them in order.  Simple sight words to help him read his book.

This was a great way to keep him engaged in the story.  I was able to read a good size chapter and still keep his attention.  I want him to hear from the Bible and not just pictures.  The creation story is so interesting but so many of the children's tellings are so simplified, they are missing some of that really cool stuff.  I use the NIV Adventure Bible and love the reading level for my kindergartner to take in.

Noah's ABC Arc



Open the window to see what animal begins with the letter shown on the shutter. I thought this would be a fun idea for the beginning sounds.  I took a piece a poster board and drew an arc with the ABCs on the windows and colored the poster with markers.  With a razor knife, I cut out the windows on the top and bottom leaving the sides in tact.  A line was cut down the center allowing the shutters to swing open.  I printed the animals off of the computer and cut them out.  I placed a large sheet of paper underneath the poster board and marked the opening of my windows.  Then I took my cut out animals and taped them into the spaces.  I then attached the sheet of paper to the back of the poster board allowing you to open the shutters and view the animal that makes that sound.  My son loves it and it adds some fun color to our classroom.

Meet Rhino

Meet Rhino

 

What classroom is complete without a classroom pet?  Not this one.  Meet our bunny, Rhino.  We LOVE her.  I never imagined a rabbit would make a good house pet but they do litter box train and are very sociable and affectionate.  Watch out for those back paws though.  Those are a bit dangerous if spooked. She suits our home and family well.  Perhaps we will be able to make her a bunny garden next year for free grazing.  We shall see. 

Welcome to Our Class

We love our new classroom.  It is complete with a large homemade chalkboard/dry erase board.  We have book shelves, play areas, activity areas, and even a classroom pet bunny.  It is full of inspiration for learning and hopefully teaching as well.  So far, all of the kid love it in our classroom and have all been spending all of their time playing and hanging out in here.  We are very blessed to have such useful space in our home.

Homeschool Odysseys

As others are shedding tears over their children going to school or day care, I am celebrating the opportunity to begin kindergarten with Asher who is my oldest of three.  I learned curricula choices are overwhelming and at least for kindergarten, I would come up with my own as inexpensively as possible.  I feel good about our material and schedule and love the valuable lessons he will be learning. 

We have prepared a classroom that is filled with inspiration for both of us and have completed it with a classroom pet hamster, “Rhino”.  The Bible is our main resource and character shaping is just as important if not the most important part of our children’s homeschool education.  We are all excited to begin our homeschool odysseys and are heading in with prayer, trust, and hope knowing that we can do nothing without God but with Him, we can do all things!

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.  Proverbs 22:6