Homeschooling for His Glory

My kids love playing pretends and imaginary stuff. These days they are into firefigting and emergency situations. They have also declared our apartment to be Australia, with the living room and dining room as the city and the bedrooms as country.   Here are a few snapshots of their arrangements The police station: The fire station, which they numbered 10 The construction yard A farmyard in their bedroom: Have a great day,

Jesus is King Wendy Churchill Jesus is king and I will extol Him Give Him the glory, and honour His name He reigns on high, enthroned in the heavens Word of the Father, exalted for us We have a hope that is steadfast and certain Gone through the curtain and touching the throne We have a Priest who is there interceding Pouring His grace on our lives day by day We come to Him, our Priest and Apostle Clothed in His glory and bearing His name Laying our lives with gladness before Him Filled with His Spirit we worship the King O Holy One, our hearts do adore You Thrilled with Your goodness we give You our praise Angels in light with worship surround Him Jesus, our Saviour, forever the same Have a blessed Sunday

Today was Zach's birthday. It is hard to imagine how time flies, but here we are 6 years later. He is still the very spirited, outside the box thinker, happy, crazy boy that he was as a baby. He is just smarter now and knows better. We love him and are very proud of him. Our hearts are full of hopes for him. He still had his violin group this morning, then had a playdate with some friends and then off to an hour of bowling. We all had fun. Then back home for more play, presents, dinner and B-day cake. We are so thankful to the Lord for our son and pray that the Lord will take hold of him and made a servant of Him for His glory. Have a great day,

At Under the Apple Tree, we have a post on the importance of choosing good books for our kids . At The Homeschool classroom there is a great article on Spending Quality Time Togeth er and another timely post on  Holiday stress and survival. At Heart of the Matter you can find an article on  Ways to add Art Appreciation to your homeschool . I also came across a site with lots of educational videos for kids:  Kizclub . At All Free Crafts you've a got a great collection of crafts to make for all seasons. Enjoy all the reading!

Another week end is here. I am still tired . . What did we do this week? Well not that much. We covered Math, Reading, English, Geography  and Science this week. Wednesday, I declared a no school day  and of course no one had any objection.  I do not even know what I ended up doing that day. We had someone over that evening but that is all I can recall. Violin went much smoother this week. Prayer does help! He has moved on this week to his next song: Lighty Row in the Suzuki repertoire. Thursday, we went skating, or should I say I took the boys skating. They had a blast. Still in the learning stages from last winter, but improving well. Today we went to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) with our homeschool group, for a guided tour of the Dead Sea Scroll Exhibit here in Toronto. My hubby and I certainly enjoyed it, I do not know about the boys, but at least they behaved (it was geared toward 4th graders and up). Tomorrow is Zach's birthday, the big 6. So, tonight is cake time for me .

Have a great day,

Black Friday is in 2 days and it is sales time. I just thought I would highlight some sites we should be sure to visit in the next few days.   Over at Currclick   Over at Nest Learning: From Black Friday through to  November 30th you can get 10% on the ENTIRE Website Using Coupon Code: BF10 Receive Free Shipping on All Items. Lowest Prices EVER!   Notebooking.com   The old Schoolhouse Have a great day,

I used to think that Zach was a visual learner, just because he was good at sight words, taught himself how to read and in general was getting a lot of information through things I had scattered all over the house. But in the past few months I came to realize that he is more of an auditory learner, with a bit of visual to it. Recently, I came across this post about Characteristics of auditory learnes , that definitely confirmed my suspicion. Hop on over it is a great read! Zach displays a whole lot of these characteristics like: Hums or talks to themselves!! They spell most of the time correctly They can read pretty well. Most are musically inclined Good at grammar Make up great stories! They remember things they hear during lectures or conversations with others Good vocabulary They can carry on interesting conversations and get their ideas across very clearly They like to talk lot!! Their descriptions are usually long and they repeat things over and over! Not good at readin

Here is a chorus that I really like. It is short but very uplifting (Romans 11:30-32). How Great is Your Love by Mark Altrogge No eye has seen, no ear has heard, No mind has ever conceived The glorious things that You have prepared For everyone who has believed You brought us near and You called us Your own And made us joint heirs with Your Son. Chorus: How high and how wide, How deep and how long, How sweet and how strong is Your love. How lavish Your grace, How faithful Your ways, How great is Your love, oh Lord. Objects of mercy who should have known wrath We’re filled with unspeakable joy. Riches of wisdom, unsearchable wealth, And the wonder of knowing Your voice. You are our treasure and our great reward, Our hope and our glorious King. Have a blessed Sunday,

The homeschool classroom as a great post on Recommended Reading for Homeschool Moms. I have discovered 2 great educational sites: Arcademic Skill Builders , which is a great online Math games site,  and,  Mark Kistlers great drawing site (it is a paid course but there are free samples and there is a good deal on it at the Homeschool buyer co-op). Education Place has great resources as well for the teachers and students. Be sure to look around, there is lots of stuff there. I also found a mine full of free internet resources for the homeschool here. Heart of the matter on Fun in the kitchen with your preschooler. An innovative take on workboxes I thought was neat. In the future I might try that. A post on the Benefits of homeschooling. Have a great day,

Fridays seem to come by so quickly. The week just flies by and it feels like we have not done much. But, I guess we must have done something. We have been following a schedule for the past 3 weeks so as to give structure to the boys and that has helped us keep things on going and on track. One of the changes this week was to put his violin practice first thing after breakfast and before school. This has definitely minimized the complaining about having to quit his play to practice and has added regularity.  Practice have been a bit of a struggle for both of us for the past few weeks but that's for a totally separate post. Today was a good day though, which has a lot to do with having prayed before we started. Math has been going well. I am very happy to see that Zach has been enjoying Math even though he is not very happy about all the work involved, but he really likes the concepts. English is going along as well. We finished grade 1 of FLL and have moved on to grade 2. For readin

As I mentioned before, our style of homeschooling is a bit of Charlotte Masson, classical and unschooling. One aspect of the classical education I have been trying to incorporate in ur homeschool is narration. With our BJU Readers 1 I had Zachary do the accompanying worktext for comprehension. He was doing well with that, but I realized that the questions did not test his actual grasping of the story on his own. So for the Readers 2 I have decided not to use the worktext and just do narration. This has allowed me to know exactly how much of the story he is able to understand and grasp on his own, along with all the other benefits of narration. Here are some helpful articles on narration: Trivium Pursuit (sccroll down to point2) The Well Trained Mind on narration Simply Charlotte Mason on narration Homeschool.com Homeschooling Highlights An article on Narration: the Art of storytelling A post @ Heart of the matter on Narration Here is a nice take on narration:  Narration with legos

Have a great day, Joelle

This is my first time joining in on the Kid's Picks @ 5 minutes for Books . Here are my boys' (6 and 4) newest subject selection: Firefighters: <A HREF="http://ws.amazon.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&MarketPlace=US&ID=V20070822%2FUS%2Fhomesforhisgl-20%2F8003%2Fed6dc4f8-b4a9-4f23-9176-86a5a3650dc9&Operation=NoScript" _fcksavedurl=""http://ws.amazon.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&MarketPlace=US&ID=V20070822%2FUS%2Fhomesforhisgl-20%2F8003%2Fed6dc4f8-b4a9-4f23-9176-86a5a3650dc9&Operation=NoScript"" _fcksavedurl=""http://ws.amazon.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&MarketPlace=US&ID=V20070822%2FUS%2Fhomes

As promised I have the pictures of the lapbook I was working on last week. It comprises all the topics we covered in our science class during our 6 weeks long elective. I just wanted to give the kids something to take home that would remind them of what they learned. I created all of the material from scratch using resources from the the internet. If you would like the file you can e-mail me and I would gladly share it with you. I might put it on my Scribd account, but I am not sure of when yet. Have a great day,

As I mentioned in yesterday's post I have not spent much time at the computer this week, so this week's line up will be short. Here is what I have for this week: At  South Forte Farm:  7 habits of highly effective women. At Confession of an organized homeschool mom:  The 411 on paper. At Apple pie you can find  2 nice articles on joy and work   and find the other one here. At Raising arrow, an excellent post on kids and chores Have a great day,

It is Friday and time for a weekly wrap-up. For any of you who normally follow my blog, I am sorry I did not blog this week, but I was very busy working on a lapbook for my students at elective this week, since it was our last elective for this session. I will post the final product on Monday. This project took me the whole on Tuesday, Thursday and part of Wednesday. On Monday we went on a fieldtrip that took us the whole day. we went to the Royal Ontario winter fair. We all had a great time. We did do school this week. Math, English and Science got squeezed in somehow. Wednesday I did take the kids on a playdate for a few hours. They had fun! Today was our last day of elective and I forgot my camera. Zach did well in his drama presentation. Could have spoken louder, but hey. . . His song presentation was nice too except he kept jiggleling during most of it. I found the whole thing rather funny. Anyway that was our week. For more weekly wrap-up head on over at Weird Unsocialized homesc

Thy mercy, My God Caedmons Call 1. Thy mercy, my God, is the theme of my song, The joy of my heart. and the boast of my tongue; Thy free grace alone, from the first to the last, Hath won my affections, and bound my soul fast. 2. Without Thy sweet mercy I could not live here; Sin would reduce me to utter despair; But, through Thy free goodness, my spirits revive, And He that first made me still keeps me alive. 3. Thy mercy is more than a match for my heart, Which wonders to feel its own hardness depart; Dissolved by Thy goodness, I fall to the ground, And weep to the praise of the mercy I’ve found. 4. Great Father of mercies, Thy goodness I own, And the covenant love of Thy crucified Son; All praise to the Spirit, Whose whisper divine Seals mercy, and pardon, and righteousness mine. All praise to the Spirit, Whose whisper divine Seals mercy, and pardon, and righteousness mine. To hear that song, click here. Have a blessed Sunday

Here is our next round up of links to share. Heart of the matter had a few excellent articles that I enjoyed again:  The Journey into teaching our kids to read , Ways to spike up our homeschool, and on the work of Memorization. Hearts in Training shares a post on a 31 days of prayer for your child list.  I thought that was a very neat thing. I was reminded of this nice article at The Homeschool Classroom on Multi-aged Lapbooking. Brenda also has a very good article titled How do you Socialized? also at The Homeschool Classroom . At Elemental Science you will find a nice post on How Nature Study Fit in ? Have a great day,

I hope you all had a good and productive week. We are 3 weeks away from our Christmas break and doing well. This week we were able to do all the things that we were supposed to. I have been trying to keep a cold off bay. Johann had a cough from last week, but is getting better. And dad is trying to keep it all away from him (getting sick with his illness is not recommended). Here is what we did though: Science, we moved on to species and Zach seems to be quite interrested. Reading , we are continuing on with our BJU readers and narration. This week we did retelling of story and summary of ideas. History , we moved on to the times of the Pilgrims. Zach was very excited to realized that we had visited quite a few of the original colonies. Math, we finished the Singapore 1A and we are both exited about that. We did weight and measurements this week and Zach had fun. Here is Zach measuring the wall with his hand. Here he is measuring the de

As mentioned before I am always trying to spice up our homeschool and come up with extra things for teaching different subjects. Now I am not very creative, so much of my ideas are either from somewhere or a derivative of another idea. Here is a sample of things I have done. For language, in the past, I have made up matching cards of sight words for the kids to practice them. They've mastered them for a while now, but as I took them out to give them to a friend of mine, Joho decided he wanted to do them. Today for our math lesson, I was supposed to have a weighing scale, but I did not. So here is what I came up with: Lapbooks I have been working on: As we go through our First Language Lessons book , I am making a lapbook to go along with it This is one to go along our Building Spelling Skills I finally starting on the Biomes one Some visuals : I am going to start teaching them about Continents, so, I found these continent maps at abcteach.com and a song to learn the continent