Homeschooling for His Glory

We Have Been Healed You bore our sins in Your body As You were hung on a tree So we might die to rebellion And live for Him who set us free You were mocked and reviled Suffering in our place Trusting all to Your Father So enemies could know Your grace Chorus We have been healed, justified Made alive in the life of Christ Righteous blood covers every sin Risen Lamb, heaven's light Crucified and now alive In Your love You have drawn us in Like straying sheep we were wandering Destitute and alone You sought us out like a shepherd You carried us and brought us home Bridge All our sin for Your grace What a glorious exchange All our sin for Your grace What a glorious exchange All our sin for Your grace What a glorious exchange

I am happy to be participating in this new meme hosting by Miranda over at the Pebble Pond . I love memes, that is when I can actually get down to write for them. I know it's Saturday but yesterday was Good Friday and some things take precedence. Anyway, here are 5 random facts relating to our life this week: 1.  I am praising God for the Easter season. Easter is really my favourite time of the year as I get to reflect and celebrate Christ's work on the cross on my behalf, and his resurrection demonstrating God's acceptance of His sacrifice. 2. I am rejoicing in the forgiveness of sin and salvation that Christ secured for me. 3 . Am I the only mom of boys whose floor is covered with legos? This is how our living room looks 90% of the time. 4 . My hubby, a real fan of the musical Les Miserables  acquired the DVD this week and we had a movie night with some friends from church last night. The boys, along with another friend of theirs, came up for

  The Wonder of the Cross Words and Music by Vicky Beeching O precious sight, my Savior stands, Dying for me with outstretched hands. O precious sight, I love to gaze, Remembering salvation's day, Remembering salvation's day. Though my eyes linger on this scene, May passing time and years not steal The power with which it impacts me, The freshness of its mystery, The freshness of its mystery. Chorus:  May I never lose the wonder, t he wonder of the cross.               May I see it like the first time standing  as a sinner lost,               Undone by mercy and left speechless,               Watching wide eyed at the cost.               May I never lose the wonder, t he wonder of the cross. Behold the God-man crucified, The perfect sinless sacrifice. As blood ran down those nails and wood, History was split in two, yes, History was split in two. Behold the empty wooden tree, His body gone, alive and free. We sing with everlasting joy, For sin and deat

One of our latest review product has been a wonderful music program called  MusIQ HomeSchool  by  Adventus . First off I will say that this is a multi-level, well rounded, self-sufficient, extensive music program. If  you have been in the market for music lessons and have not been able to afford a piano teacher, search no more and investigate Adventus. Adventus offers an array of music programs. The main 2 are: Piano Suite :  for 10 +.  This is multi-level (4 years worth) and Children Music Journey :  for kids 4 - 10. This is a beginning and intermediate level music instruction program comprised of 3 levels (3 years worth).  On top of these major ones, Adventus also offers: Ear Training Coach : 8 to adult. It is divided into 2 software: 1&2 and 3&4. This program covers: Rhythm  - recognize & play rhythmic passages Melody  - retain & play back melodic passages Intervals  - discern between intervals & identify them by symbol o

I have boys, and writing is one of those subjects they rather not do. When it is time for writing they say to each other "Run!!!!!!!".  So, when a new writing curriculum came up for review I jumped on it with mixed feelings, not sure of how it was going to be received.  Essentials In Writing is a writing curriculum that targets students in grade 1 through 12 . It is a complete and comprehensive curriculum because it seeks to cover parts of speech and composition skills in grade 1-6, and then in grade 7&8 covers the different writing styles, expository, persuasive, compare/contrast. In grade 9-12 the focus then turns to quality sentences, paragraphs, essays and Research papers. They even offer 2 High School elective courses on Creative Writing and Technical Writing. Essentials in Writing's premise is to study writing as it applies to everyday situations. Their goal is to help students to become confident writers.  Since my boys are

Not What My Hands Have Done Not what my hands have done can save my guilty soul; Not what my toiling flesh has borne can make my spirit whole. Not what I feel or do can give me peace with God; Not all my prayers and sighs and tears can bear my awful load. Your voice alone, O Lord, can speak to me of grace; Your power alone, O Son of God, can all my sin erase. No other work but Yours, no other blood will do; No strength but that which is divine can bear me safely through. Thy work alone, O Christ, can ease this weight of sin; Thy blood alone, O Lamb of God, can give me peace within. Thy love to me, O God, not mine, O Lord, to Thee, Can rid me of this dark unrest, And set my spirit free. I bless the Christ of God; I rest on love divine; And with unfaltering lip and heart I call this Savior mine. His cross dispels each doubt; I bury in His tomb Each thought of unbelief and fear, each lingering shade of gloom. I praise the God of grace; I trust His truth and might; He

At the risk of repeating myself, homeschooling is all about flexibility and innovation, taking advantage of any opportunity to learn and to grow in our understanding of life and everything around it. With that in mind the kitchen is great a place for learning life skills and practice other kind of theoretical knowledge. How does this work in our homeschool? Here are a few things I do with the kids: I try to have them help me, as much as they can and are willing, in cooking and baking. This is a great way for them to practice Math skills such as measuring and fractions to name a couple. I involve them at the store in computing amounts. This is good practice in arithmetic, rounding and estimating. Most of our science experiments are done in the kitchen. When the kids were younger, helping me bake was helping improving their reading skills as I would ask them to tell me what the next step on the recipe. The reason why the kitchen can be such a great place for learning i

I am not the most creative person there is. As a homeschooling mom this fact has been my pet-peeve, as I often associated being a good homeschooling mom as being able to be innovative in the way I teach. To some degree, I still feel that way but I have come to terms to the kind of person I am and try to make the most of it. I like to think that homeschooling is not so much " doing school at home " (though that is what I tell the boys), but " home educating ". What is the difference you might ask? Well, when I think of school I think rigidity, mold and pattern. When I think homeschooling I think flexibility, innovation, out of the box. That is not to say that there are no constraints to homeschooling, because there surely are if you want your kids to be truly educated. They have to know how to read, write, count, do algebra, have a good vocabulary, know science, history, geography and if possible foreign languages, but all of this gets to be taught in a fam

   It's been three weeks since my last weekly wrap-up. Time flies. It's not that we have been super busy but more mom being lazy to sit down and write it up. In our homeschool . . . We have been trodding along in all our subjects: Handwriting : they are both getting to the end of their handwriting books which means it's time to order new ones. I am thinking of starting Joho on cursive since I have seen how it has helped improve Zach's handwriting. I really like Handwriting without Tears. Math: We are still working on divisions and fractions with Joho and fractions, and decimals with Zach along with reviews. Zach got to work on graph and probability with A+ Tutorsoft which I just reviewed for the crew . History : we started our study of the Civil War and Zach is really excited about it. We started making a lapbook. Hopefully I'll get to blog about. French is going along slowly. Spelling is still going strong thanks to the Logic of English, of wh