(And All My) Work Be Praise

For years, I have tried to jump on the "morning basket" bandwagon and/or use our time at the breakfast table productively. I'm choosing to take it as a sign of growing maturity and wisdom that I have stopped fighting our natural household rhythms, without any guilt. We don't do breakfast together, and that's okay for us. When we did  occasionally manage to start our mornings together, the focus was on Bible and catechism memory work. Obviously, I don't want to lose that, and I struggled for a while to find a system that would work for us. I honestly don't know how I came up with our current system, but one month in, it seems to be working reasonably well for this season! Bible memory work is now a part of our "habit training" system. This idea I "stole" from Life As Mom : the morning and evening "high five." The three oldest have five simple tasks they must complete before bed and upon waking. I'm pleased to report there h...

Walk through Holy Week in Duplo and LEGO scenes, created mostly by my nine-year-old, with a little help from his big brother and some specific requests from me. Palm Sunday Jesus cleanses the temple. The Last Supper The Garden of Gethsemane: Jesus prays while Peter, James, and John sleep. Jesus sees Peter in the courtyard as the rooster crows. The soldiers cast lots for Jesus' garments. Soldiers guard the tomb. Mary gazes into the empty tomb. Thomas meets Jesus: "My Lord and my God!"

Since we're all stuck at home instead of celebrating Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday physically with the body of Christ, I thought I'd do a recap of the various Holy Week activities our family has done in the past. Most are geared towards young children, but I've found it's easy enough to include the older ones by having them read an appropriate passage of Scripture, play "stage manager" to a skit, help lead a hymn, or simply talk in more detail about what was happening and why. (As an added bonus, those of you who didn't know my big kids as preschoolers get to see old pics!) *Palm Sunday Easy-peasy "palm" branches. I saw one on Pinterest this week that was multiple hands overlapped to make a big branch, which looked fun and we might attempt on Saturday! Naturally, if you're going to make palm branches, you might as well have a parade and shout "hosanna." I have it on good authority that dads make great donkeys. ;)...

I've been wanting to share what we're using for Levi's schooling this year, but didn't want to do it until I'd publicly outed him as being profoundly gifted . Naturally, his schoolwork doesn't look like a lot of seven-year-olds', and that's okay. He did, however, ask me yesterday, for the first time ever, what grade he was in, "if I'm in a grade at all," and I wasn't quite sure what to say. For now, we're sticking with, "we homeschool, and I'm seven." I'm hoping that'll be enough for a while. Anyway, on to the good stuff. I love  researching and picking out curriculum (even more than implementing it, sometimes!). I always thought I'd be the kind of parent who doesn't pay too much extra attention to learning styles; I figure some things, you just have to soldier through and learn and it doesn't really matter how. But then I ended up with this crazy asynchronous firstborn, and a second-born who is p...

"Morning Time" (or circle time, or table time, or what-have-you) seems to be all the rage among homeschooling families right now. I've probably seen a dozen blog posts on the topic, each with her own master plan of what subjects to cover at the start of each school day. It probably comes as no surprise that my current routine is very simple. After all, I can only hold them at the breakfast table for so long, at their current ages! On our best days -- probably three times a week, if we don't have anything extra going on -- our list looks like this: 1. Bible story, with optional Bible song. This is most often taken from the ABC Jesus Loves Me two-year-old curriculum . I read from a variety of sources (a different one each day, when I can) -- first the Beginner's Bible , but sometimes from the "real" Bible, or the Jesus Storybook Bible , or a storybook of parables we have if one of them happens to correspond. Depending on how full little mouths are (I ...

At our church in Cincinnati, a high priority was placed on teaching children the basics -- and more! -- of our faith. (This is not at all to say that there is not such a high priority at our current church; the ways and means simply differ.) There was great emphasis on memorization of both Scripture and catechism, and an accountability/reward system in place to help parents stay on track. ( This is a good article on why to catechize our children, along with other arguments for regular family worship.) For several years, the whole church used the Fighter Verse program  for Scripture memorization, children beginning with a shorter set called Foundation Verses . It varied from family to family, but most were able to start working on Scripture memorization with their children as early as two years old. Levi completed the 75 Foundation verses before we moved, and last month we started from the beginning again as part of our morning table time. (More on that later.) 4-1/2-year-old ...

Silas (4) asked to learn how to read back in March. The same week, I received an e-mail about a free trial of Reading Eggs , so I went ahead and signed up. I'd never pay for it (because I simply don't pay for things like that), but it was a fun and easy introduction to phonics and sounding out words. By the time our four-week trial was up, he was ready to jump into BOB book s.  A week or two ago, I remembered a long-time friend of mine having used a learn-to-read Bible with some of her kiddos. I didn't find what I was looking for on Amazon (since I can't remember exactly what it was called), but I did stumble upon this Early Reader's Bible . The reviews were excellent and the price couldn't be beat ($0.01 used, plus $3.99 shipping), so I bought it on a whim. It's perfect  for him. On any given page, I estimate he can read about 60-70% of the words, so it's enough for him to feel confident, but it's not going to be too easy any time soon. Alr...

It's been four years now since I did a unit on creation with my kiddos, and it's fourth child's turn to do some preschool crafting! You can see Levi's day-of-creation crafts from four years ago here . His are definitely more involved than Toby's -- such is life with four kids instead of two -- but we did change things up a bit this time around. DAYS ONE and TWO Day one: Toby's first experience with a glue stick (black paper to white). Not terribly successful (think, half a glue stick smashed onto the paper . . . ).  Day two: The picture doesn't look like much, but he colored the clouds and water with chalk. I was hoping it would have a more dramatic effect on paper, but it didn't. Truth be told, I had intended to use cotton balls for clouds, but we didn't have any, and I didn't make it to the store before week's end. Keepin' it real. Day two is Toby's favorite to say out loud: "God separated the clouds and the water!...

This semester, Levi is working through a Bible study called Because I Said So: A Study on Obedience . He's doing the junior version, geared towards children ages 4-7. My husband suspects it might be a little over his head by the time we get to the end, but for now (three lessons in), I'm really enjoying it. We read a Bible story together and answer a few discussion questions. As with science, for now I'm writing down his answers so that he's not hung up on the writing part. Then later in the week, he draws a picture of the story and writes down the main part. So far we've covered Jonah (obey without delay), King Saul (obey completely), and Noah  (obey without question). When it works out (yes for Jonah and Noah, not so much for Saul), I'm incorporating related crafts and activities for all three boys. My aunt (the former daycare lady) gave us a stack of watercolor and sticker books that correspond to the Beginner's Bible that we use a lot (come to thi...