Here is our first page completed. We will make a cover page and bind them when finished.
We got some extra time to put this one together today since I just had the three little girls. Jay took Joshua and Anastasia to urgent care because Joshua has pink eye in both eyes and an ear infection and Anastasia has a sever soar throat and fever! Fun stuff going on around here....
Well this week is going to get us behind some. Sunday, Anastasia and Joshua both got sick. Joshua got pink eye and Anastasia a sore throat. So Monday morning first thing I called our new pediatrician.
Side note we have a new ped not because we moved but because our old pediatrician, after working with us for over 11 year and her being okay with us doing delayed vaccines or some not at all, decided to send out a letter to all patients like us saying she could no longer work with us and we needed to immunize or find another practice. Well I am still on the email list and lo and behold she announced in a later email newsletter how she was so excited her practice just won an award for having every patient fully immunized!! Pretty easy to do if you cut out all the other patients. Hmmmm she must be getting funding somewhere....don't get me started. Now she is sending out URGENT letters for parents to hurry and sign their kids up to be part of a clinical trial for the swine flu vaccine. NO THANK YOU my kids are not going to be guinea pigs!!
So I digress. We called our new ped. who we have never met yet we were just assigned to by insurance and they aren't seeing new patients till mid September??????? So I have a one kid with pink eye and another with possible strep when in September can they get us in? She said we would have to go to urgent care or the ER. Is this a taste of what the new Obama Health Care plan will be like? Pretty scary. So I am supposed to wait till they are all better and then drag all my healthy kids into a doctor's office to be seen and told that they are healthy because they probably won't be after waiting in the waiting room with all the sick ones.
Okay so I am sure by now you can tell what kind of days I have had the last couple of days. So Monday morning after talking to the dr. Jay takes Joshua and Anastasia to the urgent care. He didn't want me going and sitting there being pregnant and all. (Thanks Honey!) He left around 8:30 and didn't get home till almost 1:00. Joshua has pink eye in both eyes and a really bad ear infection. The poor kid has such a high pain tolerance and never complained about his ear but when they stuck the thing into look and it beeped it agitatated it really bad and he started crying. Anastasia's quick strep test came back negative but her throat has really been hurting for two days now and she has been running a fever off and on. I think she is on the mend now. By Monday night Joshua's eyes were looking much better and he was doing fine except I forgot how he reacts to medicine. Exactly the opposite of what the bottles warn you about. He gets hyper and onery and has driven me crazy the last two days till I finally figured out it was the medicine (he was taking motrin for the pain which was causing this mood swing) and he is on anti biotics. So he didn't need any motrin today and hopefully by tomorrow he will be back to himself!!
Well I have rambled enough about our two fun days! LOL We are planing on getting back to schooling tomorrow so please pray everyone is well. The other three girls have managed to stay well I would like to keep it that way!
This week's lesson was on Daniel and the Lion's Den. The goal to focus on was that Daniel obeyed and trusted God and God protected him.
The little one's memorized: "When I'm afraid I'm going to pray"
Then Anastasia andJoshua memorized: "When the hungry lions growled and roared, Daniel put his faith and trust in the Lord."
We read Daniel 6 up to the point where they throw Daniel in the lion's den. Then we stopped for our activity. I pre-cut out 15 lion heads and put clear sticky tape (sticky side up, like hanging a poster) over each lion's mouth. The kids all had to wear socks. We set up a "lions den" in the family room by placing the lion heads on the floor in a two foot wide path.
They took turns being blindfolded and walking thru the lions den. The rest of us roared as the person walked. (you want to make sure each person gets "gobbled up" by a lion at least once) Gobbled up means the lion stuck to their sock.
When everyone was done we told them they have one more chance to try and make it through the den without getting gobbled up and they would get a treat. So we sent all the kids into the other room and placed the "hands of God" over the mouths of the lion. (pre-traced hand cut outs). This time they could only come in the room one at a time and before they started they had to pray this prayer: "Dear God, No matter what is ahead of me, I know you can protect me. Amen"
As they each made it all the way through with out getting gobbled up they received their treat for putting their faith and trust in God. Then when they were all done we finished reading chapter 6 of Daniel. We talked about how the hands of God protected Daniel and can protect them too.
Today we focused on the sense of touch. I filled a paper bag with objects and they had to reach in for one item and figure out what it was. Before they could just name the object they had to use a describing word such as it feels....smooth, bumpy, hard, soft, etc. They were so excited about this that after we finished I let them each fill their own bags and they took turns guessing. This kept them busy for almost 40 min!!
They also made another activity for their lapbook: It is matching feely cards:
We should have the lapbooks complete by next week and I will share pictures.
L...L...What begins with L ???
Laughing, Living and Learning!!! These three things are always going on in our house.
This weekend I planned out the next six weeks for school. This will take us up until our Disneyland trip. I am officially now counting the days for this school year (2009-2010). For the month of August we are doing school four days a week and then will go to the pool one day a week. Co-op will start on Monday's in September so then we will be home Tuesday-Friday for school.
I use Sue Patrick's workbox forms and I color coded mine for each child to match the colors on their workboxes so it is easy to see. (See May 17th's entry) I have standard everyday things that go in the boxes and then I add in some other activites each day. I don't put in our unit studies because we need to do these all together at the same time. It is just easier for me that way.
Anastasia this week: Spelling, Vocabulary, Math, Reading, Awana, are the basics. She also does typing 20 min a day and guitar 30 mins. a day. She just finished a lap book on the American Colonies and is getting ready to start a history pocket book on the American Revolution. When her unit studies are different from the other kids we work on it during the afternoon while the 3 girls are napping.
Joshua this week: his first spelling book (he is very excited) I am using A Reason for Spelling with him, Math (both him and Anastasia use Horizons math), Reading (hooked on phonics), handwriting (I pull wksts. from the net), Awana, those are the basics. Others I add in are drawing, computer time, phonics games, story time, the science folders I made, Writing we are using WriteShop Primary book A. Then with Savannh and Alexa they are all working on finishing up their 5 senses lap book.
Savannah: She loves school and her workboxes. She is always looking for things to put in them! Her basics are her preschool workbook, the letter of the week activities, computer time, science folders, phonics folders, preschool activity bags, puzzles, etc. In September I am going to start the Saxon K math with her. It is more of a PreK math and I used it with the other two.
Alexa: She is really catching on and doing well with her boxes. She still doesn't know her colors yet! So once a day in a box I put a paper plate a small square of a colored piece of paper (let's say red) then a magazine. She has to look thru the magazine and find red things and then glue them to her paper plate. I am going to tie the plates all together with some yarn for a book for her. She also does, puzzles, computer time, story time, science folders, letter of the week, and preschool activity bags.
Natasha: She naps from 9-11 while we try and get workboxes done during this time!
Then she is up for snack while we do our unit study at the table all together.
Do you use workboxes? If so what are you putting in them this week?
Visit http://www.biblicalparenting.org/familytime.asp for more info. These are great books and the website has some wonderful resources. We currently have Bubbles, Balloons and Chocolate and Playing for Keeps. Our goal with family worship is to obviously do it ourselves on a regular basis but then also come alongside and equip other families in our church to do the same. We currently do not have a youth group and Jay is in charge in this area and we don't want a regular segregated youth group. We want to create families that do stuff together. We have seen many models and are trying to flesh out what it will look like.
Okay I digressed....back to our family night. We made home made pizza and then when we were finished we sang a couple of songs together. We are trying to teach the kids some of the songs we sing regulary in church together so they know the words and can get excited to sing along.
Then our activity was based on Good and Bad words. There were several scripture verese we talked about: Proverbs 12:18, Proverbs 25:18, Proverbs 15:4, and 1 Thessalonians 5:11. The kids need to memorize part of 1 Thess. is is : Encourage one another; build each other up.
Before we started reading I had the kids pick numbers and who ever got the closest was the one who I would trace for this activity. (Everyone got to participate but we didn't need four outlines haging on the wall) Joshua won so I traced his body and hung it on the wall:
After going over the verses we told the kids we were going to see how words can build people up and how they can tear people down. I had slips of paper and the kids called out words to me that build people up such as: I like you, Thank you, I will be your friend, let's play etc. Then we listed words that tear down such as: ugly, stupid, your mean, I don't want to play with you, idiot etc.
I put the seperated slips of paper in a bowl. (Use the tearing down words first) They took turns picking one out and said what type of word it was. Each time they said a tearing down word they tore a piece of the paper body off.
Then they picked building up words from the other bowl and as they said nice words we taped the guy back together.
Of course you can still see the scars (what a great object lesson). We really need to be careful what we say because we can build someone up but the bad words can still leave scars. When we were done taping him back together we all went around and had to say something nice about each person in our family. We are going to do that all week at dinner. We are also pointing out good and bad words more specifically this week and working on just using building up words.
What a great first activity of this type. Stay tuned this week to see what is next. We will have our family night on Thursday this week.
