Happy Easter!

Happy Easter, Friends!

I thought I'd share some of our Easter projects with you tonight. We've been doing a Grapevine Bible study on The Last Supper and found this adorable craft to go with it:

The bowls hold some of the results of a wonderful tradition of getting together with our friends to color eggs every year. We've been doing it since our oldest God-daughter, Sarah, was 4 or 5 years old. This year, her new husband joined us!

And yes, we do blow out the eggs so that we can save them. A drill and a bicycle pump make that job a little easier!

Of course, we had to look at Leonardo DaVinci's Last Supper. This link will take you to a page where you can view it pre- and post-restoration. And here is a short video that discusses the painting.

Since we studied the artist Benjamin West last year, we took a look at his version of the Last Supper as well. It's very different, but you can see that he was influenced by DaVinci's painting.

This evening after dinner, we made these little empty tombs for tomorrow. The directions can be found here. They were so simple but the boys absolutely loved making them! Tomorrow, they will all have little "He is Risen!" banners. Before bed, we read a book that we just discovered and absolutely LOVE about a rooster that witnesses the crucifixion but rejoices in new life 3 days later.

Have a blessed Easter!

Mrs. Katz and the Passover

Last week, we learned all about Passover with a sweet Five in a Row book, Mrs. Katz and Tush. In the book, an elderly Jewish lady is befriended by a neighbor family and eventually adopted as their "Bubee." She tells the boy the story of the Israelites' exodus from Egypt as they share the Passover Seder together.

We covered many of the FIAR lessons, including:

• "Love your neighbor as yourself." - we memorized Luke 10:27 and used it as copywork and cursive practice.
• We read the story of the Exodus and made really cute (I know that just seems wrong, but they really are cute) little books of the 10 plagues that I found at Homeschoolshare.com
• A yeast experiment - mix yeast and sugar in a bottle of warm water and put a balloon over the top. That worked so well that we had to secure our balloon with electrical tape.
• We talked about patterns, tried drawing our own and looked at these National Geographic patterns in nature.
• We learned all about Passover with The Matzah That Papa Brought Home.
• We learned about Warsaw, Poland during WWII and why Mrs. Katz left in The Cats in Krasinski Square.
• We learned quite a few yiddish words, ate bagels and attempted to polka. :)

I like to have a picture of the books to show you. However, Amazon apparently no longer supports just the picture of the books without the purchase information. I am not trying to sell anything here. Of course, I'm not against anyone using these links, because I will get a commission, but that isn't my reason for putting them there.

You turn your back for one minute...

and Pluto is no longer a planet. And now, friends, they're going after rainbows. According to this site, 

The sequence of colors red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet may be remembered by memorizing the name of that fine fellow "ROY G. BV". This was originally "ROY G. BIV", because it used to be common to call the region between blue and violet "indigo". In modern usage, indigo is not usually distinguished as a separate color in the visible spectrum; thus Roy no longer has any vowels in his last name.

Is nothing safe? What's next? My guess is they're eyeballing February. It never did fit in with that "30 days hath September" rhyme.

Now I would like to tell you that when we came to this point in our Noah study, we stood up and said "NO! We will not participate in this blatant, revisionist color snatching!" But those dot painters don't come in indigo. And you can't really mix them. Well, you can but the applicator tips get all messy and then the three year old wants to mix all of them and then the yellow actually paints green and he cries because he wants yellow and it's just chaos, I tell you! 

Sorry, Roy.

So here is Little Man's masterpiece:

and Z-Man's:

Nice, huh?

There's gonna be a floody, floody - All things Noah

We've had a fun couple of weeks here learning about all things Noah. We use Bible Study Guide for All Ages as a jumping off point.

Some cool things we learned:

• The Fisher Price ark sinks pretty quickly if you put it in the bathtub.
  
• There are a LOT of verses to that "Rise and shine and give God the glory, glory" song. And they all have hand motions. Don't forget the hand motions.
  
• The colors of the rainbow make a kind of muddy brown when you paint them all on top of each other.
  
• We looooove stickers. Oh yes we do.

So here are some of the things we did:

Printed out animal matching cards and laminated them with clear contact paper. Little Man almost has the hang of playing memory match. Almost.

We also printed an ark to color and we put animal stickers on, over and around it. Both were at the Jan Brett site, which is an educational wonderland in itself. For those who have children who could color for days on end, there is a very extensive mural to print out. Once assembled, it's like 3 by 6 feet. We don't have anyone with that kind of coloring stamina here.

Little Man also worked on his wooden Noah's ark puzzle and can do it completely without assistance.

We worked in The Ultimate Bible Sticker Activity Book which was a big hit. It's a DK book with over 250 stickers and also covers Joseph, Moses, Jonah and Jesus. Sorry, I can't find a picture of it.

We did some easy multiplication (twos, of course!) for Z-Man with a Youtube Schoolhouse Rock video from way back when you could actually use religious themes on Saturday morning TV.

Naturally, we had to round up all the toy animals in the house and play.

We talked about the search for the ark and the possible locations, obstacles to finding it, etc. Answers in Genesis has lots of interesting info.

We talked about God's mercy in waiting so long and giving people a chance to turn to him before the flood. We also talked about the meaning of names in the Bible and the long life expectancies.

We found some wonderful books at the Dollar Store that have all sorts of word finds, break the secret code, mazes, crosswords, activities where you have to look up verses in your Bible to complete a message, etc., that were great for Z-Man.

Next time...Rainbows!

Check this blog out for zillions of pre-school ideas:

Around the world resources

Because we have an extremely limited homeschool budget AND because we are so very blessed to live directly in back of our town's library, we plan to use the library extensively during our world studies this year. I have actually gone so far as to make "books to order" lists on i-Cal for the entire year. I told you I was a planner. Nevertheless, there are quite a few resources that I've purchased because they are a) not in our library system, b) some are consumable and/or c) we'll use them for all or most of the countries we visit.

ART: We plan to study the famous artists of the countries we visit and also use Global Art by MaryAnn Kohl. Have you seen her books? She has many and they are full of good, do-able ideas.

MUSIC: we have Wee Sing Around the World. It comes with a CD (or cassette, in our case) and very simple sheet music. Since a wonderful friend (thank you Lorie!) gave us a piano keyboard, I'm thinking of attempting to teach Z-Man to play some of the songs. This may or may not happen, you understand. We may just listen to the song from each country and I'll be fine with that.

As we study famous composers from some (not all) of the countries we visit, we'll try to find a broadcast on Classics for Kids, a great radio show with a large archive that you can listen to online. Here, you can click on a country to see who lived there. There are also printable activity sheets and games. Very cool!

BIBLE: In addition to our regular Bible reading program (right now we're using the Bible Study Guide for all Ages and we love it,) we'll also read a little bit about some of the missionaries that have served in the countries or regions that we're studying. Since we loved Wisdom and The Millers, I bought Missionary Stories with the Millers at our Homeschool Conference. I also borrowed Hero Tales (thank you Sharon!) and found Hero Tales volume 2. Since Z-Man is a pretty sensitive kid, these will be read-alouds so that I can edit on the fly if need be. 

  

Another book my kind friend loaned me is Window on the World. This is a fascinating book with great photos that lists people groups from A-Z, tells what they primarily believe, how they live, all kinds of facts about them and how to pray for them. We also have From Arapesh to Zuni: A Book of Bibleless Peoples. I'm sorry to say that there are many people groups in these books that I have never even heard of. So we'll all be learning a lot this year!

   

GENERAL: Atlases and lots of them! Mostly children's picture atlases. Oh, and this well-illustrated DK book about children, which I really like, and a fun coloring book:

  

Here are a few I'm still planning to get:

    

And finally, since I went a touch overboard on science this year, I think I'll save that for another post.

Fun Bible memorization for tots

As I was thinking about working with Little Man on his letters in a slightly more formal way today, I remembered something that Z-Man and I did when he was a tot. (And when I say tot, I honestly can't remember if he was 3 or 4. People told me that would happen, but I didn't believe it!) We made an alphabet book with short Bible verses for each letter and cut and pasted magazine pictures to decorate each page. 

I put my hand over his and we wrote the verse together*, we would say it over and over until I could just say the letter and show him the picture and he could respond with the verse. Now, we didn't do EVERY letter (like X) but that's still a lot of verses! He had quite a sense of accomplishment and took pleasure in showing friends and family. Of course, he's that kind of kid - Little Man, on the other hand, isn't big on performing. At all. But I think he would still enjoy making the book and learning the verses.

Now that I'm thinking of it, I remember getting the idea from this book, which is excellent:

Here are the verses we used, for anyone interested in doing this with their own tot:

• A  All we like sheep have gone astray. Isaiah 53:6
  
• B  Be kind one to another. Ephesians 4:32
  
• C  Children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Ephesians 6:1
  
• D  Don't fret or worry; it only leads to harm. Psalm 37:8
  
• E  Every good and perfect gift is from above. James 1:17
  
• F  "Follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men." Mat. 4:19
  
• G  God is love. 1 John 4:16
• H  He cares for you. 1 Peter 5:7
• I   "I am the Bread of life." John 6:35
• J  Jesus said, "Let the little children come to Me." Mat.19:14
• K  Kind words are like honey, enjoyable and healthful. Prov. 16:24
• L  Love one another. John 13:34
• M  "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me." John 10:27
• N  Now is the time to come to Jesus. 2 Cor. 6:2
• O  Obey God because you are His children. 1 Peter 1:14
• P  Pray about everything. Philippians 4:6
• Q  Quick Lord, answer me, for I have prayed. Psalm 141:1
• R  Remember your Creator now, while you are young. Ecclesiastes 12:6
• S  Sing a new song to the Lord. Psalm 98:1
• T  Thank God for Jesus, His gift too wonderful for words. 2 Cor. 9:15
• U  Underneath are God's everlasting arms. Deuteronomy 33:27
• V  Visit the orphans and widows. James 1:27
• Y  You must be born again. John 3:7

We didn't do W,X or Z. Obviously, this project is much easier to do with a stash of magazines that you don't mind cutting. Some verses are more challenging than others to illustrate, but as long as your child associates the verse with the picture, that's all that matters.

*Z-Man now tells me that one of the things he liked best about doing this project was the smell of the marker. Hmmm...