A Lesson in Faith

Here's a narration of "A Lesson in Faith" from Parables From Nature, from my 6 year old son. I stopped after each page to let him retell what he remembered from the story, but will gradually read longer chunks before asking for his "telling".

A butterfly had baby butterflies. She saw a caterpillar. She was about to die, so she said, “Caterpillar, will you watch my baby butterflies? You must not give them the food you eat. You must give them dew.  I do not have time to look for another babysitter.” She handed the caterpillar some gold dust as a reward. “I'm getting dizzy!” the butterfly said. As soon as she stopped saying it, she closed her eyes and died.

Before the caterpillar could answer yes or no, she was stuck with “yes”. “What a silly thing to choose a poor little creature like me! But I guess that I'll have to do. I'll need some help by another creature.” But there was a problem. Which animal would be wisest? She started with the dog, but he was to fierce. Next, she went with the cat, but she was selfish. Finally, she went with the lark. The lark went up, way up to the sky. It took a couple hours til he came back down, though.

When the lark came back down, he said, “Unbelievable news, friend! Guess what they are to be fed?” “Honey and drops of dew from the flowers,” said the caterpillar. “No, guess something different,” said the lark. “All I can think of is cabbage leaves.” “That's exactly it,” said the lark, “cabbage leaves!” “But their hopeless dying mother requested....” “Do you even know what these eggs will grow into?” asked the lark. “Butterflies,” said the caterpillar. “No, caterpillars!” said the Lark. “And some day,” said the Lark, “you yourself will grow into a butterfly.” “Extremely impossible!” said the caterpillar.

As soon as the fighting stopped, the caterpillar heard something. She looked around. Green little caterpillars were out of the eggs. One day the caterpillar was going to turn into a butterfly. In her chrysalis she said, “I now am going to turn into a butterfly.” She began to tell everyone that she once was a caterpillar, but no one believed her.

I'm not sure he fully got the meaning of the story, but I'm very happy that he was willing to narrate and enjoyed doing so!  He was so proud of his work that we printed it and he showed Daddy.  I think we may fully convert to a more Charlotte Mason method around here, rather than the Charlotte Mason/Classical bent we began with.  I just love the books we've begun from Ambleside Online Year 1!  My son is so excited about them as well, and being a voracious reader, he is thrilled to have new material that is challenging to his mind and satisfying to his soul.  He didn't say that, of course, but I can see it!

“things to do today:”

My six-year-old wrote this list this morning:

"things to do today:
1: Pray
2: read Bible
3: read two chapters in Little House
4: take a rest
5: Draw
6: look at comics
7: eat a bagel
8: take a rest

So precious. I think I must be doing something right!

Tot School

9/20 to 9/26

Here's a few things we did this week!

Playing with Cuisinaire Rods.  He's really learned a lot of colors already and could tell me yellow, orange, blue, and green.



Bingo Dauber paintings!



Playing with a shape nesting toy.



Trying to tell baby sister not to play with his toy...."No, baby, no!" he would say.



Sorting dinosaur counters by color.



He insists on wearing his bike helmet backwards!



This boy loves changing clothes for each sport he's playing; this is baseball time!



Time for golf! I don't know how he knew to put a glove on, as he's never seen Daddy wear a glove when swinging a club outside.  He's pretty inventive and used this gardening glove as his golf glove.



Playing at the park after church. Such a beautiful day!



So Proud of himself! I love my joyful toddler :)

Ergo Baby Carrier Giveaway at Modest Mom

Head on over to the Modest Mom Blog and enter for your chance to win an Ergo!! I already decided (and asked my husband for permission!) that if I don't win this, I would like to invest in one anyways! I tried my sister-in-law's out and it's so comfortable for mama and baby!! I just need to decide which color....

Take a look at the Ergo Baby Carrier website.  What color would you pick??

Week 6

9/20/10 - 9/24/10

My Father's World 1st Grade Days 23-27

This is a page from the Reading portion of MFW, where Davin made a little "Animal Tales" book.  The sentence was "A cute bug rode a mule" and Davin didn't know what a mule was, so we looked it up in our World Book Encyclopedia, of course!  (Thanks, we're getting a lot of use out of our set, Uncle Jonny!)  We discovered that a mule is the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse, has long ears, and a short mane.  I asked Davin what was coming out behind the mule and he said, "That's the steam.  He's going full steam ahead!"



We studied "Rain" this week for science, and after reading about it in Things Outdoors, Davin's narration and illustration are pictured below.  I could not believe that he drew a diagram of the rain cycle, as there was not a diagram in our reading; so it showed how his brain synthesized and organized the information so well!  Loving this way of doing science!  A short reading from one book each week, followed by a narration & illustration, then some books from the library to reinforce the idea, and an "Exploration Day" to do experiments or other activities, and time for reading library books.



Here's an activity from our "Exploration Day," titled "Cloud/Rain Model".  We boiled some water (representing the sun heating rivers, oceans, etc. and causing water vapor to rise), removed the water from the heat and covered it with a bread pan full of ice cubes (representing the water vapor rising and getting colder and changing into water droplets).  It was neat!  We also read about rain in:

• World Book


• Usborne Internet-Linked First Encyclopedia of Science


• Kingfisher's 1000 Facts about the Earth


• ***Rain by Peter Spier


• Sun Up by Alvin Tresselt


• Down Comes the Rain by Franklyn M. Branley

Some things we learned:

• The sun heats the water in oceans and rivers and causes water vapor (a gas we can't see) to form and rise.


• Rain isn't new water.  The amount of water in the world is always the same!

"Make a Lake Model": marking a jar filled with water and watching the level drop each day due to evaporation.



We made a rain gauge out of a gallon milk jug.



Fall is here!



Davin's project on "Herps" from homeschool co-op.  He's really enjoying co-op and even said that his favorite part was Gym!!  I never expected that and I'm sooo happy he's enjoying gym time.  Gym time at Sparks is still kind of a tough thing for him, so this is encouraging.

Tot School

Dorian is currently 27 months old.

Here are some fun things we did this past week!

Playing with playdoh is always a big hit.  He's not quite strong enough to push down that little contraption, but I helped him to make countless "snakes"!

Beading activity.  It wasn't too long before he took a handful of beads and threw them....so we'll wait a while to try that again!

He must have been inspired by his playdoh, as he's practicing drawing some "snakes".

We had some gorgeous weather earlier this week, just perfect for playing outside!

Discovering that the scooter doesn't scoot so well on the grass.

Taking Hippity, the bunny, for a stroll.  By the way, I'm sorry to state that Hippity and that stroller got left out in the rain....but I'm sure they'll make a full recovery!

Swinging with Hippity.

Tot Tray: transferring seashells.  All these supplies, including the tray, were from the Dollar Tree, a Tot Tray jackpot!  The trays are meant for catering, but are a nice size for tot tray activities.  The tongs are wonderful and easy for little hands to grasp and open and shut.

Pouring, more like dropping, paperclips through the funnel into the glass jar.  Not quite sure what I was thinking with this one, but thankfully Dorian still enjoyed it!

Small Spaces: Putting the straws into the holes of a toothbrush holder (from Goodwill).

He liked the shells and laid them all out on the tray and we sorted them into types.  I wish I would have gotten a picture of him holding the shells up to his ear, listening for the ocean!  It was so cute.

These are "Dodo's Weh-gos".  Having a 6-year-old Legomaniac brother has caused this little guy to snub his nose to Duplo and insist on the real thing.  He loves, loves, loves the minifigs in particular, taking them apart and putting them back together in different combinations.

Find out what other moms are doing with their toddlers for Tot School over at 1+1+1=1

Week 5

9/13/10 - 9/17/10

Days 18-22 in My Father's World 1st Grade

• Bible: We memorized Proverbs 21:23, "He who guards his mouth and his tongue keeps himself from calamity."  We looked up this verse in some different Bible translations, like the NIrV (for early readers) and the NLT.  We preferred the NIV version, like My Father's World uses.  Davin said he likes "when it's a little more complicated," the vocabulary, that is.
  
  
  
  • We read from the Jesus Storybook Bible, pages 170-207.
  
  
  
  


• Reading: Davin worked on completing his "Animal Tales" book, which is turning out to be quite cute :)  He prints a sentence from the MFW workbook and then illustrates it.  I just love his drawings!!
  
  
  
  • Writing With Ease week 4, days 1-4.
  
  
  • First Language Lessons 14-17.
  
  
  
  


• 

• Math: Read these math library books about "Counting": *** = our favorites
  
  
  
  • Stay in Line by Teddy Slater
  
  
  • ***Ten Black Dots by Donald Crews
  
  
  • How Many Snails? by Paul Giganti Jr.
  
  
  • ***Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans
  
  
  • Spunky Monkeys on Parade by Stuart J. Murphy
  
  
  • Only One Neighborhood by Marc Harshman
  
  
  • ***Two Ways to Count to Ten by Ruby Dee
  
  
  • Missing Mittens by Stuart J. Murphy
  
  
  • Arctic Fives Arrive by Elinor J. Pinczes
  
  
  • Anno's Counting Book by Mitsumasa Anno
  
  
  • Double the Ducks by Stuart J. Murphy
  
  
  • Just Enough Carrots by Stuart J. Murphy
  
  
  • ***How Many Feet in the Bed? by Diane Johnson
  
  
  • For Singapore Math: Day 11-18 in lesson plan book.  In the picture below, he is doing a color by addition problem worksheet.
  
  
  
  

• Science: This week's topic was "Trees", so we began by reading about trees in Things Outdoors and then Davin did the narration and illustration page below.  Davin did  a bark rubbing outside and spent time exploring World Book's Early World of Learning website, which has an excellent science section for kids!  We also read:
  
  
  
  • A Tree is a Plant by Clyde Robert Bulla
  
  
  • ***I Wonder Why Trees Have Leaves by Andrew Charman and Davin learned some interesting facts: cinnamon is actually bark, pepper comes from berries, cotton is a plant, and carrots are roots!
  
  
  • ***A Busy Year by Leo Lionni
  
  
  • ***A Tree is Nice by Janice May Udry
  
  
  • Be a Friend to Trees by Patricia Lauber
  
  
  • ***A Log's Life by Wendy Pfeffer.  Davin LOVED this one!
  
  
  • Tell Me, Tree by Gail Gibbons
  
  
  
  

• We also read a few books on "Plants", last week's science topic, since I didn't want to miss out!  We read:
  
  
  
  • How a Seed Grows by Helene Jordan
  
  
  • How Flowers Grow by Emma Helbrough
  
  
  • Dandelions by Kathleen Kudlinski
  
  
  • From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons.  Davin did the illustration below by looking at a page from this book.  Isn't it just beautiful??!!  I was so impressed!
  
  
  
  

• History:  We read Chapter 2, section one: "Two Kingdoms Become One" in Story of the World: Volume 1, did the review questions, narrations, map work (learned a lot about the geography of Egypt and the Nile River), and read these books:
  
  
  
  • Croco'nile by Roy Gerrard.  We loved this one!
  
  
  • The Nile River by Mike Graf
  
  
  
  

• Poetry: worked on "The Yak".


• Hymn: "A Mighty Fortress is our God"

Davin also played with some of Dorian's Tot School trays:

New Legos!!

Sweet baby sister!!  She's always sticking out her tongue, looking so cute!

Hello! I am sooo adorable!

Okay, there was a big sale at Marie Madeline Studios, so I stocked up on some fabric!!  Now, if I can just find time to sew and have my mom come give me some lessons :)  I've not done too much sewing and would love to learn more and really could use her expertise!