Sickness

Two weeks ago was our scheduled one week break from school.  We had completed 5 weeks of focused learning, and were looking forward to a week off.  It was a good time for all.  Then last week it was supposed to be back to lessons…and sickness hit both kiddos.

Really?

It wasn’t awful, but just enough to take away momentum and focus.  Sinus yuck just makes it that much harder to concentrate or want to do much in general.  So, last week was a miss on getting anything done.  Of course we still learned, read a few books together on the couch.  All-in-all though, not much forward movement.

This is ok.

I know this is truly not a big deal, and one of the perks of being at home to learn.  However, I feel like we are again trying to get back to it all.  Builder and Princess got used to laying around on the couch, and having maybe too much watching time.  And being so young, they just generally got out of the “habit” of school with two weeks off.  We did have a good day today though, so my hopes are high!

 

Your Turn ~ How do you come back from a bout of sickness in your homeschool?

 

P-Week, Passover

One thing I remember and adore about the ten years teaching in the public school system is all the times I remember seeing the Lord Himself leading my lessons.  He came as words of explanation I never would have thought of, lesson plans that tied together when I didn’t plan ahead that way, or words spoken to a student that you could tell went straight to their heart and soul.

These were beautiful moments.

Up until now, I haven’t really had that type of experience.  This “jumping in” year has been a lot of wading through days to find our identity as students and teacher.  Don’t get me wrong, the Lord has helped me tremendously in sorting through paradigm shifts in my thinking and expectations.  He has definitely been present in that way.

This week has been different.

Come Monday of this week I was already two steps behind.  I only had Monday and Tuesday mostly planned, with hopes that I would have time to finish planning the rest of the week (insert hysterical laughter here).  As expected, I didn’t have time to finish planning so it has been a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of week.  Our printer stopped working and our math units are primarily printed out.  This almost sent me to a place of annoyance and frustration until the Lord reminded me that people have been learning long before printers were around!  We have also started doing a Letter-a-Week focus for Madison (3 yrs).  Lately, she has been trying to find things to do and so I have been having letter activities waiting in the wings.

Not a hard thing, just one more thing.

This Letter-a-Week focus is where the Lord showed His presence just like I had experienced in the past.  I picked a random letter order from something I found online.  This week’s letter is P.  So I set up our sensory bin with P objects, had some ‘pig’ and ‘pumpkin’ crafts ready and waiting.  All well and good.  It took me a couple of days to realize we were also making daily crafts to celebrate Passover.  Hello, the ultimate ‘P’ focus.  Since the printer is not working and the plans were not made, there have been days this week where all we do is focus on the Passover crafts.  The entire time we have been making these crafts, I have seen how the Lord had this week set in all of time and history…

our own personal P-week focus…Passover

I was contemplating how to teach my kiddos about the death and resurrection of Jesus.  I tossed around thoughts of focusing on each day leading up to Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday.  I just wasn’t sure, so I decided to ask the Lord!  He told me to focus on Passover, including letting the kids know that Jesus died and raised during Passover.  He told me that if I focus on teaching Passover, when the time comes to focus on explaining Jesus’ journey to the cross and tomb, it will be that much richer, make so much more sense, and be effortlessly internalized.

Passover is the framework on which the crucifixion and resurrection are built.

So, I found this great Passover craft at Creative Jewish Mom website that showed different placards for each of the plagues leading up to and including the Passover.  We didn’t have dow rods or pipe cleaners so we went with tongue depressors and construction paper.  We did two plagues a day and read the account each day from their Beginner’s Bible.

1st plague – water to blood; 2nd plague – frogs

 

3rd plague – gnats; 4th plague – flies

We changed the fourth placard from the website.  There is debate over the Hebrew word used for this plague.  Some interpret it to mean “mixed or swarm of wild beasts” while others interpret it as “swarms of flies”.  Since the Bibles we have read flies, that is what I went with, informing the kids why we changed.

5th plague – Egyptian animals died; 6th plague – Egyptian skin broke out in sores

I also changed up the 5th plague just a tad.  She had pictured an elephant upside down, however when reading the account it doesn’t mention elephants.  So, we went with a horse/donkey.

7th plague – hailstorm

*We are working on completing the 8th-10th plagues.  I will add the photos when we finish.

They had a lot of fun acting out the plagues with their placards each time we read the account.  It has been a lot of fun, and I have learned along the way as well.  Always.