Crying out for Help

"They were helped in fighting them, and God handed the Hagrites and all their allies over to them, because they cried out to Him during the battle. He answered their prayers, because they trusted in Him." - 1 Chronicles 5:20

I was reading about King Saul this morning, and came across this verse. It reminded me that I need to cry out to God in my battles, and He will answer my prayers because I trust in Him. I so often try to do things in my own strength and my own way. I can do it for a while, but then I wear down and really struggle. And then He sends a great verse like this.

A neat thing, doing our school Bible lesson this morning, was the story of Elisha in Dothan, and the Aramean army had surrounded the town (in 2 Kings 6). Elisha's servant got up early, looked outside and got a little worried, to say the least. Elisha prayed that his servant's eyes would be opened. What did he see? Chariots of fire surrounding the Aramean army.

And I think of my battles. Battles with patience. Battles with doing the right thing. Battles with my flesh. And I wonder, what chariots does God have around me to help me fight my battles?

Seder Supper

Tonight is the start of Passover, so we did the Seder Supper. (We're not having a Spring Break, so we didn't do a full blown supper.)

We had gone to a Seder Supper a couple weeks ago (Rabbit and I, that is) with our Keeper's of the Home group, so I kind of knew what I was going to do. A Messianic Jewish family hosted it. They did an abbreviated version. It was neat, because they would say the words in Hebrew and then in English. The Hebrew sounded like singing. It was also neat to get a Jewish person's perspective on the traditions and meanings in the Seder Supper.

Tonight, we had a regular dinner first. The Seder isn't suppose to start until sundown, but that would have been pushing it for my kids. Plus, there is a bunch of ceremony to get through before you get to the meal. So, we read through the ceremony. The kids tried some of the things - like the parsley in salt water, but were afraid to try the horseradish. They loved the Matzo bread. I bought a Matzo Ball & Soup mix from the grocery store, and made that to eat during the "meal" part. Rabbit and I and Dad ate the soup, the boys just munched on Matzo bread.

I did hard boil an egg for the plate, and then the kids made a "lamb bone" from a paper towel tube wrapped in masking tape. So, we tried to have all the symbols, even if they weren't exact. (I find it interesting that the egg was the "peace" offering, and then Easter coming up with candy-filled eggs...)

We skipped a lot of the alternating leader/family parts of the ceremony, and it still took us over an hour to do. So, if you do all of it, be prepared for it to take a while

I made the Charoseth by the book. Then for horseradish I just bought some horseradish root and peeled it and cubed it and ran it through the food processor. The interesting thing about horseradish is it has some bite, but it doesn't linger like chili or other spicy foods do. Making the Matzo sandwich with the charoseth and horseradish together also helped keep the bite down.

The symbolism of the broken bread and Christ's body broken for us, the symbolism of the lamb for the Israelites and Jesus as our sacrificial lamb, the message of God's love and grace to us through-out history is just precious. This is a festival worth doing, at least part of it.

Week 26 in CTG

I had to do some adjusting to get our lighter days to line up with Wednesday again. With P.E. class for the boys and dance class for Rabbit, it is just too much to have a "regular" day on Wednesday. So, we ended up doing 3 days of mostly just the 3 "R's" and then catching up on some art project we hadn't done yet. So, it work out great getting caught up.

This week we covered Elijah's life in Bible history, and then learned about India in World History. we covered Hinduism and Buddhism. It is great to know that Rabbit has such a firm foundation in God's word and can see the holes in these religions.

For science, we didn't do the smell and taste activities. They seemed too complicated. We read the book and discussed. However, we did do "Seeing through Things" and "Where Was That Again?" They were both easy to do. The "Where Was That Again?" experiment was interesting. Rabbit could see from one eye better when the cup was closer and when the cup was farther away, but when it was in the middle (about 2 feet away) she had a hard time judging distance.

We started on Part II of The Children's Homer this week. It has been interesting to get to hear Odysseus' adventures.

Otherwise, we've been cruising along pretty well in the rest of school. In writing, I counted a letter she wrote to her pen pal as writing one day. Then we started on the next Writing Strands lesson. And we love listening to Handel. A lot of his music seems real light and airy.

Field trip to NCAR

On Tuesday of last week we took a field trip with our home school support group to Boulder to the National Center for Atmospheric Research. This was a great trip. We had a huge group, so they split us up into two. Our group got to go to a classroom first for hands-on experiments. The first experiment was to show that there is air pressure. They did this by pushing two plungers together (squeezing all the air out) and then having the kids try to pull them apart without twisting or pulling at the edges. It couldn't be done.

Next they learned about high pressure and low pressure. They took a small piece of wadded up paper and put it in the edge of a water bottle held horizontally. Then they tried to blow the paper into the water bottle. The paper jumped out every time! This showed that when they blew air into the bottle, they were creating high pressure in the bottle.

Finally, they did this experiment to show how hot air rises and cool air sinks. They had long, skinny tank with a divider in the middle. They put hot water (colored red) in one end, and cold water (colored blue) at the other. When the colored water reached the divider, the instructor pulled out the divider. It was neat to watch the cold water push it's way across the tank. The red water stayed up high, and the blue water stayed low.

After that, we went to a small theater to watch a short video about NCAR. Then, we got to play with the hands-on activities in the Exploration Hall. The favorite was the mini-tornado generator.
When we had spent about 20 minutes in the Exploration Hall, we got to go on a tour of the rest of the building. The best thing was seeing the computer they use to generate all their atmospheric models.

I think if you sign up in advance as a group (you have to), you can pick which topic to have them teach for the classroom time. We had such a broad range (from K all the way up to junior high at least, if not high school) that we picked Weather Forecasting. But, if you had a narrow age range, or could split your kids into narrower age ranges, you could pick even more interesting topics. Well worth the trip to Boulder.

Week 25 in CTG

It actually took us a week and a half to do this week. Rabbit got sick, and we had a field trip thrown in there too. Unfortunately, now our light and independent Fridays fall on Friday. I need them to be on Wednesday. But, I don't want to skip any days. Maybe I'll have to do some art catch-up days or something.

Bible covered from Solomon turning from God to Elijah and the Prophets of Baal. We learn how God keeps His promises - both blessings and curses. We see God faithfully providing. We also find that even in the midst of evil (Ahab and Jezebel), there are believers (Obadiah).

We did do some of the science experiments. We didn't build a stethoscope. But, we did use the ball of clay and toothpick to "see" our pulse. We didn't build the model of the brain, either. Instead, I went online and found a cut-away drawing of the brain that was labels and we compared it to what it said in the book. We did try the "Match the Mark" and "One or Two" experiments - those were easy and worth doing. I think the favorite experiment of this week was the "Drum Solo" experiment. We used Italian Seasoning. I think you can use even less of the recommended amount of herbs. I have a small boom box, and we used that. We had to plug our ears, though, to turn it up loud enough to get the spices to jump around on the plastic wrap. But, a cool experiment to try for sure.

We finished the first half of The Children's Homer this week. It was an interesting way to learn about the Trojans and Greeks.

For art, we were suppose to start learning how to paint, but Rabbit's sickness and other scheduled things cut that to a halt. I was planning on trying to do them this weekend, but alas, that didn't work either. I think we'll do last Monday's painting lesson tomorrow, so we at least get started on it, thought tomorrow will be busy too.

Everything else is going well. For the writing assignment, it has been a lot of me writing and just discussing with Rabbit. We done a little double dictation. I think part of the reason this particular assignment is hard for her is because she is not an organized person herself.

Now, how is this for a great "God" thing... Tomorrow night at our Keeper's of the Home meeting, a couple of families in our group that are Messianic Jews are going to do a pared down version of a Seder dinner. We're suppose to celebrate Passover as part of our curriculum. I'm not sure that we'll be able to do a full Passover week. But, I think it will be neat just to learn the symbolism. Rabbit hasn't always got the symbolism of the other feasts. So, this meeting tomorrow will give me a feel for how much of Passover we want to try to do this spring.

Week 24 in CTG

Week 24 in Creation to the Greeks covers from David and Bathsheba to Solomon. We learn first about the consequence of sin and the forgiveness of God toward a repentant heart. Then we see Solomon made rich, but by violating the rules God laid out for the kings (taking many wives, having many chariots and making much gold). History is basically the same as Bible this week, with a couple of extra readings on Israel during Solomon's reign.

We are still taking The Children's Home a chapter at a time. It is an interesting story, and Rabbit is finally getting better at narrating it back to me.

It wasn't a great science week - we just read most of the experiments, except "Oxygen In, Carbon Dioxide Out." This was a great experiment to do. Now, we modified it a bit. We didn't have any balloons large enough to go over the bottom of a 2 liter bottle. But, I had an old 12oz water bottle and that worked perfectly. Basically, we scaled down the model in the book. Also, taping the string to the bottom balloon to use it to pull it down didn't work - the tape pulled right off. But, we were able to just pull the balloon with our fingers and get the same effect. I have video of this, but I don't know how to where to put it online so it can be viewed. I'll try to do that. The kids loved this experiment - there were lots of ooohs and ahhhs.

The rest of school has been fine. We are progressing through All About Spelling Level 4 nicely. Usually 2 days to complete a step. Writing Strands has been a bit more of a struggle. This next assignment was to write about the things in her room in some order of importance. She didn't want to do her room, so we're doing the family room (or living room) instead.