Back to School

Well, it has obviously been too long since I updated my blog. We started week 15 today (so I'm going to skip filling in the weeks we've done since my last posting).

I think it was fortuitous (or perhaps Providence) that there was a recent discussion on the MFW message boards about Story of the World and how it introduced Islam. Thanks to that discussion, I was able to preface that reading with, "Now, this is what Muslims believe happened, and what they pass down to their children." The kids totally got it and compared some of what we believe as Christians as compared to the little bit discussed in the passage we read today. The Muslim Fact Cards were also helpful. Be sure to read the verses that compare Muslim beliefs to Christianity.

The rest of the day went quite well. Since we had done the lung experiment last year, we didn't repeat it today. But, I did read through the description again. Everything else went smoothly, even math (fractions!). Again, Providence played out in English. A few weeks ago in Writing Strands we had worked on point of view - telling a story from 1st person and then retelling the story in 3rd person. Today's English assignment from Intermediate Language Lessons was similar - write a story in 3rd person, and then rewrite it in "autobiographical" form, meaning 1st person. Since we had done the Writing Strands lesson before, it was pretty straight forward. We outlined what we were suppose to talk about, and did most of the assignment orally. Rabbit even asked if, "Later, can I rewrite the story differently."

The boys surprised me in that they didn't forget much over our long (for us) Christmas break. I didn't do MFW 1st today, but instead did All About Spelling, had them read to me, and had them do worksheets with math fact problems. Tigger even did a couple of math pages from a Lightning McQueen math workbook I picked up sometime in the past. I told the boys if they could read the last story in the second 1st grade reader from Abeka, we could go onto the third book. They both did well, so I'm going to go on to the third book in the series. They sat in on the Bible, History and Science of RTR, so I figured that it was good.

I love it when we have a good day of school, and God's hand showed up in the details with the discussion on the MFW message board and the fact that we had already done a similar lesson in Writing Strands before coming to it in English.