Piano

I used to really enjoy playing the piano. I took piano lessons for years, and I even have a piano in the living room, with a bench full of music. I hadn't played it FOREVER until yesterday, when I got sick of looking at the book that I had staged on the music stand, so I dug through the bench looking for something else. I think I still recognized most of the notes and started practicing a song, but it was hard without a metronome (you know, the thing that ticks so you can keep time). Then, it dawned on me - I bet there are a zillion online metronomes out there! Sure enough, I found one right away: http://www.metronomeonline.com/. How cool is that? There was a cell phone version too, but I think you had to buy the app for it. You can buy metronomes too, although a lot of them are digital, which I don't think existed back when I took lessons. I like the old fashioned ones with the stick that ticks back and forth. There are plenty of both kinds for sale online: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=metronome&x=0&y=0. If I can manage to master a song, maybe I'll post a video of it. Give me a while...I don't want to embarrass myself.
Today, we're studying the second fruit of the Spirit - joy - in kids' church. Here's our "joy" memory verse:

Psalm 28:7 - The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped. My heart leaps for joy and I will give thanks to him in song.

We're going to make shields, which the boys will love, and give thanks to him in song, which the boys will pretend to hate but will secretly enjoy. Have I shown you our favorite fruit of the Spirit song? Here it is:

Island of the Blue Dolphins

The kids and I just finished reading Island of the Blue Dolphins, by Scott O'Dell, and we did a cool lapbook project along with it. I did not make this project up. (Ha! As if you were wondering.) We got it for free from Hands of a Child, a lapbooking website: http://www.handsofachild.com/freebie.html. I was surprised by how much the kids loved the story, because it is, after all, about a girl...but they were fascinated. I was fascinated too. The book is based on a true story of a girl who lived alone on an island for 18 years! She was finally "rescued," but by that time, no one knew her tribe's native language anymore (the tribe had all died, mainly of disease), so no one was ever able to get the details of what she did all that time. She could only communicate in signs. So it's historical fiction, and it's awesome. We want to watch the movie (circa 1964), but it looks like we'll have to buy it. Here's a link, if you're interested: http://silveragemovies.com/island-of-the-blue-dolphins-1964-p-255.html.
We did find a movie called End of the Spear on Netflix - also on Hulu - also at this website (http://endofthespear.com/%29, which is a great movie about Nate Saint, the missionary pilot who died trying to help the Wuaroni tribe in Ecuador. We read about him for school a few weeks ago and just happened upon the movie while searching the "faith and spirituality" category. There was a documentary about him too, but we haven't seen that yet. Be prepared to read a bunch of subtitles to your younguns, because all of the dialog between the Wuaroni natives is in the Wuaroni language. If you'd rather read the book, here's a link to that; it's written by Nate Saint's son, Steve Saint.
Our other big project right now is studying and memorizing the fruits of the spirit, which are: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Even Esme has these memorized, although demonstrating them consistently is another matter. For some great songs about this verse (Galatians 5:22-23), check out my YouTube playlist: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE7E25DA3AC5CB32.
And that is homeschooling for this week.

A New Song

I'm excited to go to my Wednesday morning bible study today, because we're starting a new book and I think I might actually get caught up on the reading beforehand. We're on our second book in the A New Song series, which is a Lutheran study based on the book of Psalms. Each book in the series studies 6 psalms over the course of 6 weeks. It's very cool, and several of us are not even Lutheran. There is a lot more focus on baptism in the Lutheran church than in mine, but that's the only thing I notice...and I guess it doesn't really bother me.
Here's the verse I'm studying right now from Psalm 9: "The Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. And those who know Your name put their trust in You, for You, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek You." Yeah!
I take all of the kids with me, and the older two get $2 if they do a good job of helping with the kids in the nursery, so we ALL look forward to this study. If you're in Carroll, and you're free every other Wednesday at 9 a.m., come and check it out! Oh, and you have to be a woman.

Dinner Time Devotions

John has been wanting to get more involved in homeschooling, and we decided he needed to teach a daily Bible lesson to the kids. We found this great book at the Christian book store in Ankeny: Dinner Table Devotions by Nancy Guthrie. It has a lesson for every day of the year, including a message, related Bible verses, and discussion questions. We've been doing them after dinner, while everyone is still sitting at the table, and I LOVE it. The lessons would work for anyone from my kids' ages to teenagers, and the discussion questions are really good. It's a lot easier than trying to come up with your own lesson, and I'm pretty sure we could use this for several years in a row, since the kids' understanding will evolve and they'll continue to get something new out of the material even after seeing it a couple of times. I like that everyone doesn't just get up and run away after they finish their meal, and it only takes 5 minutes or so to do the whole thing, so the kids pretty much stay focused on it. The book looks cute too - check it out:

Allison's Favorite Show

We got rid of cable, then we got rid of Netflix, but I just can't survive without some kind of TV. I'd like to think that I'm intellectual enough to live on books and conversation alone, and maybe the occasional documentary from the library, but I'm not. Sometimes, my brain just needs to stew in its own juices for 23 minutes or so while I lounge and stare. My new favorite show is Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home on Hulu (http://www.hulu.com/watch/233291/julia-and-jacques-cooking-at-home-roast-chicken). Hulu is free - although I think there are additional shows available if you pay - and the picture quality (on my laptop) is just as good as Netflix. I think if you buy an internet-ready TV you can watch Hulu on that too.
We watched The Miracle Maker, a claymation film about the life of Jesus, at KIDS church last night on Hulu too...because I didn't have time (okay, I didn't make time) to prepare a whole lesson. We did play a game that the kids liked - I put each word of their memory verse (Matthew 6:21) on a balloon, and they took turns finding the next word and popping that balloon. Simon was the best popper.
I did a search for "Christian" to find other suitable movies for church night, and I couldn't figure out why it pulled up a bunch of episodes of Project Runway (which I love but is definitely not church night material). Turns out there's a guy named Christian in one of the seasons of the show. Aha.

Matthew 6:21 - For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Psalm 1

We're studying Psalm 1 in the Wednesday morning bible study I just joined, and it's a cool Psalm. It reminds me of my grandpa, who has a poem about trees on his headstone (he's still living; he just has his headstone already). I can't remember the poem, but it has to do with trees, as does Psalm 1. My grandpa loves trees and wood and building things, and he's a great example of a man who is "planted by streams of water." I'm praying today that all of my children and stepchildren recognize the importance of who they "walk in the counsel of" and choose friends who help them to prosper - not wither. 

Psalm 1:
1 Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. 2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. 3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers. 4 Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away. 5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. 6 For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

Of course, I shared this with John, and, of course, he knows it from  memory. So my goal is to memorize it too...so far, I can get "blessed is the man who" and then I start to get confused. Argh.

Memory Verses

One element of our curriculum that I really like is the weekly memory verse. I am really, really bad at memorizing Bible verses, so I'm looking forward to the challenge of memorizing a verse a week. Our first verse is John 3:16 - possibly the most often memorized/quoted verse in the Bible - but not one that I personally have managed to memorize. Yet. The kids are writing it in their notebooks once a day, and I also laminated it onto some index cards and posted them all over the house. One is stuck to the TV, which is perfect, because you can't help but stare at it in between episodes of "The Suite Life of Zach and Cody" and "Dora the Explorer." On Friday, we made collages of people that we cut out of magazines and pasted the verse in the middle of it, and we talked about how ANYONE, no matter what they look like, can be part of God's kingdom. It was fun. Esme glued all of her pictures on top of each other using a massive amount of glue, and Isaac decided he'd rather use animals than people, but I think they understood the point.

Here's the verse stuck to our TV. This, children, is the ancestor of the modern flat-screen television set. It's old, but I love it. Mainly because it fits nicely on the table that it sits on and because I can tell myself that we aren't THAT into watching TV, because if we were, we'd have a bigger set.