Letter E Week ( a week late)

Most of you know we had our first ever His Voice Global Weekend this last week. That meant we would be doing a large deal of traveling, schooling on the road and taking a week break from school. This is why I haven't posted the E week. It was a couple weeks ago so I am a little foggy on all that we did but here are some of the things.

For our Bible time we did God is Faithful, You can be Generous. We talked about what it meant to be generous on many levels in many different ways. Generous with not just your money and possessions but also with your time and actions. Our verse was James 1:17 "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." This was a fun verse in that we talked about our shadows, did shadow experiments and discussed how they, like us, are always changing but God is not. Titus really loved this idea.

For Justus' pre-school we made a "E"lephant. He LOVED this. He loves playing with his toy elephant so this was a big hit. He showed everyone who came over :)

By the time the week was ending and we were about to leave for Missouri because of packing and last minute details of the weekend, I felt like I didn't do much with Justus for the letter E besides a few drawing things. So we spent a morning at the zoo! We went with the mission of finding Elephants and Eagles.

We were successful. We love the zoo but going to purposely look for certain animals we had studied...made it EXTRA fun. Titus got into it which made Justus all the more excited.

That's honestly all I can think of that is "post" worthy. We read The Ear Book and some books about Elephants. Also, we read Everyone Everywhere by Noel Piper.

Hope this helps yall with the letter E!

Ducks, Dinosaurs and Doing School On The Road

I guess that is a bit of a tricky title. Do not be misled, I am not writing much about how we do school on the road in this blog but we did, in fact, school part of the week on the road.

For the D Bible Verse we did Philippians 4:6-7 "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petitions, with thanksgiving, present your request to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus." This was a long verse that was very familiar to Titus. So we listened to this song and watch the below video to help with it. I dont think he got the entire verse this week, but he definitely understands the concept and where it is located in the Bible.

For our "God is Faithful, You can Be/Have" board we did, "God is Faithful, You can have Peace." This is a big concept for Titus that we pray goes down deep in his heart and mind. He is our worrier and so this is a concept we practices often around our home! This was good reinforcement for sure!

This week we did more "hands on" because I was packing us for our trip and needing him to be occupied with out my guidance. Also, it was just soooo nice out!! I hated making them stay in and school so we did a lot out side.

We left for Houston on Thursday morning so we schooled a bit on Thursday afternoon when we arrived and then again on Friday in the hotel. I brought alot to do with Justus but haven't quite got the hang of schooling two in hotels, this was my first go round, so we didnt actually do much at all with Justus. We did some of the activities I had planned to do in the hotel, tonight when we got home.

So here are some of the D things we did::

Here are some of the D books we read::

We made a Dinosaur out of the letter D.

Titus actually did most of this while Justus screamed "STEGOSAURAS!!" over and over. I guess we can do this again for the letter S.

Brother read him Dinosaurs Before Dark::

this picture is when he started. Titus took the book on the road with us and read it to him as we drove. Do not be fooled though, I am unsure that Justus listened at all except the day this picture was taken, but who knows.

We went and fed the Ducks::

This was, as always, a big hit. It was a very nice day so the ducks were a little full from all the other kids feeding them too.

We dug for dinosaurs::

I just buried some of his dinosaurs, big and small, in the sand box.

Dinosaurs hunting for Ds::

I had Titus hide the letter D all around the house. They put on Dinosaur masks and Justus "hunted" them with help of Titus, of course :)

That's it for D week...I think :) I am so tired, so I apologize if this makes zero sense! ha!

Remember.

Today we remember. We remember those who were lost in the tragic events of 9/11/01. We all remember the moment we heard.

To those who have experienced great loss through these events, I am so sorry. We honor you and your families this day. Thank you to all who serve our country. You are not forgotten.

I kept seeing this video retweeted over on twitter and finally decided to watch it. I am so glad I did. Please take a moment to do so as well. You will be blessed.

Gluten Free Granola

Hey Yall! I posted a pic via instagram of the granola that I had made and got lots of commenters asking for the recipe. I have posted a similar one HERE years ago but here is approximately what I do now. I never make it the same so feel free to mix and tweak whatever you want! Oh and by the way, any oats will do but most all oats are full of gluten so if you are hoping for these to be gluten free you will need to make sure you buy g-free oats. (Here is a link to ones we get if I cant get them at a local g-free store although this is a link to a 4 pack so don't worry its not that expensive!)

I have a method of doing this that keeps the cost down and keeps the majority of items fresh and local. I take a measuring cup with me to a store that sells bulk raw nuts (or farmers market if you have one close that actually sells nuts that are raw & local. local nuts are not easy to find in some cities so at least go for raw) and just measure out and buy exactly what I need.

Ingredients::

4 1/2 cups gluten free oats ::

we prefer quick cooking oats but rolled oats work well too

1/2 cup of 4 different seeds or nuts.

• Example :: 1/2c pecans,1/2c cashew, 1/2 sliced almonds, 1/2 pumpkin seeds:: all nuts need to be broken up to edible pieces if not already. I some times use extra to make it less sweet...its up to you

1/4 cup flax seeds (optional)

3/4 cup PURE maple syrup ( i use a medium grade)

1/4 cup Local honey

1/4 cup Coconut Oil or Canola Oil whatever you use around your house (canola works best but it is not easy to find non GMO canola in the US)

1 teaspoon vanilla (if you are going for g-free be sure to make sure your vanilla is in fact g-free, not all are)

Cinnamon to taste

1 1/2 cups dried cranberries (or raisins or dried anything fruity)

Directions::

Pre-heat oven to 350.

In a large bowl mix all the oats, seeds & nuts. This step is very simple if you already measured out your nuts because all you do is pour them all in and stir!

In a separate small bowl, mix the syrup, honey, oil and vanilla. Once it is mixed well, pour this mixture over the oats/seeds/nuts. Stir until all dry ingredients are covered.

Grease a 10X 13 pan (the deepest one you have) and pour all ingredients into the pan. lightly dust with cinnamon and place in oven. Set the timer for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes pull it out and stir it carefully (the pan will be very full). Lightly dust with cinnamon again and place back in oven for 10 more minutes. Repeat this until it is a desired texture. I prefer it to be less crispy and sticky so I do it for 3 rounds. But many do it up to 5 rounds.

Pull final granola out of the oven and let it cool to room temp, stirring occasionally to avoid it clumping up. Then add cranberries and you have granola!

If you use G-free oats you will need to refrigerate your granola. We refrigerated it way before we were g-free because we liked it cold!

Enjoy!

C is for Caterpillar, Cupcakes and Casting Your Cares

Here I am blogging week 3 and feeling a little insecure about the "homeshcooliness" of this blog recently. I am going to try my best to up the "cool" factor in the next few weeks by posting things other than the musings of my attempt to homeschool a 2nd grader while keeping a preschooler entertained. But lets be real, the day in and day outs of our lives are not "cool," and never have we claimed that to be true, so we will see what I can do in way of other subjects to cover :)

If you are new to this homeschooling series, you might want to check out the previous posts:: Intro, A & B

Our verse for the letter C was :: Cast your cares on the Lord and He will sustain you. He will never let the righteous fall. Psalm 55::22

This was very timely in that we had a loss in our family this week. In light of this we decided that for our "God is Faithful, You can be____" board we would do "God is Faithful, You can be Comforted & Comfort Others." This was great for our verse and for our letter although we generally don't stick with the letter for this activity. It was also great for what was going on in our family. We talked about times when they have been comforted by God and how He was faithful to hear them when they prayed. Then we had them think of some people who were going through something hard and send them a letter with the verse on it. Titus LOVED this. Justus was sorta clueless but had fun. :)

We love Seeds Family Worship and they happen to have a video out for Psalm 55:22 so we watched it multiple times a day this week. It really helped!

For Justus we did our normal letter pages::

We read lots of C books::

We pulled out the paint dabbers this week which were a huge hit! So I put a bunch of letters on a page and had him dob the C's. I was so excited at how well he did, I had very low of expectations. He mixed up a few Us but I thought it went great and he loved it!

We made a Caterpillar out of two C's. We read (and watched) The Hungry Caterpillar. I had hopes of making a Cow out of a C also but didn't get around to it.

We delivered one of the boy's "comfort letters" to a friend who just moved and she happens to work at Starbucks. SOO we did C is for Coffee. (of course!) We looked all around the store for Cs and J loved it. We found them all over, Cafe, Coffee, Cake, Cappuccino, etc. Justus (if you know him this wont surprise you) was a little too loud and excited about the Cs so our field trip didn't last that long! ha! He was screaming "C mama C!" and the people in the cafe were not as excited about this schooling experience as we were. hehe!

We had Chocolate Chip Cookies but I have no pics of it because I was indulging in them myself since I made them gluten free!

And last but not least:: CUP CAKES!

That's all I can recall for C. I hope this helps yall! I know I keep saying this but I plan to blog what all Titus is covering this year...I'm working on it. I hope to have linked all the curriculum and sites we use. Please pardon my slowness.

B is for Brown Bear and other ramblings of B

Hey yall! I hope the last two posts have been helpful for some of you. I have heard from many of you (although not via comments on the blog) that these posts have gotten your wheels turning and I am so glad! I personally never imagined I would actually ENJOY teaching pre-k and elementary school! ha! Its awesome what the Lord does in your heart when He is asking you to do something.

Week one went MUCH smoother than week 2. Justus was very into the letter A, the new routine and special attention but when it lasted beyond a week he was over it. So, I had to step up my game :) At this point in his life, I really want him to learn through play so remember these things I post only take about 10-20 minutes max and as you can see we only do a handful of things each week. I do however try to pull to the front or reintroduce him to his toys & and books that go along with the weekly letter...at least that's what I've done so far seeings as though its only week 2! Ha!

Like I have mentioned in previous, posts our Bible/Theology lessons this semester are all about "God is Faithful; You can be/have____" This week our 'B' Bible Verse was "Behold, I am making all things new." Revelation 21:5 So our "God is Faithful" saying was "God is Faithful. You can have HOPE!"

We did a few art project based on God making all things new. We talked a lot about the New Earth and God redeeming all things. I must say, it was a fun week. We collected things out side that had died and painted them like we thought they might be on the new earth. I had Titus do his writing lesson on this making complete sent

ences about the things he painted. (A fun side note is :: without planning ahead, Titus' history curriculum covered the exile of John to the Island of Patmus during the persecution of the Jew by the Romans. It was so fun to see Titus know the story and understand when the verse he was learning was written! fun!)

Justus painted leaves and a rock::

We started Operation World this week. In the mornings when the boys wake and I am finishing up breakfast, they sit at the table and 'read' their Bibles. Justus just looks at the pictures in his and Titus reads his out loud to all of us. We do this with their Jesus Story Book Bibles. Then we go the computer and look up the country Operation World has highlighted for the day. We talk about the statistics of the country, find it on the map and pray for the people there. Titus likes this a lot...Justus...well, he is extremely non-verbal so its hard to say if he likes it or not...he just takes it all in.

I still haven't posted about the curriculum we use for Titus for all the other subjects, I really hope to get around to that soon.

So here are some of the things we did with Justus for the letter B::

We read lots of B books like Brown Bear & The B Book::

We made the letter B into a bear and into a butterfly:: these animal letters have turned out to be Justus' favorite thing so we are going to try to do a couple each letter. I let him cut on some of these as you can tell on the eyes and mouth of the butterfly :)

We did more of the homemade B worksheets. We colored in Blue and we glued Buttons on a different day. We also did more letter stamping with B.

And no day is complete to Justus with out a little playdough so we did Blue playdough::

On the first blog I realized I forgot to tell about a few things that get LOTS of use around here during the day. The Tag Junior Reader. We LOVE this thing. It reads books to Justus and he loves doing this by himself. It makes him feel like he is reading.

And lastly....$.50 stickers. These have come in so handy. Each day I put a sticker of the letter we are focusing on on each of his hands. He loves it. Then he wants to put some on mine, so if you see me this week and I have a letter sticker on my hand...you will know why :)

A friend of ours is doing preschool with her son while her kiddos go to Classical School two days a week and they homeschool the others. We got to meet them at Cabella's for a "field trip" to see the animals. Justus had a blast finding Brown Bears, Black Bears and Polar Bears. He found Bass, Beavers, Bucks and Bison. It was so fun. I highly recommend it if you have little ones and live near a Cabella's or a Bass Pro.

Well, that was longer than I meant it to be...sorry. But I hope it helped y'all! It was fun for me to journal it. Thanks for stopping by!

Big A, Little A, What Begins With A?

Week one we began with the Letter A.

(before you read this you might want to read the Intro post. Also please know while you read that our boys are normal boys. It is sometimes fun and dreamy to think of things you want to do w/ your kiddos but the reality is some things flop...but somethings totally turn out fantastic and totally worth the effort. You will never know what they love if you dont try! hope this helps someone get there wheels turning!)

Our Memory Verse was " A gentle answer turns away anger, but a harsh word stirs up wrath" Proverbs 15:1 (because we were having some issues with the boys tones towards each other and towards us we thought this was only fitting :) We were going to use "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" Romans 3:23 but Titus already knew it and I was on this blog I found via Pinterest looking for 'A' activities and the mom was using this verse for 'A' and I thought it was great for our situation!

We are covering God's faithfulness (like I mentioned briefly in the Intro post) and with each week we are saying, "God is faithful. We can be ______" this things will not correspond with the letter of the week but will go along with stories we are reading / hope to read. We started this with "God is faithful. We can be courageous" We have a book of children's stories about virtue and one entire section is on courage and perseverance. So we read those to the boys this week. We talked about all kinds of ways God has been faithful to us and others we know. We read many Bible stories about men being courageous because they knew God was faithful.

For Titus' school he followed most all of his curriculum (which I plan to list out w/ links some day ) and it seems to be a good fit so far.

Here are some of the things we did with Justus::

I made shape flash cards. He loves them. We can hide them around the house. We can carry them around and match them with objects around the house, etc. Or just use them as flash cards. If they get torn...no biggy, I made them on a whim w/ a 3X5 card and a marker!

I mentioned in the Intro post that I had picked up some of these from the dollar bin at Target. They are fun and age appropriate. He is not as skilled w/ his pencil but he is catching on.
We did "A is for Apple" (found on this site) I just drew apples w/ a marker on a piece of printer paper and he glued tissue paper pieces on each one as I told him the color to use. This helped with motor skills (gluing/placing) and worked on his colors along with the obvious A sound.
This was another Pinterest find. (here is a fun link for letter projects) All the letters can become animals! A is for Alligator. This was a definite favorite for Justus!
A friend of mine made 5 sets of alphabet coloring sheets with just a maker and some printer paper. We paint them, marker them, color them, cut them...easy, quick and fun.
I found a super cheap set of wood stamps of all the letters at Jo-Ann Fabic on Teacher weekend. We have TONS of ink pads so this was another cheap activity that Justus LOVED. He seriously loved this. He did so many sheets just like this of A.
I found a set of the Letters that teachers use for their bulletin boards for a dollar or two and thought they would come in handy. They were a lot of fun. you can do all kinds of things with them!
I think that's about it for A. Hope this helps someone get their brain going for your home! Remember for the littles, they will only last about 10 mins on any given project so dont spend much time getting it ready just throw it together and they will love it!