The currency of Grace is where my song begins...

Hair, Hopscotch & Harmonicas :: The Letter H week

We had a super fun week at school. Some weeks just seem to fly by and seem wonderful. (but those who homeschool know this is not always the case) I think it is because....brace yourselves...we didn't travel this week! It was easy to just spread out our things and get to learning. Titus flew through his work and was able to have lots of free time to work in his "lab" which is really just a table in our garage where he does experiments. Justus really seemed to like this week of school as well! I think it is a combination of things. Besides the fact that we had a very routine week, which he really thrives under, we also saw some major growth on his behalf. Those of you who know about some of the delays and needs Justus has had will love this post because you will see that he is really progressing in so many areas!! His speech, while still behind, is catching up and getting clearer and his ability to do both fine and gross motor skills are growing by leaps and bounds. Our chiropractor gave me some more exercises to do with him and in the short amount of time that we have been doing them, we have seen most all of the worrisome tendencies majorly decrease and some slowly leave!! (I know that is vague, as I have not really blogged about our journey with Justus. I haven't decided if or when I will do that)

In our Bible time this week we focused on the forgiveness of our sins. Our verse was Revelation 3:30, "Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him and he with me." We talked through this with Titus in quite a bit of detail. Because Titus is around a lot of Christian teaching as we travel he tends to pick up on little ideas here and there that aren't always clear to him. He is good about asking but I felt like this week he really asked some great questions about the soul & the location of the Spirit as he resides in us. This week I really let him talk it all out. He talked a lot, sorting through the imagery of Jesus standing at a door knocking, willing to come in. I love just letting him talk it out, sit with it and come to conclusions. It challenges me. Titus is very much a thinker. He will not be told, he must figure it out. So...this week he did the talking.

One of our family's favorite books is Halfway Herbert by Francis Chan. It starts with an H and the character starts with and H so I thought it would be a fun one to bring out this week. Titus read it this time. He enjoyed feeling "old enough" to read to us. This is a fantastic story of a boy who does everything "halfway" and sees that life is not intended to be done "halfway." If you don't already have this book and you have k-3rd graders I would highly recommend it.

For Pre-school with Justus we did a lot of fun activities for the letter H. His favorite toys right now are anything with wings or wheels, so the obvious H was HELICOPTERS!!! I found this one at Wal-mart for under $5 so I grabbed it for him. It made it even more fun that it was new!

Justus is just now getting into music. I, being a music lover, feel it necessary to act on this. So we did, H is for Harmonicas. At one point this week I thought I had lost my mind when both boys were playing their harmonicas loudly. Then I laughed and remembered that one day I will love that memory.

It was very nice weather this week, so the boys did A LOT of playing and exploring outside. I am so thankful for our backyard! I drew a hopscotch board on the back patio and they went to town having fun. This served as MANY helps for Justus. He has a hard time recognizing his numbers (although he can count and sort while counting he just cant recognize them as a symbol with great accuracy). So we yelled the numbers out loud as he jumped. We pointed at the numbers and rolled things to the numbers. It was great! I am not sure that he picked up that it was called Hopscotch and that that name starts with an H but ....who cares! :)

Our table projects (that we try to do when Titus is doing workbook type work) were about the words Hair and House. I just drew some people and had him color hair on them. The next day I drew a bigger person and had him glue tissue paper strips on for the hair. He thought it was funny!

And here is the letter project. We made H into a house. Justus really got into this. He thought it was fun because we talked about what all the house pieces were called, i.e. window, roof, chimney, curtains.

I think that is about it for H. Titus wanted me to take a picture of him doing work....so just in case you worried that Titus doesn't do much school since I never really blog about 2nd grade, here is proof:: (he was taking a grammar assessment)

Happy Schooling!