Hot, Hot, Hot!!!

We are in the middle of a drought. I have never seen this happen here and see and experiencing things I haven't before like the dryness of the air itself is really doing a job our allergies and sinuses. Our garden this year is very small and I won't even begin to talk about the grass. And then, to add the record heat...ugh! Anyway, when life serves you lemons, make lemonade. We wanted to see if it was hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk. Our results:

Today's science lesson

This was today's science lesson- build a bird feeder- from Apologia :

Please excuse my mess!

Please excuse my mess while I redesign my blog- prayerfully, it will be done shortly!

Year 1, Week 6-7 of Tapestry of Grace (Long)

After much prayer, the Lord has us use a another curriculum this school year- Tapestry of Grace. With the various ages of my children, it was answered prayer that I didn't know how much I needed. My planning time has been cut down tremendously and I now have time for other things like...well, living : ) The last few weeks have been fun and full of learning. Last week and this week we have learning about the Tabernacle and the Jewish Feasts. For my Dialectic level daughter, I used the information and books I already had on hand.

The last one is Ilumina- a computer Bible program with animations and a virtual tour of the Tabernacle.

Last Friday, we attended a Shabbat service at a local synagogue. I was a little nervous, but they were very welcoming and we enjoyed ourselves. My parents have gone to Israel several times and always bring us something back. About three years ago, my mom brought the boys back their own kippahs. They really didn't understand the significance behind them until they saw the men wearing them at the synagogue. Thankfully, I remembered to bring theirs and they wore them proudly. My youngest said, "My little hat is pretty cool, now!" lol

We covered Rosh Hoshana this week- interesting considering in reality it began Wednesday. I really wanted to return to the synagog to hear them sound the Shofar, but I read it was a high holiday and I may not be able to attend-understandable, but it would have been interesting none the less. I am greatly blessed to own two shofars from Israel, but I never been able to blow them, nor did I know anyone who could. So, I did what any mother living in 2011 would do- I looked up "How to blow a shofar" on youtube! And low and behold- there was tutorial!
We watched it and my children gave it a try:

I am going to attempt to upload a video, if not, it will be in the next post : )

It worked!!! Yay! Sorry, this is dark and badly done- this is one of my first times using the video camera and uploading. Love the look of shock on my daughter's face when she blew and sound actually came out!

My mother and I teach the Adult New Members class at our church. We go go thru the Bible and teach lessons from Genesis to Revelation. Very similar to TOG. So when we get to the tabernacle lesson, we have a large replica that people can actually go thru. My mom keeps it at her house so we went by and looked at each piece of furniture and discussed them:

The Brazen Alter

 

The Brazen Laver 

 

The Golden Candlestick:

The Table of Shewbread: 

The Alter of Incense:

The Ark of the Covenant:

 

The rest of the week we have been working on our tabernacle lapbooks and models. We did lapbooks about 5-6 years ago with our other curriulum and it was pretty neat to pull them back out and watch the kids faces. You can see them here and here. This time, 2 children wanted to do lapbooks and the other 2 chose to do a models.

While looking online for a model to build, I came across this one which was free and downloadable: 

http://www.gospelhall.org/teaching--preaching/sunday-school-lessons-and-activities-for-kids/sunday-school-lesson-219-the-tabernacle-in-the-wilderness.html

We are still working on everything and will wrap up this week-in time for our Unit Celebration. Here's a sneak peak-10 year old's model :

My 15 year old's High Priest:

Whew! What a long post! Congrats if you made it all the way to the end!

Please be patient with me...

...my blog is under construction. We just recently moved to blogger and are trying to "virtually unpack" and put things away. God bless

This is a first...

I am entering a photo challenge for the first time at iheartfaces.com- this should be rather interesting!

Okay, this week's challenge is "In the Orchard"...here is mine- a picture of my son taken a few years ago, on a little John Deer with the apple orchard behind him.:

The Whole Armour of God

We are now officially in Volume 5! Yay!!!! Seems like it took forever! Well, we covered chapter 1 fairly fast so now we are in chapter 2- part of it deals with Rome and Roman History. My first thought was since it was near Halloween, I could easily find te boys some Roman costumes to play around in and to help with the lesson. Thankfully, the Lord guided my foot steps and I was able to find a sword, breastplate, and a shield at our local $1 store! Well, I really, really wanted them to also have a helmet- the Lord directed me to another $1 store and up high on a self- there they were! I am tall and you would have to be tall or standing on something to see them (love my height!) So, my two younger sons were able to get a whole outfit for $5 a piece. Not bad at all- and they LOVE playing with them! I was surprised! To make them look more Roman, I cut up a red blanket and tied it to the back of their breastplates. Here's a few pics:

The last one reminds me of the movie 300. Anyway, I figured while we had them dressed like Roman Soldiers, why not go ahead and cover the "Whole Armour of God".  It went perfectly with the lesson. We identified each piece in the scriptures and today I had them do a coloring page and a fill in the blank:

For older students: http://www.kidssundayschool.com/Gradeschool/Colorpages/9colorpage01.php

For younger students: http://www.coloring.ws/armor.htm

http://www.custom-counter.com/resim.php?resim=http%3A//www.prepaide.org/rbtbm/tga/Graphics/Armor.gif&title=armor%20of%20god%20picture%3A%20images

If you you need to improvise: http://www.professional-mothering.com/armor-of-god.html