Encouragement from Titus

Now, Titus is not usually a book in the Bible that I turn to for encouragement! But, somehow I found myself reading Titus last week and it was so great!

Titus 2: 11-14

For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.

Titus 3: 1-8

Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good, to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and always to be gentle toward everyone. At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. This is a trustworthy saying. And I want you to stress these things, so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good. These things are excellent and profitable for everyone.

I just found these verses to speak to my soul last week, it was like a nice, tall glass of refreshing water on a hot and dry day. I love it when the Word comes alive.

Reading through Luke with the kids at Bible time has been wonderful too. We were all convicted when we read about remembering the poor and how we are not doing very much right now to give to the poor. It is so wonderful to see their hearts touched by the Word of God.

The other day at co-op, Micah looked at me and said, "Mom, I believe in Jesus....What does that mean?" :) How precious! I was so excited to tell him that it meant that he was forgiven of his sins and could go to heaven and be with Jeus forever. He is almost five, and I think all my kids had this type of conversation at this age. Something in their soul must start longing....

Psalm 42:2

My sould thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?

School Days

We have been doing school around here, if any one is wondering!

HISTORY

We just finished up a couple of weeks on Vikings and we are deep into the Middle Ages now. I have decided to deviate from our curriculum for the next couple of weeks and use a few activity books on the Middle Ages that I've picked up here and there. I wanted to slow it down and spend more time on different projects from these books. The list of history reading over the next few weeks looked a little daunting for each day--I think we'll all be happier taking it a bit slower, although we may be doing history until July this year!!!! And I am cutting out all vocab and art lessons right now. Just too much! Oh, and we just aren't ready for the reproductive discussion in science right now, so we are doing a couple weeks on nutrition before transitioning to Space. I have one child very curious to "learn about babies", so I will have a private discussion with that one to quench the curiousity there. :)

We are plugging along with Spelling, Reading, English and Math for everyone.

MATH

My mother-in-law gave me a big stack of "the daily half-dozen" for 5th graders, and I feel like that is really helping Zeke get in some repetition on the basics--adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, fractions. I really like this addition and it is super quick for him to do, so not much complaining! I had to purchase a bunch of work books for Eli since he was doing all his school work for the entire day in about...20 minutes! I think some of the books I selected offer new challenges for him. They are mostly FlashKids workbooks and a Kumon workbook.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE

I am also trying to be more consistent with Zeke and Eli on Rosetta Stone Spanish. Abby has given up for now; she has some speech issues that make it very difficult for her to pronounce the spanish correctly enough for the program to accept it. She winds up in tears almost every time she tries it. I have not played around enough yet with her course to find one that fits for her.

EXTRAS

Our co-op is in full-swing right now. I am only helping out with one class right now, but have some good ideas for classes I'd like to teach for next year! We have 3 more weeks of a homeschool gym class and 2 more art classes for Abby and Eli. Abby gets to start gymnastics up again this week after recovering from her broken arm. She is excited! Zeke and Eli are also enjoying their Upward basketball seasons.

February 2012

I can hardly believe another month has come and gone! Here's what fun we had in February!

New art projects:

Valentine's Day:
FINALLY!!!! A little bit of snow to play in!

I wouldn't mess with this pirate!