Thanks to having company on Saturday night, our school room is clean for the first time in. . . how long? Maybe since we moved into it. I love it, but I do wish I could figure out how to manage my home in something a little less anxiety-producing than crisis mode.
How do you do it? Yes, I’ve tried Flylady, Motivated Moms, etc. I’m basically a messy person. Any tips, especially from you homeschooling mamas out there?
This week at the House of Hope might aptly be called “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” or perhaps “The Thrill of Victory and the Agony of Defeat.” This was our fifth week of schooling, so I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later. Actually, in terms of learning, we had a good week. It was more the organizational/logistical side of things that went awry. Let’s address the good stuff first, shall we? 
Bible and Devotions
We continued reading about the prophet Elijah. He went head-t0-head with the prophets of Baal this week, and then he fled from Queen Jezebel. We read a couple of devotionals from Leading Little Ones to God and continued learning the verses to the hymn “Holy, Holy, Holy.” We pretty much have the first three verses down pat; we’re still working on verse four. Our memorization of Psalm 24 continued, as well; we’re up through verse seven now.
Reading
Lulu finished section ten and began working on section eleven in OPGTTR this week. These were her independent read-alouds:
(I thought this would be a winner due to the girls’ longstanding LHOTP obsession, and I was right!)I know she read more than this; I’m pretty sure she finished a book a day during her mandatory ten minutes of quiet reading time prior to rest time, but I didn’t keep up with the titles. I’ve tentatively put out a copy of a Magic Tree House book, Mummies in the Morning , in hopes that Lulu’s interest in mummies and Egypt (thanks to our history studies!) would give her the incentive to delve into a chapter book on her own. I’m not pushing it, though–just offering, gently. I think this is something that can’t be rushed.
Louise completed two lessons in OPGTTR this week: lessons 34 and 35 (minus the game). She also enjoyed all of Lulu’s read-alouds!
Math
Lulu was introduced to writing equations this week in RightStart level B. She also began keeping her math journal for RightStart, which is something I’m glad is a part of this particular curriculum. (It’s something that I’ve always wanted to have her do, but not something I usually think of on my own.) As I mentioned last week, we began using Math Mammoth this week, too. 
History
We had something of a difficult time getting history done this week, for some reason. I only intended for us to cover one half of chapter four in SOTW 1–the “Making Mummies” portion of “The Old Kingdom of Egypt.” We finally got around to writing hieroglyphics from last week, but we didn’t finish making our scrolls. (Note to self: Buy whatever school materials we need on the weekends; if we don’t have the materials by Monday, we’re not likely to get them through the week!) We read a couple of supplemental books and began working on our Ancient Egypt history pocket (from History Pockets: Ancient Civilizations, Grades 1-3
Stay tuned to find out if I actually go through with my plan to mummify a chicken!
Science
Our animals of the week were the giraffe, the camel, and the deer, via Elemental Science Biology for the Grammar Stage. As usual, we read several supplemental books, and Lulu read aloud a few books related to our animal studies, as well. We completed our first “experiment” this week (not including the one we did a few weeks ago that didn’t work out). The idea behind this experiment is to figure out the importance of a camel’s large feet. We took a large cardboard disc and a small cardboard disc and determined which one was easier to push down into a bowl full of salt (to mimic sand).
I like to highlight any good books we read for our science studies, and this week, the camels won out. This book is a fiction title, but it is a fun read. What’s the Matter, Habibi?, written and illustrated by Betsy Lewin, is the story of a camel, Habibi, who gives rides to children to make a living for her master, who loves her and calls her “my darling.” One day, Habibi refuses to get up, and her master is unable to figure out why. It turns out that Habibi yearns to improve her appearance, and she steals her master’s shoes to make it happen. This one made me laugh!
We’re really enjoying this approach to science this year!
Language
More First Language Lessons and Writing With Ease. Lulu finished memorizing “The Caterpillar” several weeks ago, but we finally got a new memory piece in FLL: “Work.” We managed to complete three lessons in each of these books this week.
This is actually where Art should go, but this is also where “the Bad,” which I alluded to above, comes in. On Thursday, our usual art lesson day, Louise had a doctor’s appointment in the afternoon. This necessitated that I take Louise and the DLM out to my parents’ house, about fifteen miles in the opposite direction from the doctor’s office, and then get Louise over to the doctor. I also try to mix it up a little on Thursdays–for all intents and purposes, it’s Friday for us here at home (the girls’ homeschool group meetings will resume next Friday), so I try to add in a little bit of fun. After all, we’re homeschoolers, and we can do that, right? Right. I decided to bake cookies on Thursday, in addition to trying to accomplish most of what we usually do. Well, we did make the cookies, but it was not a good day. I do not handle stress well ( ), and I was a near-basket case all day, trying to get lots accomplished but still get out the door in time to make Louise’s appointment. This is also where “the Ugly” comes in–as in, my attitude and dealings with my girls. I don’t want to dwell on the bad here, especially since this is a record of our school year, but let’s just say that mama has a lot to learn about patience and letting things go. 
But like I said, we did bake cookies, and they were good. (We used this recipe from Alton Brown.)
Chocolate works wonders, doesn’t it? 
On Friday we had to take the DLM to the photography studio to have his 3 month picture taken, and after lunch out and a few errands, we came home to have rest time. The girls and I began working on our art lesson before we left this morning, and we finished it after we returned home and had rest-time. I’ll post what we drew for Sketch Tuesday next week.
The girls have enjoyed listening to The Cowgirl Aunt of Harriet Bean
I don’t usually mention Louise as much in our weekly report because since she’s not officially school-age yet, I often let her just play when she’s willing. I try not to push, but as a not-much-younger sibling, she’s all about keeping up with big sister. Louise did reach a milestone this week, though. She finished her last toddler/little kid music class and will begin class piano lessons next week! At Louise’s little mini-recital, Lulu tickled my mom because she brought in the book she was reading in the van on the way over so she could finish it. Mom said that this was just like me growing up, and I suspect it was just like Steady Eddie, too. We’re both bookworms from way back!
The DLM–well, he just keeps getting cuter and more engaging. This week he began making those cute little growly noises down in his throat. We’re all quite taken with him.
Well, it was a good week, despite my failings. I just need to work on the organizational and planning end of things–how much can we realistically do when we have afternoon appointments? Any ideas or advice?
I don’t want to end this week down in the dumps, so I’m going to end with a clip from one of my favorite t.v. shows. When we studied giraffes at the beginning of the week, this clip kept playing over and over and over in my mind. Enjoy!
(I’m linking this post to the Weekly Wrap-Up at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.)
I admit that while I love a good book of any kind, I’m not always great at turning books into projects. I’m mostly okay with that; to me, the real joy is in the reading of the story. However, some books just beg for an activity afterwards, either because they have one built in or because they inspire the reader to create their own.
Fannie in the Kitchen is the story of Fannie Farmer, the first person (a woman, at that) to include accurate measurements in recipes in her cookbook entitled Boston Cooking School Cookbook. She is known as the “mother of the modern recipe” for just this. Fannie in the Kitchen is about Fannie’s career as a mother’s helper in a Boston household in the late 1800s. Fannie teaches Marcia, a young girl in the family for whom she works, how to measure dry ingredients accurately, how to tell if an egg is fresh, and how to choose a ripe watermelon. At the end of the story, Marcia bakes Fannie the perfect going-away cake in celebration of Fannie’s employment as a teacher at the Boston Cooking School. Of course, without Fannie’s careful instruction, the cake would not have turned out quite as well. This picture book is divided into short “chapters” entitled “First Course,” “Second Course,” etc. Fannie Farmer’s original “helpful hints” are also incorporated into the illustrations, usually as pictures framed and hanging on the wall. Cute!
Honestly, what makes this book special is the illustrations. Nancy Carpenter’s pen and ink drawings capture the essence of the time period, from the hairstyles to the labels on the bags, bottles, and cans of food used in the recipes. According to the CIP data in the front of the book, “The illustrations are rendered in pen and ink, collaged with 19th century engravings on the computer, laser printed, Xeroxed onto watercolor paper, and then watercolored.” Whew! And I thoughts artists just drew and painted! The illustrations remind me of the artwork on the opening credits of the television program Cheers. (I even looked this up on YouTube so you can see for yourself what I mean, if you’re so inclined. Link here.)
We’ve actually enjoyed at least one of Deborah Hopkinson’s books in the past. We loved Apples to Oregon ! It turns out that Nancy Carpenter also illustrated this one of Hopkinson’s books. For more about Deborah Hopkinson and her works, visit her website.
As I mentioned earlier, Fannie in the Kitchen even inspired our family’s supper on Monday night! We had already planned to have what is probably the girls’ favorite supper–breakfast for supper–but after reading this book we decided to call our pancakes griddlecakes and follow Fannie’s recipe! (We did modify it a little and use half whole wheat flour, half all purpose flour.) Fannie’s advice served us well–flipping our griddlecakes ”when puffed, full of bubbles, and cooked on edges” yielded excellent results!
What have you and yours been enjoying together this week? Leave a link to your blog post below, or simply leave a comment.
Have a yummy Read Aloud Thursday!
This post is almost a year overdue, I am sorry to say. Long-time readers here at Hope Is the Word will remember that late last summer, we decided at the last minute to enclose our garage and convert it to a school room. (You can read about it here.) By the time we finished it, the school year was well underway, and we were too busy using it (and messing it up!) to take pictures. Many, many times since then, I’ve wanted to post pictures, but it was never quite “there.” Today, thanks largely to the Not Back to School Blog Hop, I’ve decided to just do it–it will likely never be much cleaner than it is today, anyway.
The picture above is of the doorway that leads outdoors. I wanted to put a phrase or quotation over the door, and I finally settled on Psalm 119:130. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough letters left over to put the reference, too.
This is what we see when we enter the school room from the kitchen. As we come down the steps from the kitchen, we pass through a little hallway. On the left is the laundry room; on the right is a little closet which holds a deep shelf full of school materials, Steady Eddie’s tools, and a cabinet with more school supplies and stationery. (Note the DLM’s bouncy seat and car seat in the picture. Obviously, this picture and those below were taken on two separate occasions.)
The space below is what I intended to be a reading area. I even bought a cute little canopy to go here, suspended from the ceiling. We just have too much stuff for it to work well. This white unit holds things the girls can work on independently while waiting for their one-on-one time with me: puzzles, games, Wedgits, etc. That’s the idea, at least. That basket to the right of the white cabinet is our library basket. :-)
This view is of the rest of the room–taking this picture, my back was to the view above. That white cabinet is where I keep my teaching materials, and obviously, the black chair is mine. Our computer is hidden in the white armoire. The skinny shelf to the right of the white cabinet is our nature shelf (as well as the repository for the girls’ bicycle helmets, which you cannot see).
This is actually what’s on the right after you come down the steps from the kitchen. The tall table and the white shelving units that are visible here are for my scrapbooking things. None of this has seen much use since way before the DLM’s arrival. The little table is our art table. Since we added the paper storage unit, it’s really only big enough for one girl to use at a time, but it’s nice to have the space when we’re painting, etc. One thing that’s barely visible in this picture is the base of the oscillating fan positioned over one of the AC vents twe use in hopes of cooling this lovely space down in the 100 degree temperature we’re having here in the South. Unfortunately, since this room was once a garage, it isn’t insulated very well. Couple this with the fact that we have only two air registers in this largeish room and the windows get a fair amount of direct light, and, well, it’s warm in here most of the time. We do what we can.
This monstrosity holds most of the children’s books we have in our home. The exceptions to this are a few shelves of juvenile and young adult fiction and a whole shelf of boardbooks, all of which are stored in various places in the main part of the house. I purchased this piece when a local school supply store was going out of business last summer. I have a love-hate relationship with it. I love that it holds so many books; I hate that they all fall over and look messy most of the time.
Below are the canvases the girls painted for our school room this year. This is a back-to-school tradition that I started last year. (In fact, you can see last year’s canvases propped against the wall in one of the photos above!) Lulu’s canvas is on the right and Louise’s is on the left. I suggested that they paint butterflies. (I’ve learned it helps to give them a little direction, especially if it’s something we’ll be looking at for a while.) Lulu’s started out that way and quickly turned more abstact. Louise decided to paint a butterfly, a house, and a rainbow. She has since informed me that she actually isn’t finished with her painting.
Just for fun, I thought I’d share the pictures that are above my cabinet. I took these when we went to the hummingbird banding last year. (If you click the link, you can see some of the pictures close-up.) I love these pictures and they make me happy every time I look at them!
Truthfully, though, these days we do about half of our school from here, while I rock and feed the DLM. The evidence of our learning litters the floor of his nursery! Not every baby can say that.
I’m so glad to have this post finally written!
If you’d like to check out other school rooms, visit this week’s Not Back to School Blog Hop. The last time I checked, there were some 250 entries, so there’s plenty of inspiration to choose from!
An alternate title for this post might be “Science by the Seat of My Pants” or “I Really Didn’t Plan a Science Lessons Today, and Look What We Did!” Seriously, as much time as I spend thinking about and reading about home education and the various curricula and methods available, I should enjoy planning (and do more of it) than I do. Planning is not my strength, unfortunately.
Before the DLM was born, I actually thought we’d do a light school schedule this summer. However, what I didn’t remember is how much time a newborn demands, especially one who cries more than we’re accustomed to here at the House of Hope. (We’ve since revised our expectations. ) Since my state requires a minimum number of days of school, I wanted to get a head start during the summer so that we’d have a little wiggle room during the school year proper. While we’ve done our share of reading aloud, I haven’t done a good job of documenting, etc. There have been a few days here and there that I’ve actually planned and documented, but nothing like I thought we’d do. This week, though, I thought we’d properly and thoroughly “row” a Five in a Row story. (More on this later, hopefully.)
Then I saw a thread on one of The Well-Trained Mind forums about homemade challah and how delicious it is. The poster of this particular thread even supplied the recipe–one from a book which has long been on my wish-list: Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. (Catherine’s review convinced me that I need this book!) One of my great loves is baking (and eating!). I’ve had a deficit of what I consider fun cooking in my life during this post-partum period, so I decided this morning to seize the DLM’s morning naptime and bake this bread with the help of my girls. Of course, I couldn’t simply bake the bread; I had to also turn the baking session into a science lesson. I googled (actually, I Swagbucked, but I’m not sure that word has made it into the lexicon yet) yeast and elementary science lessons and came up with this fun experiment. Steady Eddie had actually done a similar experiment with them using baking soda and vinegar, so he stole my thunder just a bit. The girls still loved it, though. The following pictures show the progression of our experiment:
I also pulled a much-read Magic School Bus book off the shelf and re-read it to them. Although the leavening in this particular story isn’t yeast, the principle is still somewhat the same.
Thinking about this activity today, as successful as it was, lead me to think about my own educational philosophy. I love the idea of unit studies, and I think there are home educators out there who do them very well (Heather comes immediately to mind). However, I think I would forever feel like I was forgetting something if I solely did unit studies with my girls. (The thought of unschooling makes me almost break out in hives!) I think that’s one reason that classical (neoclassical?) education appeals to me. I like having The Well-Trained Mind as a model–I need things spelled out; I need someone to hold my hand. I get that there’s really not a particular, exact body of knowledge that one must acquire to be an educated person, but I feel at a loss when I just come up with topics willy-nilly.
Except in the summertime. In the summertime, I kind of like it.
As someone who is admittedly organizationally challenged, I am happy to report that last year’s curricula has been removed from the Official Teacher’s Cabinet and replaced with next year’s. Now I just have to find the table under all of last year’s stuff (and find a place to put the stuff!). Two posts I promise to (eventually) write and post:
I know you can hardly wait.
I’ve been meaning to do write up this post for a while now because I have stamped a big “DONE” on kindergarten here at the House of Hope. We’ve finished up our required number of days, and I am to the point in this pregnancy that I need some time to just relax and try to get a few non-schoolish things done around the house. For a while this made me nervous–the idea of quitting while everyone else in our neck of the woods is still plugging away at it, but I’ve gotten over it and have come to realize that in order to take advantage of good weather, perhaps finishing earlier in May is a good idea. We can always start back in July when it’s too hot to do anything outdoors!
When I look back at my kindergarten plans, I see that I have stayed pretty true to course, at least in the fundamentals. Here’s where we stand right now:
Reading
Lulu has finished through lesson 88 in The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading
Math
We’ve finished all but three lessons in RightStart level A, and I’d say that math has been Lulu’s favorite subject this year. RightStart has been a good fit for her. I’ll admit that I grew a little weary of it in the last few weeks of schooling, but that was mainly due to pregnancy fatigue. It is a very teacher-intensive program (which may be true of all programs at this level–I’m not sure), but I feel like Lulu made a lot of progress in terms of thinking mathematically. The lack of lots of worksheets makes me a little bit nervous (and I might just be ignorant about what young students should be doing at this age), but in the future we plan to continue with this program and supplement with some other approaches.
Handwriting
This is the subject for which I’d probably give myself a big fat F just because I wasn’t consistent enough with it. Lulu did finish Handwriting Without Tears Letters and Numbers for Me and begin My Printing Book, but after Christmas she began keeping a reading log and I pretty much let her drop doing the workbook. She’s not much of a workbook-y girl, and she doesn’t like writing, so I thought at least the reading log would make it seem like she was doing something worthwhile and meaningful. This is also an area in which I feel the least amount of confidence in terms of what her writing “should” look like. Part of this is because I kind of see handwriting as something that is very personal (and mine gets worse the older I get). That’s not exactly the way I should see it, probably, but it is. We’ll pick up with copywork next year and ditch the workbook altogether, I think.
Science, Social Studies (History), Geography, Art, Etc.
Of everything we’ve done this year, this is what the girls (Louise has been along for the K ride this year) will remember. What we’ve done for these subjects has been rather scattered, really, but I think that’s okay at this age. Much of what we did early in the year was based on one Five in a Row title or another. For science, we did deliberately do a unit on the human body, and this was a huge hit with both girls. As far as history goes, we spent a good bit of time on Helen Keller also, and Laura and Mary were never far from our minds (or our CD player). I tried to be deliberate about doing artwork with the girls, and sometimes I succeeded and others I didn’t.
Ivy Green, Birthplace of Helen Keller
Outside the Home
If our days are full of learning at home, our afternoons are often full of learning and playing outside the home. Lulu played Upward soccer in the fall, and she and Louise both played in the spring. They both took two fairly intensive weeks of swimming lessons just last month. They’ve both been involved in weekly music lessons since they were toddlers, and Lulu has actually progressed to a weekly piano class that is quickly getting beyond my level of experience. Lulu also began practicing with our church’s Bible quiz team this spring.
We’ve also had numerous opportunities to go places and do things, both as a family and with our homeschool group. This year we’ve been to
To Sum It Up
I think we’ve had a great year, but this doesn’t prevent me from feeling the old familiar angst. That’s why I included that picture at the very beginning of the post. The moment I saw it at the Georgia Aquarium, I thought of us and this journey we’re on. Although we belong to a homeschool group, outside of the group we only know one other family that homeschools. I feel most of the time like I’m doing something very counterculutral, especially given my previous and Steady Eddie’s current profession.
This time, I think I can attribute most of my appprehension to working out yet another schedule/routine/way of doing things with a new baby in the house. My biggest challenge this year as a teacher of my children was figuring out what to do with Louise while I worked one-on-one with Lulu. (This really deserves a post of its own.) Sometimes I can’t even begin to fathom doing it with an infant, and even more, I can’t imagine doing it with a toddler, etc. Then I think, if others can do it successfully, why can’t I?
The other problem I’ve had is figuring out how “to do it all”–housework, meal preparation, blogging , attention to my spiritual life, etc. I console myself with the fact that my girls and I have read an awful lot of good books together this year, we’ve made a lot of sweet memories, and Lulu is reading! I did that! (I know I didn’t really do it, but please allow me the pleasure of a little self-congratulation.) I just have to remind myself that everyone makes choices, and choosing one thing (in this case, home education) necessarily disqualifies other choices (public or private school), but that each choice will have its pros and cons. I love this quote from Wendell Berry’s Hannah Coulter, and I try to remind myself of it when I’m feeling particularly uncertain:
The big idea of education, from first to last, is the idea of a better place. Not a better place where you are, because you want it to be better and have been to school and learned to make it better, but a better place somewhere else. In order to move up, you have got to move on. I didn’t see this at first. And for a while after I knew it, I pretended I didn’t. I didn’t want it to be true.
But it was true. After they [her children] were all gone, I was mourning over them to Nathan. I said, “I just wanted them to have a better chance than I had.”
Nathan said, “Don’t complain about the chance you had,” in the same way exactly that he used to tell the boys, “Don’t cuss the weather.” Sometimes you can say dreadful things without knowing it. Nathan understood this better than I did [. . . ]
And so Nathan required me to think a thought that has stayed with me a long time and has traveled a long way. It passed through everything I know and changed it all. The chance you had is the life you’ve got. You can make complaints about what people, including you, make of their lives after they have got them, and about what people make of other people’s lives, even about yoru children being gone, but you mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be somebody else. What you must do is this: “Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks.” I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions. (112-13)
I know this quote might not make too much sense completely out of context, as I’ve used it here, but can anyone else see the truth of it?
Well. This post started out as a purely academic exercise and ended philosophically. If you’re still reading, I thank you. We’re still in the process of hammering out what next year will look like, but I’ll be sure to post about it as soon as I can.
A couple of years ago now, I had the privilege of taking a quilting class taught by my good friend, Wanda. In addition to being a talented writer, a college instructor, and an avid reader, Wanda is a quilter. She is active in the Alabama Folklife Association, and as a part of this, she has been a community scholar. I, along with several other women and girls, benefited from her involvement through the string quilting class she taught. Wanda chose this particular quilting method because this is the way her own grandmoter taught her to quilt. It uses up leftover fabric in a very efficient way, and we even recycled old newspapers for our blocks. I found this website which provides both written and visual instructions, if you’re interested in learning more about string quilting. Anyway, that’s my quilt you see up there, and I’m very proud of it.
Wanda is really great at a whole lot of things, and one of them is being a very generous friend. She presented me with a couple of books with a common theme of quilts and quilting to share with my girls, and when I realized that one of the Five in a Row books is about sewing and quilting, too, I saw the makings of a thematic unit. The FIAR title is The Rag Coat
The Rag Coat made me think of Dolly Parton’s Coat of Many Colors
One of the books Wanda gave us is The Keeping Quilt
The girls’ favorite quilt book by far, though, is The Quiltmaker’s Gift
As far as what we actually did with these books (besides read them, I mean), I started out at Homeschool Share, looking for activities for the FIAR title, The Rag Coat. However, after realizing that The Quiltmaker’s Gift was more of a hit than The Rag Coat, I decided to go in that direction. Homeschool Share offers an abundance of resources for this book, but in the end, I ended up utilizing EQuiltBlocks.com a lot and calling it done with a few math activities and an art project or two. Lulu, my child who really doesn’t like to color very much (who knew?), requested different quilt blocks on several occasions simply to color. I’m still somewhat torn between simply reading the stories to the girls and talking about them and actually doing something with them. I can definitely see our homeschool moving more in that direction as the girls get older, but right now, I think I like to take things easy and just do the reading and talking, and maybe a little bit of art. In that vein, we did a hastily-prepared art activity in which I allowed the girls to pick out a quilt pattern from The Quiltmaker’s Gift. I then drew the pattern on a piece of watercolor paper with a Sharpie, and we got out our watercolors and went to work.
Lulu chose the King’s Crown pattern:
Louise chose the Spool pattern:
I chose the Log Cabin pattern:
I think these brighten up our school room quite a bit!
I can’t close this post without mentioning again a fabulous book with quilting as its theme that I read a few months back. Leaving Gee’s Bend is a beautifully written juvenile fiction selection. I won’t rehash my review of it again here, but I will say that it’s worth a look if you enjoy well-written juvenile literature!
I had fun with this theme, and so did my girls!
I realize that posting about our Easter activities is rather anticlimatic, but I had hoped to have the book I’m reading finished in time to review it for the I Read It! carnival at 5 Minutes for Books. Since I’m still working on the book, I thought I’d share a few of the things we did while I was on my bloggy hiatus. Mostly, this is for my own future recollection. I’m notorious for starting “traditions” and then failing to remember to do them the next year.
First of all, the biggest thing we did was spend a whole lot of time at our church. Our church produces a huge Easter drama each year, which is essentially the Passion of Christ. I serve as the narrator and Steady Eddie plays the Apostle Thomas. We spend part of the week prior to Palm Sunday weekend in dress rehearsals, and then we go live on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights of Palm Sunday weekend and Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights of Easter weekend. The program is long–about 2 1/2 to 3 hours–and it is tiring (especially when you’re 30+ weeks pregnant!), but it is very worthwhile. It is the largest evangelistic outreach our church does each year, and each year usually results in 150-200 people making decisions to follow Christ. Please pray that these new converts will find root and depth in Christ and not fall away.
As far as our homeschooling and family life are concerned, I tried to focus on Jesus and His sacrifice the week leading up to Easter. The week before Palm Sunday, we enjoyed quite a few non-religious Easter stories . After Palm Sunday, though, it was all about Jesus. Our main resource for this was Benjamin’s Box and Resurrection Eggs. I know I’ve said it before, but this was a HUGE hit with my children. I don’t think I’ll have a hard time remembering to keep this tradition.
On Monday of last week, we kicked the week off by having a reading Easter egg hunt. I typed out some review sentences (from The Ordinary Parents’ Guide to Teaching Reading) for Lulu and some words for Louise to read and stuffed them into plastic eggs. They found the eggs in record time, and coming inside to read their sentence strips was way more fun than merely sitting down to read them off the white board, our normal modus operandi. Why don’t I do things like this more often? (For the observant, yes, Louise does have her pants on backwards. I don’t know why. That girl has a mind of her own about most things. That day was particularly cool and windy, and Louise was still getting over a cough, so the hats were a must.)
The Thursday before Easter, I had planned to do some Easter-related baking. By this, I mean I wanted to bake something traditional for Easter. I was contemplating pretzels or hot cross buns, but then I read this post over at Tammy’s Recipes about homemade matzah. This was a rather fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants venture, but Tammy’s pronouncement that this recipes requires only six ingredients sold me. Although we didn’t specifically focus on the Passover aspect of Easter this year, it worked out nicely because we just read about the Passover a few weeks ago in our Bible story book. This was fresh on the girls’ minds, so it was easy to make the connection. Of course, the girls LOVED baking the unleavened bread, and eating it wasn’t too bad, either.
On Friday, Steady Eddie had the day off. It was the eagerly anticipated egg dyeing day for the girls, so dye eggs we did. The girls had a great time, and I’m learning to just let go and let them create. It feels good.
I also spent a portion of the day on Friday and Saturday baking in preparation for Sunday. My family came over for Sunday dinner (mostly provided by my mom), so I baked this lovely strawberry cake for the first time in honor of Easter. I’ve learned that PW‘s recipes are pretty reliable, but I actually have few qualms about experimenting on my family with new recipes anyway. I ended up not being able to follow the recipe exactly because I didn’t have the proper sized cake pans, but it turned out to be delicious, anyway.
On Saturday my main objectiveas were to frost the strawberry cake, make homemade cinnamon rolls, and rest in preparation for the night’s Easter drama performance. All this after two soccer games in the morning and a shopping trip. It was a busy, productive, exhausting day.
Sunday morning, I still wanted to do something meaningful with the girls in honor of Easter. The busy-ness of the previous two days had disrupted our daily rhythm (which is fairly gentle and peaceful, I might add), and I wanted to try to get the focus back. I had read over at The Homespun Heart about Resurrection Biscuits, so I thought we’d give them a try. The girls enjoyed making and eating these, and while I think it’s fairly redundant (not to mention unhealthy) to bake these the same morning that you’re planning to have homemade cinnamon rolls during Sunday School, I think the message behind the biscuits made sense to the girls.
Sunday School and the worship service at church both focused on Luke 24–I love it when the texts are Spirit-orchestrated so perfectly. It was a lovely service.
After the service, we came home and enjoyed ham, potato salad, baked beans, rolls, deviled eggs, and the aforementioned strawberry cake with my mother and my sister and her family. The girls and I finished up our hunting of the Resurrection Eggs and our reading of Benjamin’s Box with my 10 and 11 year old nephews before lunch, and the boys seemed to enjoy it as much as we did. After lunch, the children hunted their dyed eggs, and then it was off to rest/nap/read for everyone for the next couple of hours. Sunday night was the final performance of the Easter drama at church, and it all came off beautifully, with many people responding to the Gospel.
And so ends our marathon Easter weekend. Sometimes I wish I weren’t so busy during this season of the year. I truly love Easter and wish I could focus on quieting myself and reveling in it more. Then again, I love being a part of our church’s drama because it is such a great evangelistic tool. I feel like I’m doing something God has gifted me to do when I serve as the narrator. Nothing worthwhile comes without a price, for sure. I hope next year I can plan ahead a little better (‘though I have no idea what to truly expect with a new baby in the house!) and make things a little more peaceful and contemplative.
I just wanted to post a quick follow-up to my St. Patrick’s Day post in which I declared that we would be making this cake or these cupcakes today. I opted for the cake after I read lots of comments following the cupcake recipe with phrases like “this took a lot of time” or “time consuming,” etc. Ours was something of an ill-fated project from the beginning: I spilled a little bit of the batter after I added the water to the cake mix, so I guessed at how much water to put back in. Then, I realized that we only possessed two eggs, not three, as the recipe demanded. Last, Louise managed to drop an entire bottle (the bottle too, not just the contents) into the bowl of batter she was tinting.
All things considered, I think it turned out pretty well. The girls agree.
Happy Spring!
