Heart of the Matter Meme

For today's meme we are to post our thoughts on the following quote:

“The difference between school and life? In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson.”

~Tom Bodett

All through the Bible we find examples of how God tested His people.  I believe that is when we grow and learn the most -- during the times of testing.  I know personally I have learned many lessons through my times of testing.  And those lessons stick with me.  A wonderful benefit of homeschooling is that our "school" is just another part of life.  To our kids, life and school go hand in hand.  They are not separate.  It is simply our family routine.  Another lesson God is teaching me!

Lunar Eclipse

I hope you went outside last night with your kids.  The lunar eclipse was great.  Even in town, we had a great view.  My Dad just recently sent us a telescope.  We were able to get a closer look with it.   James even got a glimpse of the rings on Saturn, which is very cool because we are studying Saturn this week.  I was even able to teach him something about Saturn that he did not know.  (That is a rare occurrence.  Even though I have a bachelor's degree...he is much more a wealth of knowledge than I am!)

We took a ton of pictures.  Some of them were pretty blurry.  We have digital zoom on our camera, but the pictures taken with regular zoom turned out better.

I am still amazed at how God placed each planet, each star, each moon right in the perfect place.  And all of them are for our purposes.  They protect us and keep life on earth as He planned it.  What a great God we serve!  He did not leave out any details.

I would love to see your pictures if you have them.  If you want to link your pictures to this post, sign Mr. Linky!

Wordless Wednesday

Silly fun in the sun!

Last Minute Getaway

We had planned on going to Cincinnati this past Saturday.  When James got home from work Friday afternoon we decided to go ahead and spend the night.  It was fun to get out of the house for the night.  The girls always love staying in a hotel.  I think their favorite part is being able to watch Animal Planet.  We went to the Children's Museum on Saturday.  If you are in a few hours drive of Cincinnati you should definitely take your kids.  Right now they have The Human Body exhibit.  James and I would like to go up sometime just the two of us and see the exhibit.  It is 2 hours and a bit pricey to take the kids through it.  We did get to see the Human Body video at the Omnimax theater though.  We all really enjoyed it.  And I was very excited that there was only one reference to evolution.  They were showing babies swimming underwater and made reference to their ability to hold their breathe.  The movie said it is a reflex babies have and "probably was left over from us coming out of the water".   We immediately told our girls that God gave babies that ability.   Overall we were very impressed with the video.  And it actually gave support to God's hand created our bodies, even if they never said that.

I will post pictures soon.

Black Death Doctors

The girls had another lessons about the black death yesterday.  We use SOTW for history.  In the activity book there is a craft to make the bird mask doctors wore to, they thought,  protect themselves from the plague.  Here are some doctors that survived....

I don't think there were Cinderella doctors in the 1300's.

My Dad's Cooler Than Your Dad

Last week we saw a preview for a new TV show that is starting soon -- My Dad's Better Than Your Dad.  Kids go on with their dads.  The dads have to do all these crazy competitions.  Well, of course, my girls immediately said their Daddy would win!  And this weekend he proved, yet again, that he would most definitely win a show called "My Dad's Cooler Than Your Dad". 

The past two summers we have really gotten into camping.  All of us enjoy it a great deal.  These past few months of winter have really made us anxious to start camping again.  So this weekend my girls were able to go camping.

He moved furniture and set up a tent in our living room.  He has done this before.  But each time the excitement is full force!

This one turned out blurry.  They were only pretending to be asleep anyway.

I would have to agree with my girls.  They have one very COOL Daddy!

Working Hard

Last week we put aside our normal phonics, spelling and math lessons.  The girls did some fun Valentine's Day lessons instead.  I was really impressed with how many words Lulu could spell from a Valentine's sentence.  She filled up her entire sheet with no help.  We did some "living math".  (I implemented some ideas from Cindy)  I gave each girl a bag of Kissables.  They estimated how many of each color (pink/white/red, of course), sorted their piles, and made a graph of the actual amount.  Then they found the difference between their estimations and their actual amounts.  It was a lot of fun to add something different in for a change. 

We also learned about Jupiter.  I think after we finish all the planets I am going to have the girls pick one planet to do a presentation on.  I'm open for ideas as to what all I could have them do for this (1st and 2nd grade).

In history we started learning about the bubonic plague.  When I was reading about the rats, their ears perked up.  Lulu said, "That's what happened in Little House on the Prairie."

Lil started a number book.  She is learning to recognize 1, 2, and 3.  She also played with counting bears.  She is very good at sorting!