Caterpillars Day 10

This is one caterpillar up close.  You can see he
(or she) is in the middle of changing into a chrysalis.

For earlier caterpillar posts:
Day One
Day Two
Day Three
Day Four
Day Five

Easter Eggs

Dying eggs with Grandma

Decorating her egg to look like a zebra

All lined up and ready to be hidden

Grandma decorated this cute chick.

Papa giving egg-hunting hints

Easter Thursday

In celebration of Easter, I chose specific Bible stories to read to my almost-three-year-old this week. Thursday night's story was that of The Lord's Supper, which takes place during a Passover Seder. Because I wanted my daughter to have a better understanding of this story, after reading to her, my mother helped me set the table with matzoh, a lamb bone, haroset, romaine lettuce, parsley, an egg, a bowl of salt water, and grape juice.

Matzoh is unleavened bread, a reminder that the Israelites had to be ready to move when God told them to, and did not have time to wait for bread to rise.  Romaine lettuce (maror) is a bitter vegetable symbolizing the bitter suffering of the Israelites in slavery.  Haroset (a mixture of apples, nuts, cinnamon, honey, and wine or grape juice) represents the mortar the Israelites used to build Pharaoh's cities.  The lamb bone symbolizes the tenth plague in Exodus, when the Israelites marked their doors with lamb's blood as a signal that death should "pass-over" their houses; we did not have a lamb shank bone, so we used a bone from a lamb chop (vegetarians use a roasted beet).  A hard boiled egg was the food of mourners, and symbolizes mourning the loss of the two temples.  Parsley is dipped in the salt water to represent the tears shed by the Israelites while they were enslaved.  Wine (or grape juice) symbolizes freedom.

For Christians, Passover Seder is when Jesus told his disciples to eat unleavened bread and drink wine "in remembrance of me" - the reason Christians take communion.  During dinner, my daughter ate asparagus and matzoh.  At one point, I looked over, and saw that she'd made a huge mess with her matzoh.  I raised my eyebrows and opened my mouth, but before I could say anything, she said, "I broke the bread like Jesus broke the bread."

Caterpillars Day 9

We returned home from visiting family to find our caterpillars pupating!  Four of them are hanging, and one is at the bottom of the cup.  When the caterpillars are done turning into chrysalides, I'm supposed to gently scoop it out with a spoon and put it on a paper towel on the floor of the butterfly habitat, and it will emerge there.

Here is a pic of our caterpillars just a few days ago.

Six Places Mother and Father Have Visited

On the programmes from Charlotte Mason schools, children in grades one through three were to hear stories of places father and mother had visited. This was part of their geography lesson. Six places per term, or one place every two weeks.

What countries have we visited?

Father:
Mexico
Panama
Bahamas
Netherlands
Germany
France
Italy
Armenia
Georgia (the country, not the state)
Saudi Arabia
Pakistan
Bahrain
Thailand
Korea
Hong Kong
Japan (including Okinawa)
Philippines
Guam
The Marshall Islands
Iran (for 15 minutes)

Mother:
England
France
Germany
Austria
Switzerland
Armenia
Italy
Bahamas
Mexico

A Master Thought

My musings while reading Home Education chapter 15 ("A Master Thought"):

Education is the values we model for our children through our actions.

Curriculum is chosen, not because it teaches certain skills or certain facts, but based on what a child can learn from it about beauty, truth, goodness.

Education includes a wide variety of subjects.

Faith and science can coexist.

A theory is not a fact. A theory is based on evidence, and as new evidence is found, theories change. By studying science in historical context, as well as in current events about science, one can see this truth over and over.

Children are fed a "diet of great ideas."

Education is the science of relations. (Fed a diet of great ideas, children will form connections between these ideas.)

1st Grade Term

After looking at the Parents' Union Programme 44, I came up with this:

BIBLE LESSONS
-one Old Testament story per week
-one New Testament story (Matthew, Mark, or Luke) per week
-maps of the Holy Land

WRITING
-one letter each lesson (master one letter each week)
-write a letter from dictation ("Write the letter C.")

NATURAL HISTORY
-read 40 pages of a nature book
-study 6 kinds of something (trees, flowers, insects, etc.)

GEOGRAPHY
-read 40 pages of a geography book
-mother & father tell stories of 6 places they've travelled
-draw the neighborhood in a sand tray

FORIEGN LANGUAGE
-learned orally with pictures

SUMS/MATH
-use of dominoes and beans to do sums

PICTURE TALK
-study 6 reproductions of the works of one artist

DRAWING
-one sketch per week
(6 of one thing, 6 of another)

TALES
-History stories (40 pages)
-3 Grimm's Fairy Tales (one a month)

RECITATION
-2 poems (1 every 6 weeks)
-3 hymns (not set to music) (I plan to do 1 hymn set to music per month)
-12 Bible verses (6 OT and 6 NT) (one verse per week)

READING
-The Happy Reader or The Delightful Reading Box by Sarah Mason

MUSIC
-piano

SINGING
-1 English song per month
-1 foreign language song (over 3 months)

DRILL (P.E.)
-marching
-calisthenics
-ball drills

WORK
-handicrafts


On Ambleside Online, 44 1a is labeled 2nd and 3rd grade, but looking at the programmes, I think these are mislabeled. The reason I think this is that 1b appears more advanced than 1a (the number of subjects, the expectations in math, the tales, etc.).