Greetings from Me and My House,

On our bibleprinciples elist I was asked for the nitty-gritty of our days. I’ve placed parts of that answer over here, to not make that post way too long, especially the details of our family worship times. As I noted in that post, every single thing isn’t done every single day, but this is our typical pattern, and what we work toward daily. Here’s how we teach when we lie down and rise up.

I like to begin our day the night before - remember God said it was “evening and morning the first day….”

Our evening family time consists of: Family discussion about the day and upcoming things, a chapter from a family read-aloud - “life changing literature”, a Psalm (or more than 1), and prayer together - including prayer that God will pull it all together! Usually each family member prays each night.

We are currently reading the Crown and Covenant series by Douglas Bond. It is historical fiction telling the stories of the Scottish Covenanters. We many times read “Rare Collectors” from Lamplighters. Last year’s highlight was the Kingdom series by Chuck Black.

We begin the morning with each person doing their own devotions - Bible reading and prayer. A Bible reading schedule that has us all reading the same chapters is awesome, but it doesn’t always work that way. Little ones can use a tape/CD or mom or older person can read to them. We encourage the children to journal their devotions. Little ones can draw. The older ones can follow the pattern set out in our Redeeming the Time forms - Read, Rewrite, Relate, Recite.

When we come together we have a Family Altar time: Opening with Prayer, Worship (singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs), Wisdom-Proverb of the Day, Scripture Recitation, Catechism study, Daily Prayer Focus - we pray for different areas each day, and each person writes a daily journal of what God is teaching them through Life and Learning studies. The little ones are required to be a part of all this, they can draw pictures of “what God is teaching them.”

Our older girls and I used to read 5 Psalms and the Proverb of the day each morning. We can’t get that much in anymore. So we do our Psalm at night, and many times only 1, but I figure we will still get through the book of Psalms at least once, maybe close to twice a year.

I will also say about this morning time, I believe music is very important for “physical” and spiritual reasons. Music (well at least certain forms) opens our hearts to God and also our minds to learning. Well balanced music helps our brains make connections between those creative and orderly parts of our brain and helps us remember. We begin with psalms and hymns to “enter His gates with praise” and play low level classical music through most of the day, at least as we get the day, and our brains, going. This is a good time to do music/ instrumental practice also - they usually snatch a few minutes each, in between their clean-up chores, and practice longer later.

Till next time.

At Jesus’ feet,
Lisa @Me and My House
Blogging Here
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Greetings from Me and My House,

Hmmm, I said I would write a Part 4 to conclude this series on “MyMini Books of Remembrance”, but I didn’t write down what I planned to conclude with right away, and I now have no idea what it was. Let me think a minute, and review. In Part 1 we covered what a “MyMini Book of Remembrance” is and why to make them. In Part 2 we covered general questions about making MyMini BOR’s. In Part 3 we covered the supplies needed. So that must leave the nitty gritty details for this Part 4 - How to actually MAKE the MyMini Book of Remembrance.

But before I get into that, I did remember one supply I left out of Part 3, pictures. You may want to find or draw images to enliven your MyMini Book of Remembrance. You can draw your own pictures, cut or copy them out of books or magazines, or find online clip art to print out. Add them to the your mini-books and the BOR folder itself. These will all help enhance your BOR.

Now on to making mini-books and your MyMini Book of Remembrance:

A mini-book will be made anytime you have a piece of info to add to your MyMini Book of Remembrance. If you are teaching one point per day, and/or one theme per week, it won’t be hard to determine the basic “what” you will put in your mini-book. How you want to state it and what form of mini-book you will put it in is where your/your child’s creativity comes in.

You may state your main point of the lesson as a “title” for your mini-book, then include some of the details you learned about it. You may be state things you learned as questions and answers. In teaching by Biblical principles, many times our main point is followed up by examples/applications. We also many times are looking at the internal cause or meaning and the external action or effect. The choice is totally yours as to how to present what you have learned. Again, as I stated in Part 3, do not get hung up on some supposed right way of doing this and mimicing someone else’s BOR. This is for what YOU learned.

Some mini-books have general limitations which will help you choose which mini-book to make. A single Match Book presents 2 pieces of information. A Tri-fold Book presents 3. And an Envelope Book presents 4. Flap Books and Layered Books can be varied greatly in number of ideas you can present in one. I made a proto-type folder of all the types of mini-books. My children are able to look at it to determine which type of mini-book best suits the material they want to add to their BOR.

Generally, throughout the lesson/week the children are encouraged to take notes - preferably in graphic outline (mindmapping) form. for example, our weekly (or longer) theme may be the Parables of Jesus. Each day we study a different parable, looking at the meaning. The children are noting what the parable was about, its Bible reference (Book, chapter and verses) and its meaning. At the end of the week/theme, they make their mini-book. A Layered Book or a Flap Book would both be good for presenting this theme with so many different details. On the outside they may write “Parables of Jesus” - perhaps here or on the first page giving the definition of a parable. Then on each flap or bottom of the layer giving the reference and/or the “name” of the parable. Inside they can tell (briefly) what it was and what it meant.

Or how about a biography you are reading. As you read, take notes on the person’s history, influences, character, and contributions. If it is a part of another study, you may just want one mini-book on this person. Perhaps make a Quad Shutter Book (that closes) for this. Put the person’s name, birth and death dates and their picture on the outside. On the 4 shutters inside list the 4 aspects of their life (above) or a quality from them in the person’s life, then under each shutter write examples and details.

Perhaps you are doing a whole BOR on this one person. You can use one section of the BOR for each of the 4 aspects of their life, with 1-3 mini-books each. For example, in the History section you may want to do a Timeline Book of their life, perhaps another mini-book on their childhood and one on their adult life, or one on where they lived, or what their world was like then. On the Influences section you would put mini-books on their education and other key influences in their lives. I think of Helen Keller; you’d want a whole mini-book on Anne Sullivan. In the Character section perhaps you can identify 2-3 character traits that were prominent in this person’s life and do a mini-book for each, giving examples from their life that show that character trait. In the Contributions section, you will put mini-books that demonstrate their achievements in life. For example, for George Washington perhaps you’d want a mini-book on his military contributions and one on his Presidential contributions.

These are all just very small tips of endless icebergs for creating mini-books themselves. Now, what do we do with them? We keep our mini-books in zip lock baggies until we are finished with our topic and ready to make our “MyMini”. As you make your mini-books, be thinking ahead as to how you want to lay them out. As suggested above you may want them organized into sections or a certain order. OTOH, perhaps they can be placed anywhere in the folder. Let your eye be your guide.

When you are ready to put your MyMini BOR together, fold your file folder into a shutter fold and start laying out your mini-books. Experiment until you like the lay-out, then glue them in. Make some sort of “cover” design for the outside of your BOR. You may not want it to be a folded mini-book, but perhaps a picture and title. You can glue on these aspects or just draw/write them on.

Too many mini-books to fit in your folder? Make extensions. You may need just one extra panel, or maybe you need a whole extra folder or more. No problem, MyMini Books of Remembrance are expandable.

In this series of articles I have only given you a taste of what can be done with MyMini Books of Remembrance. I plan to devote a whole session or two to this in our Freedom & Simplicity™ of Lifestyle Education through Discipleship™ seminar, late this spring in North Platte, NE. I hope you can join us.

But above all remember, we are children of the Creator Himself, made in His image. He has placed within each one of us creativity. How can you use yours to document your learning in Books of Remembrance?

For Me & My House,
At Jesus’ feet,
Lisa @Me and My House
Blogging Here
and There
Order Christian and Home Ed Resources Here

Greetings form Me and My House,

This is part 3 of this series. Part 1 here. Part 2 here. In this part we will cover what all is needed to make a MyMini Book of Remembrance.

Some people get really hung up on this. It really is not hard at all. And you certainly don’t need a kit or someone else’s plans to direct you through this. Like its big sister Book of Remembrance Journaling (Notebooking) it is the record of what you have learned/internalized from your studies. No one else can lay that out for you. PLEASE do not use this to try to copy someone else’s learning.

All you need is the basics - the supplies, and instructions for making the mini-booklets - and of course something you have learned and want to document.

Your supplies begin with paper to make the mini-booklets out of.
You could use plain ol’ white copy paper, but that would be very boring. Go to the office supply store (or Walmart, if yours has it) and get an array of various colored papers, brights, neons, primaries, pastels, whatever you desire - just standard 20-24 weight.

You will also need scissors and glue - glue sticks work great. If you like nice straight cuts you may want a paper trimmer, a small one such as used for scrapbooking works great.

You will also need some kind of writing utensil. Again, something not quite so boring as a plain pencil or blue ink pen. Various colored fine tip markers are great - preferably ones that don’t bleed through the page.

The last supply you need is file folders. Again, please bypass the boring tan manila ones and get the pretty colors. 3 cut or 5 doesn’t matter.

I’ve already told you in part 1 where to get your instructions for the mini-books, Dinah Zike’s The Big Book of Books and Activities - unless you have a friend that will show you. (Yes just that one book is all you need.)

In part 4 I will conclude this series.

At Jesus’ feet,
Lisa @Me and My House
Blogging Here
and There
Order Christian and Home Ed Resources Here

Greetings from Me and My House,

Continuing discussion on MyMini Books of Remembrance. Read Part 1 here.

Several questions are usually asked about MyMini Books of Remembrance, otherwise known as “lapbooks”, “shutterbooks”, or my shortened term for ours MyMini BOR. Who does them? When do they do them? What do they cover? Here’s some answers.

“Do we make one MyMini BOR as a family or does each child make their own?” Yes. Do both. At times your children will want to each make their own MyMini BOR on a study they do. At other times one book can be made together. You can assign, or each child can choose, one or more aspects that they will do a mini-book on and then you can arrange them all together into one MyMini BOR.

“Do we make one BOR per day or per week or per month?” Yes. Well, it might be a little rare to make one per day, but you could make one mini-book per day or 2 to add to your BOR. For the actual BOR, weekly or monthly, depending on the topic, are both normal. A couple examples from our home:
1) 3 of our children took a 3 day art class with Barry Stebbing. After the class they made a MyMini BOR together.
2) Our children have also done MyMini BORs on their own over a 6 week topic.

Mini-books can be made daily or weekly, then all compiled into the BOR at the end of the unit. Or you can wait until the end of the study, and take a day or a few to make the mini-books and the MyMini BOR.

“Do we include all subjects in one BOR or make a different BOR for each subject?” Yes. Some of our MyMini BORs are on specific subjects, some are on everything we’ve learned during a certain time period, most are on whatever we covered during a topical study that integrated several subjects.

Continued in Part 3 and Part 4.

At Jesus’ feet,
Lisa @Me and My House
Blogging Here
and There
Order Christian and Home Ed Resources Here

Greetings from Me and My House,

You’ve probably heard of MyMini Books of Remembrance by another name - lapbooks. Or perhaps shutterbooks. They are made up of little booklets, sometimes called minit-books, mini-books, or book folds. We began making them many years ago. But like many good things they sometimes got brushed aside, and we needed “reawakened” to them and their joys.

In Exodus 17:14 God tells Moses to write a book of remembrance and to tell it to another; “Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua.” Journaling is a big part of Lifestyle Education through Discipleship™. We teach our children to journal their learning, not only for their own benefit but also as a “text” that they can teach others from, patterning off of this Scripture. This too is how we learn to teach.

But sometimes plain old Journaling in our Notebooks can become kind of mundane. We begin to lose our joy in it. We forget the creativity God has placed in us. Sometimes we lose sight of the Wisdom seen in the “Big Picture”. That’s the time to remember to pull out our colored papers and colored folders, some scissors and glue, and make those Books of Remembrance” something to really remember, by making MyMini Books of Remembrance.

MyMini Books of Remembrance are perhaps the best, primary method of Journaling for our younger children. Our youth still enjoy it and can use it as much as they’d like also. These truly are books that help them remember what they have learned.

Just what is a MyMini Book of Remembrance (or lapbook)? It is several small uniquely cut and folded booklets, made from colored paper, containing the things we’ve learned - one thing per mini-book, attached to a shutterfolded file folder (preferably colored ) Dinah Zike has written the definitive book for making the little books. It’s called The Big Book of Books.

Well, with that introduction, I close for tonight. I have much more to share with you on this topic. But it will have to be on another day. I hope I’ve at least inspired you to check this out further.

Continue to Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 of this topic.

At Jesus’ feet,
Lisa @Me and My House
Blogging Here
and There
Order Christian and Home Ed Resources Here