I don’t often get writing done on specifics about our personal studies. But thought I’d give you a look into our home today. Here’s what a day of learning looked like in our home after we returned from a vacation break. I’ll spare you all the details of the unproductive times, interruptions, general messing around. 🙂
We begin our day with Family Altar, that is Bible, Prayer and Praise. I had planned to go back to the Proverbs this week. We read the Proverb of the day, then each child chooses (or is given) a Scripture and reasons from it. But we aren’t finished with Acts yet, so we read a chapter there. Since today is Monday, our prayer focus is for missionaries and minstries we know, in addition to our immediately family and specific prayer needs. We also “put our armor on”. The current hymn we are working on is “How Firm a Foundation”. Sometimes we sing with a CD other times I play on piano.
After a short break to clear and clean up breakfast, we began our Bible Study. Today was on Exo. 1:8 and Egyptian government. Our studies took a bit of a twist as we were talking about the Israelites being enslaved and what that meant. Complete external control, to have no liberty, or personal rights, don’t own anything, even you yourself are owned by another, make no decisions about what you do, but do only as you’re told. You have nothing but what is given to you, and even then it isn’t “yours”. You are completely controlled by another in what you do, and dependent upon them for everything you receive. I then took them to Romans 1:1a, “Paul, a bond-slave of Christ”. Not only Paul, but us! What great Bible reasoning came from this lesson. AND as an added bonus, in our Adult Bible Study tonight, that we lead, we are studying Romans chapter 1. I have much to share and challenge with. They finished up this lesson by copying Psalm 23, and beginning to memorize (or refreshing memory of) it. We may be bondslaves of Christ, yet we do not serve a tyrannical dictator, but a benevolent King. Obviously, this was a Governments and Stewardship study as well. Normally our teen-aged daughter would have added assignments from our Bible Study, but I didnt’ give her any today.
In Communications we are laying our Biblical Foundation. Today we reviewed what Communication is, and its usage to Bless or Curse. We talked about the power of words. Their creative and destructive power (God’s words created everything, His word is living and powerful and surgically divides (so to speak.) That even our words have the power of life and death. We copied Pro. 18:21. Our older daughter will reason from this verse, and write an essay. Other Communications applications were scattered in, as noted below.
In HisStory and Creation we are just beginning a study of Astronomy. Our purpose for studying Creation (what is called the “sciences”) is to know God and make Him known. We looked at God’s purpose and the “big picture” of astronomy today. We reviewed our key scripture for Creation, Rom. 1:20, tying in Ps. 97:6. We read Ps. 19:1-6, which will be our memory verse. (We’ll copy it tomorrow, when we don’t have so much other copywork.) These lay a good foundation on how the heavens “tell” of God. We read an introductory child’s book called, “God Made Outer Space”, which gives a good simple overview. Normally I would take the time to narrate as we were reading through. Today there were too many interruptions. Hopefully, they will be able to narrate as a review tomorrow. We wrote down vocabulary words (there were about a dozen) from that book and discussed what each means. Our older daughter will formally define these. I also assigned her the first chapter of James Nickel’s astronomy book, Lift Up Your Eyes on High, a great study of the whole of star study (not just the “facts”, “but also of the amazing message the stars declare”). Tomorrow we will get into Gen. 1:14-19 and the beginning of the HisStory of the heavenly bodies.
Throughout these times we have had numerous phone calls and knocks at the door, giving plenty of time of chores, practicing piano, etc. We’ve also had several mini phonics lessons through the reading we’ve done (much of it the children read aloud). Some handwriting and grammar lessons mixed into the copywork and writing. The only specific “math” lesson we got to today was as our daughter was making soup she needed to figure out how much water was 3/4 gallon. Obviously, numbers and quantities were worked with in other ways, but not specifically as “lessons”.
We finally got to lunch, which will make a short time between lunch and supper, since it must be early tonight because of Bible Study. So our studies are probably finished until tomorrow, while we finish chores, play outside, practice music, and host our guests.
