SOAP - Luke 1:1-38 - Human Response

 

Scripture: Luke 1:28-30 ESV

And he came to her and said, "Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!" But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.
Observation:
It's so encouraging to see Mary's very human response to an angel showing up and greeting her in such a way.
Application:
The angel told Mary to not be afraid. I can choose to respond to situations with fear or with thanksgiving. I've been thinking a lot lately about practically what it's going to be like having a new baby and then three kids. I can choose to be anxious or I can choose to be greatful.
Prayer:
Father, I pray you would help me to not be afraid, but to remember your blessing on my life. Thank you for recording the human responses of those you have chosen to do great things. Amen.

Join me in reading through Luke with MomsToolbox

For this week, we will read:

• Monday: Luke 1: 1-38
• Tuesday: Luke 1:39-80
• Wednesday: Luke 2
• Thursday: Luke 3
• Friday: Luke 4
• Saturday: Luke 5
• Sunday: Luke 6

~S

Countdown to Christmas–Day 3

Day 3 of our Advent activities was to get family pictures taken. While I haven’t had time to process the really good ones to make into cards or whatever, I do have a humorous collage of the rejects.

Stay tuned for the good ones…

~S

TOS Review–ARTistic Pursuits

It’s Speak Up Saturday! Time for a review (0r two)…

From the Publisher:

The ARTistic Pursuits approach to teaching art is a welcome departure from typical art instruction books. This award winning homeschool art program meets the specific needs of homeschoolers at home. A variety of fun art lessons teach both the expressive and technical aspects of art while allowing children to make choices about what and how they will draw, paint, and sculpt.

• Preschool children enjoy kids art activities that encourage exploration of art materials and their world.
• Kindergarten and Elementary art instruction combines art history with hands-on art projects.
• Middle School and High School art students learn about artists, art history, and art techniques in both drawing instruction and painting instruction.

I had the opportunity to review ARTistic Pursuits, K-3 Book 1, and I am so glad that I did! I wasn’t planning on doing any specific art activities with Kahlen this year, but this program is fantastic. I’ll let them explain more about what is included in each lesson:

Read one lesson per week and your child's creative efforts will flourish. From art educators to moms with no art experience; all are successfully teaching children art using ARTistic Pursuits. Lessons capture children's interests and imaginations while introducing the fundamental principles of art. Lessons are divided into three sections as follows:

• What Artists Do: Ten lessons cover activities artists engage in when making art such as imagining and observing. Children explore drawing and painting techniques, gaining experience in pencil, color, and brush work.
• What Artists See: Seven lessons cover the elements that artists use in 2-dimesional and 3-dimensional works such as shape, form, and color. Children explore collage, paper works, and color mixing. Children gain experience in handling scissors, glue, and paper forms.
• Exploring Ancient Art: Fifteen lessons cover ancient art from the cave paintings of France to book illumination of the 13th century. Children see that art is more than just a picture on a wall. Cultures used it in different ways and for different purposes. Lessons expand the child's ideas of what art is and where we find it. Children explore mural, pottery, low-relief, paper art, bookbinding, mosaic techniques and more.

Kahlen is at a stage in her artwork where some direction is very helpful and gives her all kinds of ideas about what else she can draw and make. She absolutely loves crafting, coloring, etc. so this has been really fun.

  She has enjoyed getting to use a variety of new art supplies, such as watercolor crayons, to create new pictures.

What surprised me, actually, was how well she has taken to it. She really tries to follow what the activity says to do in each project and spends a long time thinking about the composition and drawing each object in her picture carefully.

While we haven’t been able to complete one lesson per week, the ones that we have completed have not taken any prep work from me other than having the correct supplies on hand. They have been fun, engaging, and a great learning experience.

ARTistic Pursuits has 10 different books available ranging from preschool to high school. You can read about each one here. You can take a look at a sample lesson for the book that I got here, the book retails for $42.95. You can also purchase supply kits from them if you are ready to get everything up front and don’t want the hassle of hunting it all down. The kits seem to cost a lot, but they are high quality art supplies that are cheaper to buy in this kit instead of individually. If you don’t have any fine arts supplies, I would recommend just purchasing the kit.

I highly recommend this curriculum! We have really enjoyed the projects we have done so far and I can see that it has gotten Kahlen to think about art and her “projects” in a whole new way (She’s currently “writing” a book about Christmas eve that I have nothing to do with. It’s 10 pages complete with illustrations and words)

See what other crew members are saying here.

~S

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this product through The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew in exchange for my honest opinion. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Countdown to Christmas–Day 2

Day 2 of our Advent activities was all about the meaning of Christmas symbols. Last week, my husband was in charge of leading a bible study for 10 kids ages 2-6 for our fellowship team. I came across this post featuring this book, “My Merry Christmas and the Real Reason for Christmas Joy” over at one of my favorite blogs, 1+1+1=1.  The lesson went well, I was helping so I don’t have many pictures. I do have this one of all 10 kids eating a treat before we started

Anyway, after we did that, I felt that we could do more learning about Christmas symbols. So, I found more resources about a lapbook and other things to put in it. I started here at 1+1+1=1, then ended up over here at Christian Preschool Printables for some more info since I didn’t really want to make up my own printables this time.

Here’s what we ended up with:

Lapbooking at the kindergarten level is a bit different, I must say that much. We mostly talk about things as she cuts and glues them on, but I still feel like it’s a worthwhile activity, and then we have something to show daddy about what we’re learning. It will be nice when she can write in it herself though! Maybe next year…

~S

TOS Review–El Espanol Facil! Jr from Great Commission Languages

It’s Speak Up Saturday! Time for a review (0r two)…

From the publisher:

Introducing El Español Facil! 

• Phonetic, incremental, conversational Spanish & high frequency words
• Spanish Scripture, songs, games and coloring pages
• Great for homeschool co-op groups
• Digitally mastered enhanced CD for audio and computer
• Printable activity sheets: no purchasing consumable activity books or photocopying.
• Teaches language and grammar through literature based entertaining storylines
• Does not require prior knowledge of Spanish
• Set outline of skills per quarter
• 3 year program for younger students
• 1 to 2 year program for older students and 1 year Fast track option for teens
• Cultural flavor of Mexico and South America with optional projects
• Use of Tomatis and SAMONAS sound theories to facilitate learning
• Follows Charlotte Mason Method, Bloom's Taxonomy and high order theories by Dr. Jeanne Chall
• Edited by and featuring the recorded voices of Native Spanish Speakers from Nicaragua and Venezuela

As I stated at the beginning of the year, I want to start teaching Kahlen Spanish this year, but I don’t really have a good plan about it, so when El Espanol Facil! came available for review, I jumped at the chance. I was hoping for an easy-to-teach, simple Spanish curriculum appropriate for my kindergartner.

I was, sad to say, disappointed with this curriculum. The book was too vanilla and too vague for me. If you are someone who likes to have a basic idea and run with it, you might really like this approach. It’s not what I was looking for, however. I was hoping for something that we could just jump into with prepared activities that were age/level appropriate and some kind of lesson plan or ideas about how to teach the material.

Each lesson has a story that you can read and listen to, a vocabulary list, and a list of possible activities. What it doesn’t have is some idea about what I should do with that information, like a lesson plan, or some idea of a break-down for each day or week. Am I supposed to do the story just once? Multiple times? How do I fit in the other vocabulary words that were not part of the story?

There are two sets of activity pages included on the CD so you can print out just what you want to use, and as many copies as you need for your family. The first is a set of activity pages, generally one for each lesson. The second is a book that you work on throughout the program called Soy Yo! It’s Me! which is designed to relate the lesson to the student specifically. The idea is good, but again, it does not utilize all the vocabulary that is supposed to be learned in that lesson. Also, a lot of the activities involved writing and/or reading, which Kahlen is just not ready for, and I don’t think most kindergartners are.

Great Commission Languages offers the Spanish curriculum in the Jr. level, which retails for $69.95 and Level 1, which is designed with older children in mind and retails for $139.95 as well as several resources to go along with the program. You can view sample lessons and products available on their website. They also offer a French curriculum.

I give this product two stars. It has a few good features, such as the Soy Yo! It’s Me! book, but overall I did not find it useable for me.

See what other crew members are saying here.

~S

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this product through The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew in exchange for an honest review. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Countdown to Christmas–Day 1

Day 1 of our Advent activities this year was to make a Christmas Star paper chain. Kahlen loves making paper chains, so this was a good one. Nate even got in on the action this time. No pictures of actually making it because when an almost-5-year-old and a 2.5-year-old and a stapler are all involved, mommy gets to help too :) It’s now hanging right around the corner from the advent calendar. Good place for it so we can tuck it up if other littles come over to play.

In the first Countdown To Christmas post, I included a printable that I made with all the activities formatted to print on 2”x2” squares. Well, the second page also includes the star that is at the top of our paper chain. I found the original poem here, and just stuck it inside a star. Kahlen cut it out before we stapled it to the top of the chain.

Nate hasn’t figured out that we get to rip off a link every day, which is probably good because there might be arguing about who’s turn it is…

~S

Countdown to Christmas 2011

If you’ve been around here awhile, you may remember the Countdown to Christmas Advent activities I did last year. Anyway, I decided to do something similar but not quite the same this year. I feel like Kahlen is still a little young to do anything more serious, and I did incorporate several activities that explain the true meaning of Christmas as well as the spirit of giving that I’d like to instill.

I’ve recently joined Pinterest as well, which has been slightly distracting, but overall a good thing. I’ve been pretty good about not spending too much time there, but it is very tempting. Anyway, I found a bunch of great Advent activity ideas and resources, so I combined them and made my own, cause that’s how I roll.

Here’s the links to the ones I used parts of:

• My finished product looks very similar to this one
• But I got my numbers from here
• And several lists of activities can be found here, here, and here.

Tada!

Here’s my activity list (link goes to ones you can actually print, already formatted to 2”x2” squares):

1. Make a Christmas Star paper chain
2. Christmas Symbols Lapbook
3. Get Christmas Pictures taken
4. Find and decorate a Christmas tree
5. Make and mail Christmas ornaments
6. Look at Christmas decorations at the mall
7. String popcorn garland for the tree
8. Make Christmas Cards for friends
9. Make a new ornament for the tree
10. Watch classic Christmas cartoons
11. Sing at Church
12. Bake cookies and give them to neighbors
13. Drink hot cocoa and watch The Polar Express
14. Minivan Express
15. Library Storytime about Christmas
16. Nativity Coloring Book
17. Celebrate Kahlen’s Birthday
18. Make paper snowflakes
19. Read or Watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas
20. Christmas craft(s)
21. Wrap Christmas Presents
22. Play “Don’t Eat Pete”
23. Read “A Special Place for Santa”
24. Go to the Christmas Eve service at church
25. Have a Merry Christmas!

I printed them on 2”x2” squares and taped them inside like this so that once we do an activity, we turn that day inside out so we can see all the activities we’ve done. I used just a bit of tape so I can rearrange them if I need to.

Okay, supplies I used:

• Large glassless picture frame (I picked this up at a thrift store over a year ago, has so many uses!)
• Scrapbook paper in several colors/patterns. I used four different papers to provide variety, but you really could use all the same paper. I also didn’t want to go buy anything, so these are from my stash.
• Mini clothespins (from Joann’s)
• Ribbon
• Staple gun (you could use tape, but I like it to be nice and sturdy)
• Glue or tape (I used my Scotch ATG, but anything will work)

How I did it:

• I actually used my Cricut Expressions and the Plantin Schoolbook cartridge to cut out the shape I used for each day, but a rectangle would have worked just as well. I used the bookmark and then folded it in half and folded the top part down so it looks like a present. But, seriously, a long rectangle would have worked just as well.
• After I had the bookmark shapes all cut, I printed these numbers and cut them out with a circle cutter at about 2.5” (scissors would have worked too).
• I taped the numbers onto the bookmarks I had already cut and folded.
• I laid out my activity cards on the floor and figured out when each one would work best for us. Some are better on the weekend, some have a specific date, and the rest were “fillers”. Then I taped them on the inside of each of the folded cards with just a bit of tape so I can rearrange if I need to.
• Next, I stapled ribbon onto the frame. I did not measure, I approximated, and it worked out just fine. If you are more of a perfectionist than I am (which is not hard), you might want to actually measure so you don’t end up with a gap at the bottom like I did.
• Finally, I just pinned all the cards on to the ribbons, hung the frame on the wall, and voila! A cute, somewhat simple, advent calendar!

Since my posting has been sporadic anyway, there are no guarantees that I will post every single activity, but I’ll do my best. Geez, I’m already two days behind! Gotta go take some more pictures of the things we’ve done already…

~S

I included a lot of links in this post, but none of them are affiliate links so I won’t be benefitting in any way from you visiting said links. I just thought you might like to know what I was talking about :)