When You Lie Down and Rise Up

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
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"Books of Remembrance" II

Greetings from Me and My House,

Continuing discussion on "Books of Remembrance".

Several questions are usually asked about BOR. Who does them? When do they do them? What do they cover? Here's some answers.

"Do we make one BOR as a family or does each child make their own?" Yes. Do both. At times your children will want to make their own BOR on a study they do. At other times one book can be made. 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 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 BOR together.
2) Our children have also done 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 few to make the mini-books and the BOR.

"Do we include all subjects in one BOR or make a different BOR for each subject?" Yes. Some of our 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.

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

"Books of Remembrance"

Greetings from Me and My House,

You've probably heard of these by another name - lapbooks. Or perhaps shutterbooks. They are made up of little booklets, sometimes called minit-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 Disicpleship. 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 sissors and glue, and make those "Books of Remembrance" something to really remember.

"Books of Remembrance" are the best, primary method of Journaling/Notebooking 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 "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.

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