Simple Curriculum Advice

Victoria Botkin gives sound and inspiring advice in her Curriculum Advice CDs. Parents are encouraged to give their children a passion for all that God has made and all that God has done. Wow! That is a worthwhile vision. As parents, we are first of all to consider what God wants. He desires that we equip our children to be ambassadors for Him in theology, history, science, reading and writing.

The beauty of Victoria's advice to parents is its simplicity. Read a lot, and borrow most of the books from the library. Read history to your children rather than giving them simplified history books or text books. Choose a math curriculum (they used Saxon) and mark daily. Borrow lots of "real books" for science as well, and talk about them together. Equip your children to read and write with excellence as they are called to proclaim Christ and must be able to communicate effectively. Watch your own attitude, as you are their example.

As I have considered how to educate our children, I have often returned to the thoughts that Victoria shared. Homeschooling doesn't seem so daunting when I think of it as an extension of what I am already doing with our 20 month old. We talk about books and numbers and nature, and as he grows we will build and build on this knowledge. The Curriculum Advice CDs are available in Australia from Anselm Study House, where you can also find additional information about the content. In the USA they are available from Vision Forum.

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Saturday's Backyard Bounty: Radish Eating Babies and more!

We harvested radishes, lettuce, our first butter beans, parsley, chives, basil, oregano, rosemary, carrots, patty pan squash, zucchini and spring onions.

One of my most precious memories from the week is from yesterday afternoon, when I brought Nate into the garden with me to play nearby while I planted. First he had lots of fun feeding me lettuce! Next I showed him how to pull up some radishes and he immediately wanted to eat one, eating a lot of dirt in the process. I took it inside to wash and he ate narly the whole radish for afternoon tea! After finishing all but a segment he asked for the carrot that was on the bench, and proceeded to eat a lot of it. You can see the progress in these pictures. I was surprised and how much he ate of these raw vegetables.

We also had an impromptu lesson about how roots draw water from the soil, with the radish as our teaching tool!

More ways we used our backyard bounty . . .

Grated beetroot with mayonaisse. We still have beets in the fridge from last week's harvest.

Salad to take to dinner at a friends, with 100% our own vegetables

Baked potatoes harvested last week with topping of 500ml sour cream, grated beetroot, grated carrot, some lemon juice, and lots of chopped parsley. We have enjoyed this sour cream topping with other vegetables included in it, but this was the first time with beet. We like it!

Pizza with zucchini, carrot, parsley, spring onion and basil as some of the toppings (weird, I know . . . but we liked it!)

Eggs for breakfast a few mornings, boiled, fried and scrambled. This is the main way we eat the eggs from our chickens.

Potato salad and squash on the braai, like last week.

Bean salad with butter beans, fetta cheese, olives, olive oil, parsley and chives. This is a favourite from last year, and it was lovely to enjoy our first beans in this way tonight.

It was also fun to see the bean tendrils from our two teepees at the front of the garden finally meet in the middle of the string Dave put up between them over the entrance of the garden. You can see the chairs we sat on for an outdoor Bible and prayer time this evening . . . making precious memories! You can see the net which goes all the way around the garden and seves to keep out chickens.

This picture was too cute not to include! Dave put up the swing a few weeks ago.

We learnt that our snail bait may also have killed a worm. I found a dead worm on the soil near some bait. We are still using the bait though, as slugs have destroyed so many of our seedlings.

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Thursday's Learning Spotlight: Imprisoned in Iran by Dan Baumann

There are many educational resources and ideas that I would love to share. They whirl through my head but I rarely sit down and write about them. So I've decided that each Thursday (time permitting) I will briefly "spotlight" one resource or idea that may benefit others.

This week I am reading "Imprisoned In Iran: Love's Victory over Fear" by Dan Baumann (my Christmas gift from Dave). Dan Baumann was imprisoned in solitary confinement for nine weeks on false charges. Dan's account exposes his weakness and fear, and God's faithfulness and power.

Reading "Imprisoned in Iran" has felt like an encounter with God! I have been filled with awe at God's awesome love, what he is willing to do to save people, and the way he sets us free. I have prayed afresh that God will set us on fire for Him and cause us to trust Him with everything. I have been reminded of the suffering believers face in Muslim countries, and the desperate need to pray for the growth of the church in those places.

This book will definitely be kept on our shelf, in the hope of reading it to our children one day or including it as part of our studies. The book would not only be a wonderful way to teach children about who God is, it would also provide a useful point of discussion about geography, mission, people groups and culture. This is the fourth book in the International Adventures series that I have had the pleasure of reading. Every one of them has been a gripping account of God's work across the world.

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8 weks old tomorrow

Mercy Joy in the garden amongst the gem squash and the corn.

My how she has grown!

Mum, do I really have to have one more photo taken . . .

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Saturday's Backyard Bounty

Each week I am going to aim to post about what we have harvested from our garden, and how we have used our harvest. I will also aim to write about a couple of things we have learnt.

Our harvest . . .

Today Dave dug up two buckets of potatoes. Elnathan enjoyed transferring them from one bucket to another!

We also harvested beetroot, carrots, lettuce, radishes, zucchini, spring onions, parsley, chives, our first tomato for the season, and basil.

Food from the garden . . .

Salads with fresh lettuce, radish, spring onion, cooked (boiled) beet, grated raw beet, carrots, and our first tomato! We are enjoying salads much more since I devoted a couple of meters exclusively to salad crops and began growing a variety of lettuces.

Risotto with beetroot and zucchini. Beet risotto is one of our favourites, and adding some zucchini was an experiment. We liked it!

Pizza with zucchini and basil as two of the toppings.

Potato salad this evening with our new potatoes, fresh eggs plus chives and parsley - yum, yum!

We also harvested some patty pan squash and enjoyed them on the braai tonight.

We planted . . . 

Seeds for carrots, turnips, spring onions and broccolini.

What we learnt . . .

Dave discovered that sunflowers are highly productive but susceptible to drought. They use water continually as they do not shut down their stomata. We must keep them well watered if we want them to be productive and produce seeds for our chickens. Our first sunflowers opened this week. They are behind the corn in a long row, so we hope it will look amazing soon.

I learnt to plait garlic and hung it on a hook near the back door.

Slugs have probably been responsible for the destruction of many of our seedlings. We laid snail bait and snared many. We thought grubs were cutting our seedlings off at the base but now think slugs may be responsible.

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Giving thanks for the first six weeks

Beyond birth . . . more reasons to praise God!

* I felt connected with the baby from the first day, with all those warm feelings you hope for, whereas I felt distant from Elnathan for some weeks until his precious first smile.
* Dave has four weeks of paid paternal leave – wow!
* God answered my prayers for no mastitis or thrush this time. While there were a few other breastfeeding problems, they were resolved in the second week of Mercy’s life.
* Mercy feeds more quickly. She can eat her fill in half an hour rather than an hour, something that I prayed for often.
* While feeding I have enjoyed using the little book of Scriptures and prayer points I prepared during pregnancy, and have learnt Colossians 3. Nancy Campbell's devotional book "100 Days of Blessing" has also helped me meditate on God's word.
* The nursing chair we purchased has helped me to have less back pain while feeding this time, and the pockets on the sides have been great for keeping books nearby.
* The routine I established for Elnathan has worked well, and he has mostly responded positively to his new sister.
* Mercy mainly sleeps well at night, only feeding once. 
* My recovery has seemed easier.
* Like Natey, Mercy has gained weight rapidly and is the picture of health! When I took her for the six week check, the doctor said she was the strongest and most alert six week old she had seen for years. That is music to a mummy's ears!

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Praising God for Mercy's birth

 

There are so many things to be grateful for about Mercy's birth, including . . .

• I prayed and prayed that the baby would be in a good position, and the reduced pain in contractions indicates that this prayer was answered!
• Dave's wonderful support.
• Few of the birth suites at the hospital have baths, and you are not allowed to bring in a birth pool. We were so grateful that a suite with a bath was available!
• Having a lot of muscular pain during late pregnancy made me wonder if the contractions would be even more painful than last time. I wondered if muscular tension contributed to labour pain. I am grateful to realise that this is not the case!
• I remembered the last labour and birth well, it being so recent, and I didn’t feel like doing it again. I had some fear to pray over as we approached this birth. God’s amazing goodness is shown in the fact that this birth was totally different! In away we didn’t “do it again”, we had something different to do! This is, for me, yet another reminder not to be anxious about the future.
• The birth coming at a good time for us as a couple, even though it was late, because closer to the due date we felt more strained. We wondered about God's timing, as the extra week and a half was physically and emotionally difficult, but of course He knew best!
• Being able to hire the same midwife we had at our first birth to assist us this time. Our midwife spoke kind, encouraging words to us and made extra effort to help.
• Receiving good advice from our midwife about when to go to hospital, something we had been unsure about.
• Even though I was panicking, God enabled me to get through the difficult final stage without speaking unkind words to anyone. At one point I was able to focus on Him saying “God is my help and strength, I will not be afraid”.

 These are just some of the things I've been praising God for! He is so good to us!

 

 

 These pictures were taken in hospital shortly before we left.

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First Memory Verses

Our desire is to teach Elnathan the Bible as early as possible. Little ones have such good memories, why not fill their minds with God's words? I have been reading Sally Clarkeson's book The Ministry of Motherhood and answering the study questions. One of the challenges was to write down five ideas for giving your children God's word. One idea I had was to illustrate memory verses and laminate them to review at mealtimes. The trouble was that I did not have much time to do this! I wrote this idea down before Mercy was born and now she was a month old.

Then I listened to Sono Harris' "A Joyful Mother of Children" talks on CD while breastfeeding. Sono encouraged mothers to really enjoy their children and include them in what they were doing. So I thought, why not try to include Natey in making his memory verses? It was a little challenging, but he enjoyed looking for pictures we needed in magazines and old diaries. He also enjoyed sticking the pictures to the paper after I put the glue onto them. We also used some of my scrapbook supplies to embelish our pages. The result was a little less perfect than it might have been if I'd done it on my own, but it does the job. I could have included pictures of a Bible and a light for Ps. 119: 105 if there had been more time.

Elnathan has clearly taken in some of these verses. We have reviewed them with him, pointing to the pictures so that he can say the word it represents (people, sheep and pasture for Ps. 100:3 and lamp, feet and light for Ps. 119:105). Now he is able to say the right word even when we just speak the verse to him without the pictures. Bear in mind that Natey's language development is progressing well for a 20 month old. He already has some three word phrases and often puts two words together. It would not be reasonable to expect this of all under two year olds, as some have few words. Nate has had to learn new words in order to learn these verses.

Since completing these verses I have also created a couple more to teach about obeying parents. These were easy to illustrate with pictures of our family. I am looking for more verses that can be illustrated with objects of interest to little ones. If you have any ideas, I'd be grateful to read about them. Have you started memory verses with your children? If so, how did you teach them?

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The Birth of Mercy Joy

 

Early labour lasted for most of Saturday November 20. In the afternoon Elnathan went to Grandma’s, happily waving goodbye. The contractions became increasingly regular and intense in the evening. In between contractions we looked at plants outside. Later Dave read to me. We have some lovely memories of the evening at home together. I had practiced breathing in through the nose to the count of four and out through the mouth to the count of six, and found this helpful throughout labour. I progressed to established labour (contractions that were more intense and I didn’t want to go through alone) at 9 or 9.30pm. We went to hospital at 10pm.

In hospital I spent most of the time labouring in the bath, as I was achy and tired. The water was restful between contractions. We asked the same people who were with us for Elnathan’s birth at home to come with us to the hospital, a private midwife (who also works at the hospital) and my sister. The contractions were less painful than last time, when I needed massage to get through them, and I only required Dave to talk me through. The pain was all at the front, none at the back. The bath was an ordinary sized one where you lie down, unlike the birth pool we had at home for our first labour. I kept wondering if I should be up upright to get things moving along faster. In my heart I knew that my body was opening up, but my head kept wondering if this was hard enough, or I was doing enough.

Sometime after midnight the waters broke. The next stage was short, but more painful. I was very panicky during it. I laboured on the bed. After I began pushing, she came with only a few pushes and was born at 1.30am on November 21st with only a minor tear. We praise God for an easier labour than first time around. With Elnathan’s birth established labour lasted seven hours and pushing took two hours. While I remained calm for most of the time, unlike this birth, afterwards I felt shocked. When I think about Mercy Joy’s birth, I feel happy and positive. As her head came out I said “it is a wonderful thing to give birth”. Now I can identify with people who say that labour and birth were not as bad as they expected, and that giving birth is a wonderful experience. We share this story with gratitude to God. Soon I hope to share some praise points from the birth and the first six weeks.

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