My Fruitful Life: Week 7: My Father's World K and Sonlight P4/5

This week we took a few days off. When it rains, it pours. Since my grandmother passed away last Friday, we had some funeral things to take care of. Tuesday morning I met with some of my cousins and siblings and we talked about memories we had of her. That evening we had the visitation. Wednesday morning was her funeral. In the midst of this, the government shutdown. This meant that my husband was sent home without pay. We know the shutdown won't last forever but this has caused some extra stress, especially since we are a one income family. The father of one of my friend's also passed away last week. Needless to say, there's been a lot of sorrow going around. Thankfully God is always here ready to comfort us. I have received some of the sweetest cards, emails, and calls comforting me during the mourning of my grandmother that included some wonderful memories others had of her life.

Now back to homeschool. Blue Rock is only 4, so if we miss a few days here or there I'm not too worried about it. We're also using a kindergarten curriculum so if it takes us a little longer to do, that's fine. However, I do have the get 'er done personality so as we go along we'll add a little extra work as needed to catch up to where we left off. Also, the way I see it, life is all one big classroom anyway. While we didn't do official school work everyday, we did talk about life and death. He went to his first funeral and is learning more about how this life is not forever. I have to brag a litthe that his behavior was A+ at the visitation and funeral of his great-grandmother. For a 4-year old, and as the only kid there, he really showed maturity and good behavior.

Along with studying apples, A, and the number 4, we are studying the fruits of the Spirit. Our memory verse this week was. Galatians 5:22-23 (NIV): But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

We've talked about these fruits for a few years now so this was a verse Blue Rock already knew. It made for an easy review as well as good conversations regarding what the fruit of the Spirit is and how we want to portray these fruits in our own lives.

Our other memory verse this week was Colossians 3:13 (NIV): Forgive as the Lord forgave you. Our character trait was forgiveness: I treat someone as if they never hurt me.

Monday: We continued our apple unit. He did some handwriting practice of the letter "a" and number 4. He worked on sound discrimination, did some cutting, made an apple graph, painted some apple trees and a volcano that exploded and lava covered the trees (his idea), we made a pepperoni and kale pizza for lunch, he did not like the kale, and we ate Asian food for dinner. He loved using chopsticks.

Practicing writing As and 4s

Thinking about what letter each picture starts with

Getting his graph ready

Cutting is one of his favorite things to do

Free time to paint, he loves painting as well.

Apple Magnet

Pizza which he loved except the kale, which he said, "ew, gross!"

He ate most of his dinner with chopsticks!

Tuesday: Today we were busy meeting with family and making preparations for the funeral on Wednesday. We also had my grandmother's visitation that evening. No school work was done.


One of the last pictures of Blue Rock with his great-grandmother

Wednesday: Today was my grandmother's funeral. We took the day off from school work as well so we could spend time with family and remember my grandmother. We did eat dinner with some friends (it was National Taco Day) and Mr and son went to church that evening. I was too tired to go so I went home and rested.

Thursday: Today was Homeschool Day at our zoo. Since hubby is on furlough he was able to go on the field trip with us. After spending a few hours at the zoo, we went home and Blue Rock did a little school work, and then we went to one of his friend's birthday party at Chuck E Cheese's. After having a few stressful days, it was nice to have a day of fun.

Daddy gave him money to see the giraffes up close

He loved petting the snakes on display

Family train ride

Train ride at the zoo

There's an indoor playground and he loves crossing the bridge

Some giraffes - this was the only picture of the animals I took

Getting the letters ready to match with the correct picture

He matched all of the correctly!

There were go-karts at the birthday party

Blue Rock spent most of his time driving

Blue Rock with the birthday boy and his brother

His friend picked him to do the ticket blaster with him.
He was so excited!

The tickets flew everywhere!

You have to wear safety goggles

Friday: We did some school work and then met our friends for lunch at Chick-fil-A, something we do throughout college football season. The Curious George exhibit opened at the Children's Museum and so some of our friends went with us to see Curious George. Blue Rock loves Curious George and we've been waiting since this summer for this exhibit to open. Friday it was open for members only so it was not very crowded.

I'm thinking of four pictures that start with A

Curious George exhibit, pushing blocks up a conveyor belt

Seeing how wind works

He did not want to see George at first, I think because he was a giant George

When his friend joined us he finally was happy

Shadows and windows

Different shadows and light

Saturday: Since we do homeschool everyday, really, I decided to include what we did on Saturday. Today we took him to a pumpkin patch at a local nursery. They have fun activities for the kids including decorating a pumpkin pie pumpkin. He picked out a ghost (white) pumpkin and we got a number of gourds and small pumpkins to decorate our dining room table. When we got home we harvested our garden and finally picked our watermelon. Our tomato plant is still producing, our herbs are still doing great, and our peas should be ready soon.