Today I took notice...

as I saw before me, my daughter, who is almost 7! She was eager to help cook, eager to learn, eager to play with her older brother. When her youngest brother woke up and she heard him through the monitor, she was eager to get him. Later, she was eager to entertain her 2 baby brothers and teach them a new trick.

I am amazed of how much growth and maturity has taken place over this past year!

What a blessing it is to have the opportunity to see transformation daily in the hearts and lives of the kids! It really just hit me today! Lord, thank you for opening my eyes to notice!

Back to Life...

Just got back home today from being in Puerto Rico for 2 weeks! We took TONS of pics that I will share soon! That's it for now. Back to life and reality but it feels SO GOOD to be home! There is something about your own bed and schedule that is comforting :-)

Oh, and we are taking December to do a Christmas unit study and will be back to ECC Week 12 in January! Here is the link the Unit Study on the Symbols of Christmas.

7, 8, 9...

We are getting to our "crazy" season! So posts maybe few and far between. In less than 3 wks, we will be headed (in real life), on a secret trip to Isla del Encanto! Yes, it can still be a secret when I'm posting on my blog b/c the surprisees do not read by blog:-) That being said, I'm super excited and you know how hard it can be to be productive when you are looking forward to something in reachable distance! I'm trying to push through these next few wks and get everything finished!

Now back to previous weeks 7, 8 and 9! Sadly, my camera battery charger is lost and hubby accidentally erased most of my camera phone pics which = s no pics and mostly boring post. I LIKE my pictures!

We traveled to Canada for 2 wks and Brazil for week 9 and we are in week 10 now. We are learning so much!

The highlight while studying Canada was learning about George Muller (who is German lol!) WOW! This man was AMAZING!

The day after we started reading about George Muller in Hero Tales,

I found this free downloadable book written by him! I wasn't even looking for that but when I downloaded another book, this one came up as a recommended book!

Week 9 we started the biography of Nate Saint.

We have been loving this read aloud because it's packed with so much action. Abrianna interrupts all the time and says "What's going to happen?". I keep replying, "We have to keep reading to find out."

We also found a Brazilian Bakery super close to us and have enjoyed many pastries and breads from there!

So far, we have learned all of the names of the North American countries, including the islands and we are working on learning the ones in South America.

That's the "school" update :-)

In other news, Jose's family came for the weekend from Miami and we had a birthday party for Elijah, who turned 8 a few wks ago! Here are a few Noy family pics (courtesy of my SIL)!

I'm really bad at this

blogging thing!

So, where have we been and what have we been doing?

I will start with the much needed vacation Jose and I took ALONE to NYC!!! We are SUPER THANKFUL for WONDERFUL moms (and a sis-in-law) who babysat while we were away! What a FUN time we had with each other sharing our dreams, hopes, and vision for our future and the future of our children!

On that note....VISION...

We were recently talking about a vision for our family and what would = success when it comes to our children and here is what we came up with:

We will be successful if our children

-KNOW HIM INTIMATELY

-FOLLOW HIM PASSIONATELY

-SERVE OTHERS INTENTIONALLY

Yep! That's what everything boiled down to!

School update:

Week 5 & 6 in review.

We traveled to MEXICO! I checked the kids passports and let them cross the border since the didn't look suspicious;-) They added the Mexico flag sticker to their passport book.

BIBLE-We talked about Cuba and Haiti, using Window on the World, and learned about the prayer needs of each country. Our memory verses were Matt 4:4 Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" and Colossians 3:20 Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. For our verses from now on, I have decided not to use the ones in MFW (for now) and focus on ones that relate to character training which I've been learning and using from our Growing Kids God's Way class. Which, by the way, is the best parenting curriculum, based completely on God's word, ever created in my not so humble opinion;-)

SCIENCE-We learned about desserts from Properties of Ecosystems and about dessert animals from Living World. We learned the difference between cold blooded and warm blooded and did a couple of different experiments to help illustrate. We also learned oases and rain in the dessert. We encounte.red a giant grass hopper and a giant moth? or something in our home "habitat".

GEOGRAPHY-Facinating Mexico facts. Nature, farming, and Industry in Mexico. How to cook tortillas. Geography game where we are learning all of the countries in Latin America.

ART- We made yarn art and tomorrow we are making tissue paper flowers tomorrow in preparation for our Friday FIESTA!

When Elijah is not doing school, he is building a new Lego creation, watching the weather channel or researching past hurricanes and weather patterns!!! This child is OBSESSED with WEATHER! He cracks me up dancing to the jazz music while announcing the different city's weather!

When Abi is not doing school, she loves to play Pet Shops and actually loves to build Legos with Elijah! I'm so thankful how close we had them together! I guess that's why we had two more so close huh?!

Joseph is still getting into everything! He's so curious and so precious! He LOVES Abi and Elijah! (I'm sure he loves Moses too when Moses' isn't trying to eat him!) Yes we have a biter! Yes we are working on him;-) Every night and for naps he asks for each one to come and pray with him then give them a hug! Joseph has such a sweet spirit!

Moses is definitely the clown of the family! SO FUNNY ALL THE TIME! Oh, except when he is biting! He ALWAYS has a SMILE and is always making us laugh!

Here is a random pic of our grocery store trip!

There's the update!

ECC Weeks 3 & 4

Crazy 2 wks so I'm putting weeks 3 and 4 together since they are running together in my brain! Our first official stop in North America was USA!

BIBLE: We are LOVING Hero Tales! We talked about Dwight Moody (Boldness, Repentance, Strength) and Harriet Tubman (Compassion, Joy, and Perseverance) and the character traits that went with each person. We also talked about missionary kids and the Navajo from our book Window on the World.

GEOGRAPHY: We reviewed USA states and colored our USA coloring sheet and completed a fun cross word puzzle. Since we just finished US history last year with Adventures we had time for lots review and fun stuff.


SCIENCE: We enjoyed a nature walk as your will see from our butterfly pics! Beautiful! We learned the different types of forests and what lives in the different parts (Canopy and Forest Floor).

ART: We made Navajo sand art, cat and dog masks (just for fun) and a bean and seed necklace minus the seeds. LOL!

READ ALOUD: We are continuing Kingdom Tales, which I LOVE!

Below are a few of our pictures! Today (Labor Day) we went to Fort Moultrie and had a great day! We also talked about the history of Labor Day and how it came about.

We are taking the rest of the week off just doing the 3Rs because my mom is moving back to Charleston tomorrow and Jose and I are heading to NYC on Thursday! YAY! A weeked getaway! It's been awhile;-) Enjoy the rest of your week in My Father's World!


Abi painting her mask

Elijah's finished product


Beautiful!

Elijah writing a letter for PLL.



Elijah's sand art

Abi's sand art

Fort Moultrie

Fort Sumter in the distance

ECC Week 2 in Review

So...2 wks are gone!

I have to say, I think I'm finally in my groove with homeschooling (for now). In my opinion, it takes 2 years to start to kind of know what you're doing. It's probably my opinion b/c that is true for me. LOL! It's like the children know what is expected of them, they know the schedule and the agenda so we just get it done while having fun! I seriously can not even believe how much I am enjoying this journey! If you talked to me a few years ago, I was in tears at the fact that homeschooling was going to be my reality. But, the Lord definitely knows what he is doing! I can't imagine our days any other way! I definitely know homeschooling is not for everyone and I would never want anyone to choose it unless it was something they felt led to, but I'm so thankful I listened to the call the Lord had for our family! Even if I started out kicking and screaming ;-)

THIS WEEK WE LEARNED:

Bible

-How people began to speak other languages

-There is only one God for the whole world

-The good news is for EVERYONE

-Judaism

Geography

-Elevation and depth

-Difference between physical and political maps

-The names and locations of the oceans and continents

-We made and enjoyed our world cake

-Definitions of ocean and ocean ridge

-We reviewed our address and phone #

Science

-Biomes around the world

-Leaf and Bark rubbings

-Nature walk which ended with Joseph getting stung by 3 bees :(

-Oxygen and Water Cycles

Art

-We created paper dolls that were from around the world. Our creative juices were NOT flowing in this project ;-)

Read Aloud

-We started Kingdom Tales (I'm loving this book)

We also have Grammar, Spelling, Spanish, Math, Reading and Music but nothing too interesting to report. We did join a Lego group on Thursday that meets once a month. The kids had a blast. My kids LOVE Legos! What was funny though there was a group of girls playing dolls while Abi and another girl were the only ones playing with Legos. Here are a few pictures from our week.

Week 1

Our first week of school was AWESOME! Way better than I could have imagined! The KEY was for me to have time with the Lord before even beginning! Imagine that. A crazy, unique idea right?! My heart and my head needed to be in the same spot!

Like I've mentioned before we are using MFW Exploring Countries and Cultures (ECC)! This is the intro year before starting the four year history cycle. In ECC, we will be studying diverse cultures around the world, geography, and learning about different missionaries.

Anyways, our first week was pretty much an introduction for the year. So, we started out with our memory verse John 3:16. As we "travel" through out the different countries we will be learning this verse in the different languages. We also had an introduction to maps. We learned N, S, E, and W as well as hemispheres, distance, and scale. In science, we started learning about ecosystems, environments and studied our backyard habitat.

In music we learned a new song called "Hello to All the Children of the World" which teaches them the word Hello in several different languages. I'm NOT a fan of the cd's with children singing but the kids seemed to love it! LOL!

We also did our "real" school work with math, reading, phonics, writing, and Spanish. Next week we are adding spelling.

I'm really pleased at how smoothly the days went. Even with the toddlers. It really helped to schedule time for the big kids taking turns (20 min-30 min) playing with the babies. I was able to focus on the individual needs of Elijah and Abi with their help!

I know I'm a little late posting week 1 since we are 1 day shy of completing week 2 but better late than never!