Summer Plans

We now have two weeks of school left. We are going to be working on zoo animals and whatever else comes with that unit study and hopefully we'll be able to take the kids to the zoo or at least a petting zoo, there is one of those around here!

I want to spend this summer planning for the things we are going to be doing for school come Fall.
I was trying to figure out how I'm going to do this now that X4 is going to be doing some type of preschool/kindergarten type of schooling and of course A7 will be doing 2nd grade stuff.

Since there is only one of me I can't be with both kids at the same time. X4 is going to be needing more of me than A7. The only thing I can do with both at the same time is Five in a row. Everything else is pretty much, one does one thing the other something else.

What am I going to do??...well I just found out about the workbox system. What is the workbox system? I'm going to be spending my summer figuring that out. From what I've been able to see from other blogs this is something that is really going to help our schooling. Mainly the organizational part of school.

I will be blogging about the workbox system throughout the summer. I can't wait!

Change of Plans

This week we were supposed to be rowing the book Who Owns the Sun? We actually read the book on Monday. After reading it I made an executive decision, instead of continuing with the book I decided to finish up the Space unit study we were working on last week.

We had so much stuff last week and not enough time to do it all. Who Owns the Sun is a wonderful book, however the theme of the book (slavery) requires a lot more attention than I was willing to give it. I already have my book list schedule for next year and it includes the book Follow the Drinking Gourd. I think I may do a unit study on slavery and read both books then.

After this week we have two more weeks of school, we'll be doing a zoo animals unit study and hopefully going on a field trip at the end of it.

How to Survive the Economic Meltdown

You can download a free copy of Patrick Morley's book; How to Survive the Economic Meltdown. Free PDF version at www.SurviveTheMeltdown.org.

Space Unit Study

After Easter vacation I knew I would need to do something really fun to get the kids back into school mode. I decided to do a space unit study. We are going to be covering this in depth probably in the third grade. For now I just wanted to get the kids familiarize with the names of the planets, what is a star system and the milky way.
We had a lot of fun creating the solar system plus the kids got to watch Magic School Bus' Space Adventures.

We got to do science and math and took a break from reading and writing.
Well, not really a break from reading since A7s been picking up any and every book she can get her hands on and reading it!
When we first decided to homeschool our kids a lot of veteran homeschoolers told us all about the "book library". How every free space in our home was going to be covered with books. Now I understand. I'm going to have to add a few more book "totes" since I don't really have any room for anymore bookcases. So far I have two book totes in the living room... They are no longer enough! I have book piles all over the living room, bedroom and even the bathroom.


I can just see what my house is going to look like when X4 starts to read! He enjoys having books read to him, and he likes to leaf through them. I'm already working on building a library of books he'll enjoy. Lots of action and mystery type boy books.

I've been told that once your children can read and enjoy reading, your job as their teacher becomes a lot easier....here's hoping!!

The End of Christianity or is IT?

There is an article in Newsweek that talks about the end of Christian America. I read the article of course and what I found was not so much the end of Christianity but the end of political influence, social influence. James Dobson think this is a bad thing and for him it is.
Back when Bush was President organizations like Focus on the Family had a lot of influence, now thanks to Obama they no longer do.
Any religious organization like Focus on the Family whose mission is to change American politics, to change the culture through politics I should say, it's not going to like the fact that more and more politicians don't care about what the religious leaders think anymore.


Greg Boyd is not too worried about this, here is an excerpt of a post talking about this very thing.

I’ve come across two very interesting and insightful essays this week on the demise of American Christianity. I offer my own assessment of this demise.

1. America has never been, and will never be, a “Christian” nation in any significant sense. Among other things, America, like every other fallen, demonically-oppressed nation (see Lk. 4:5-7; 2 Cor. 4:4; I Jn. 5:19; Rev. 13), is incapable of loving its enemies, doing good to those who mistreat it or blessing those who persecute it (Lk. 6:27-35). By applying the term “Christian” to America, we’ve massively watered down its meaning — which undoubedly helps explain why the vast majority of American Christians assume being “Christian” is perfectly compatible with hating and killing your national enemies if and when your earthly Commander and Chief asks you to. The sooner the label “Christian” gets divorced form this country, the better. It provides hope that someday the word “Christian” might actually mean “Christ-like” once again.

2. Related to this, there’s a good bit of research demonstrating that the majority of American’s identify themselves as “Christian” when asked by a pollster, but when asked what this label actually means in terms of core values and lifestyle choices, it becomes apparent that for the majority of them the meaning of “Christian” is basically “American.” I submit that the main problem Kingdom people confront in spreading the Kingdom in America is that a majority of people assume they are already in the Kingdom — they are “Christian” — simply by virtue of being American or because they prayed a certain prayer or go to Church once a year, or whatever. If fewer people are identifying themselves as “Christian,” this is good, for it means there’s one less major illusion that Kingdom people have to confront and work through as they invite these folks into the Kingdom.

3. If Evangelicals lose all their political clout, we may be less tempted to lust after political power, which means we may have one less distraction from actually doing what God called us to do — namely, manifesting God’s reign by how we humbly live, love and serve.

4. As my friend Alan Hirsch demonstrates in his great book, The Forgotten Ways, the Kingdom has always thrived — and really, has only thrived — when it was on the margins of society. The Kingdom is, by its very nature, a “contrast society.” If Christians lose all their power and position in society and become marginalized, this can’t help but be good for the Kingdom. If Christians become persecuted, it likely will be even better. We’d be turning back the clock from the disaster of Constantinian triumphalist Christianity in the direction of Apostolic, servant Christianity.

5. The “Christian” element of American culture was never deeper than the thin veneer of a shared civic religion. A major problem Kingdom people have faced on the mission field of America is that the majority of people mistook the civic religion for the real thing. So it is that so many think that being “Christian” is focused on preserving the civic religion (e.g. fighting for prayer before sports events, keeping the ten commandments on government buildings, holding onto a “Christian” definition of marriage within our government, etc.). Not only this, but this veneer of Christianity causes Jesus followers not to notice the many ways foundational assumptions that permeate American culture are diametrically opposed to the values of the Kingdom. If the civic religion of Christianity were to die, Kingdom people would be less tempted to associate Christianity with symbolic civic functions and would become more aware of how the Kingdom sharply contrasts with foundational aspects of American culture.

6. Finally, and closely related to this, if Jesus followers lose all their position and power and become a minority (or better, revealed to have always been a minority) in American culture, this will expose the idol of American individualism we have bought into for far too long and perhaps help us realize that we need to cling to each other and that the Kingdom is inherently communal. We are called to manifest God’s uniquely beautiful love and bear witness to the reality of Jesus Christ by how we share our lives and serve one another (e.g. Jn. 17:20-26; Acts 2: 42-47. 4: 42-45). But its very difficult for many of us to embrace radical Kingdom community when we can get along very well (by American standards of “well”) without it. The demise of Constantinian American Christianity would serve us well by stripping us of the privilege of individualistic living.

I don't know about you but I think this is Good News!

Break's Over

I can't believe it is the middle of April already. Easter break was so nice, the kids got to spend time with the grandparents, I got to spend time reading...books, blogs, magazines... you name it, I read it!
I also had time to listen to some podcast I had downloaded from itunes. I've been listening to Mark Driscoll, Matt Chandler and John Piper.

Mark Driscoll has this awesome sermon on 1Peter 3:7, if you have itunes and you're married, you need to download it(you can download the audio or video sermon) you will not be disappointed!

Easter is a great time to just stop and think, or meditate rather on everything that God is, on what Jesus did and what that means for us.
I read somewhere that Dr. James Dobson, (you know him from Focus on the Family) said something about losing the battle when Obama won(he later said that's not really what he meant). I find it weird that he said this right after we celebrated the greatest day on the believers calendar, Easter. Resurrection. The day Jesus won over death.

I think Focus in the family has it backwards, we cannot try to make this world worthy of God. Moses tried that back in the day with Israel and he failed, time after time he failed. Jesus wants to transform people's hearts. That's where we need to start, in your heart.

After Iowa's Supreme Court legalized gay marriage I read a comment somebody made that was directed at believers. "Face it, you lost".

Face it, you lost... I remember thinking to myself.."is that what they think we are doing this for..to win? Do they think we see this as defeat. We lost." I started thinking about Jesus, what He did on the cross, dying for our sins. I thought to myself and maybe it was the Holy Spirit empowering me to really understand what is going on here. We haven't lost, we already WON!
Because of the victory of Jesus on the cross, we can now be in relationship with God again, just like we were in the beginning, you know Adam and Eve. Before Eve ate what she shouldn't have eaten, she and her husband enjoyed a close relationship with God. Once she sinned against Him that was broken. The only way we could be close to Him again was through sacrifices, lots of them. And even that didn't last long.

But now because of Jesus we can have that close relationship once again. Not only that but Jesus said that we will live forever with Him and His Father in a place he is preparing for us right as we speak!
We are not trying to change the world because we think we are better than everybody else or because we are somehow more righteous that you...only Jesus can do that and He will! We are not trying to get people to stop listening to rock & roll, stop drinking or smoking or wear suits and skirts.

Here's the deal, we haven't lost anything...we won because Jesus won. This world is not going to last. Is not going to get better, it's going to get worse. We know this because God's word says it is. What would be the point in trying to make this world better when Jesus himself told us is not happening till He gets back and sets everything right again?

We haven't lost, you are the one who is lost. We are trying to point that out to you. You're lost!
You need a savior because sin is killing you and you cannot save yourself. The stars are not going to save you, the sun is not going to save you... not even Oprah is going to save you.

Only Jesus can do that. There are not many different paths to Heaven and God. There is only one way and that is through Jesus, that's what the Bible says and that's what I believe!

For the person who made the comment, face it you lost. You have no idea what you are saying, and I'll be praying for you to come to the Truth.