Weekly Wrap-Up

Last week I talked about how we were getting started "home schooling." (At age three I don't know that you can technically call it that. On the other hand, I don't think you can't technically NOT call it that! So for simplicity sake, let's just say we've started some schooling.)

At the ripe old age of three, the thing I am most interested in him getting the hang of are:

1. Motor Skills.
2. Counting to 20. (He counts to 30.)
3. Letter identification.

This week we practiced more coloring and tracing which went pretty well (when we did it). Being that we are at the TAIL END OF THIS NEVER ENDING ADOPTION PROCESS *ah hem* I spent a lot of this week trying to glue the phone to my ear and wishing it to ring. This is a pretty accurate representation of my internal feelings:



Maybe next week?

At any rate, it's hard to focus on much else.

Bookworm is currently in love with these things:



In every attempt to feed his obsession AND get him to practice tracing, I "dotted" out some shapes that vaguely resembled whales, sharks and other ocean animals and had him trace those shapes. He took great delight in that and then shocked the living daylights out of me by grabbing his toy turtle and attempting tracing around the toy. I don't know if he's ever seen us do that, but I figured he's connecting dots, literally, quite well!

We also memorized the following scripture verse:

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Gen. 1:1

Our "text book" of choice, which we have read multiple times this week, is Melody Carlson's God Made Them All which is offered by Crossway Books.

This book is AWESOME if you want to teach your children that God made the world. We're using Bookworm1's interest in animals to segue into the fact that God made them all. When I saw this book I had hopes it would be everything we could possibly want, from a toddler's perspective, of enforcing the concept that God created the giraffes, the hippos, the rhinos, the snakes, the cows and horses and everything else.

Each page spread hits a different animal grouping. On the first page we discovered that God made the farm animals, the second we learned that he made all of the animals on the African plains and then, lo and behold, we also learned that He created stingray, WHALES, a lobster and SHARKS! The book points out that all animals are different and live in a variety of locations. "But each of them is special, for God has made them all."

I highly, highly, highly recommend God Made Them All as a sturdy board book that is fun to look at and possible to learn from.

This fit in very well with our focus on sea animals (learning Who made them) and our Bible verse (to solidify the idea) and the book is colorful and thorough in its exploration of the animal kingdom that it was requested time and time again.

Lastly, when I was growing up my mom had this CD cassette called "The Creation Sensation" which was a children's musical which focused on the debate of Creation vs. Evolution. I have not been able to find it at all but I DID finally locate the songs on Amazon. You can download the "Days Of Creation song" for less than a $1 on Amazon. Despite the HORRENDOUS cover art on the front of the CD cover (please don't even pay attention to it! It's awful!) the song is very catchy and sings you through the days of creation and what happened on each day. We've sung this song every day as well and I've been rememorizing what happened when (so it's good for mommy also).

I don't know where you are at, personally, with the whole concept of creation or evolution. I've made statements before around here before that I am a Creationist. Not trying to start any debates (not interested) - just sharing what we are doing in the spirit of the "Weekly Wrap Up" carnival (hosted by Kris) and to keep myself accountable in being creative (pardon the pun!) with my kid. I think this song and this book are two excellent resources for people with toddlers who want to present the idea of creation to their children. They are simple, straightforward and capture children's attention in a good way without being too complex.

I understand Creation vs. Evolution has become a "touchy" subject and, again, this blog is not the place for discourse. I'm here to report and that's how I'd like to leave it.

So this is what we've been up to this week. Tracing, singing, reading. I'm pretty happy with that!

As for next week - I'm hoping for a severe disruption in all plans which would indicate that Bookworm2 has made his long awaited and longed for appearance!