A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

The big things have gone quite well . . . it's the little things that just about undid me. And I'm crying this morning, for no good reason other than I think I've held it together for so long that something had to give. But after total chaos with the van battery dying on Saturday just as I was supposed to drive 2 teens to work and get all of my errands run for the day, we did manage to plant a flower garden in the front yard. :) Monday was fine.  A regular sort of day.  We got out and on a morning walk, and the kids played with their shadows. "I'm walking on your head!" "Ha, my head is on your back!" "Look how tall I am!" This was when our shadows were in front of us. When we got around the block, I asked, "Where did your shadows go?" The littlest ones were stumped, but the medium sized kids showed them that their shadows were behind them and explained why. Such a small lesson, but an inte...

We are total Drive Thru History® fans around here.  We discovered Dave Stotts and his awesome video series years ago, and we've watched them enthusiastically ever since.  The videos are informative, interesting, and funny, so we jumped quickly at the opportunity to review the newest series:   Drive Thru History® – “The Gospels." And it definitely makes the grade. Because this new series focuses on the gospels, we opted to make watching it the focus of our Family Home Evening on Sundays. The timing of our review period was such that we were enjoying the lessons in the weeks leading to Easter. How cool is that!?! The series has 18 episodes, beginning with background information about Judea before Christ's birth, exploring the annunciation, His birth, His childhood, all kinds of aspects of His ministry, through His trial, crucifixion, and resurrection, finally ending with a summary of the prophecies and power of His ministry and thought-provok...

 Without a doubt, the best part of Monday was our review of The Living Christ . For whatever, reason, Pixie had the camera with us at the table, and she filmed for almost 15 straight minutes, capturing how the little boys just sang their hearts out and filled the rest of our hearts with joy. Here's a video of the last not-quite-4-minutes of the singing: The video quality is rather poor because I reduced the file size from jumbo-giantic to uploadable. :) Little Princess has her back to the camera because she's mad at Pixie for filming when her hair is uncombed. The computer is on its side because I tipped it over to point the speakers out toward the kids, so they could hear the music. And, I don't know what else to explain  . . . other than the ugly, torn wallpaper that is on our wish list to remove . . . but it's pretty far down on the priority list. Anyway, I think the light of the kids' spirits is too lovely to wast time fussing over the ugly w...