BFIAR: If Jesus Came to My House

This was not a normal week for me, but it was reality. Frustrating as it was, it truly needed to happen. I've always known one of my biggest struggles in homeschooling would be flexibility.

I am a planner.

I like my schedule.

I like routine.

And I don't like change.

But that's not life... and if I refuse to change, homeschooling will never work.

This week the weather has not cooperated (which affected my plans and my mood), we had a field trip, and an *almost* emergency trip to the ER.

Monday started out cloudy and cold... the perfect storm for mommy to battle depression.  All I want to do when it's cloudy is snuggle on the couch under a blanket.  How realistic is that?!?!?  Even if it's not raining or cold, it's cloudy way too many days out of the year to let this affect my schooling. But today it did. All we accomplished was reading our book. We rowed If Jesus Came to My House by Joan Gale Thomas.

Our companion books with a shadow theme were:

• The Shape of Me and Other Stuff by Dr. Seuss
• Moonbear's Shadow by Frank Asch
• Nothing Sticks Like a Shadow by Ann Tompert
• The Black Rabbit by Philippa Leathers

On Tuesday, the weather was still cloudy... aka not good for learning about shadows. So we read our book again and I had Joshua build a castle for Jesus with his blocks. Of course I didn't get picture, because that would've been too cool. <sigh>

On Wednesday, we went to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra! We had box seats so that was really cool. Joshua loved it! I thought the music choices could have been better... they did an American theme, so music by American composers. I thought it would've been better for Joshua to hear music by Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Rachmaninoff... or at least songs that were familiar! But it was still a great experience. I'm sure there will be many more symphonies in our future.

Joshua LOOOOVED the organ! 

By the time we got home, I was exhausted and no school was completed.

On Thursday, we read our book again and discussed rhyming words. This is still quite a difficult concept for Joshua to grasp. The other day he told me "turkey and turkey rhyme!" He said it with such excitement it was hard to tell him that wasn't exactly true. We'll keep working on it.

We experimented with shadows inside and matched animals to their shadows.

We also added some more animal classification cards: kitten, dog, elephant, cow, rabbit, bear, and butterfly.  Joshua enjoyed learning the animal baby names (kid, lamb, calf, cub).  I had him match the card to the animal in the book.

On Friday, I was determined to get more accomplished. But our emergency changed all of that.

By Saturday, the sun finally came out and the weather was warm enough to be outside! Thank You Lord! We traced Joshua's shadows at 10, 11, 12, 1, and 4.  It was cool to see them move and change from long and skinny to short and wide. This was a great activity!

I so enjoyed this book. The thought of Jesus coming to play is such a great analogy to teach little ones kindness toward one another. The pictures were beautiful and it's written like a poem, with stanzas and rhyming words. This will be a treasured book in our home for many years to come.