Bible Study Guide for All Ages

 

A new year, a fresh start to Isaac’s homeschooling. As said before, I’m not kicking it in high gear considering he is only 3. Just testing the waters. James and I still plan on keeping him home this fall when most kids his age will be going to PreK.

The last few months have been slow since we moved into our new house and had some adjustments. I still tried to create learning experiences whenever possible. I have noticed a big time change in Isaac’s play. He does a whole lot more make believe and wants me to participate with him more. He loves playing cowboy the best. The obsession started after he watched part of Lonesome Dove with us. He really liked Gus.

Over the Christmas break, I drug out the sight word flash cards. He still remembered at least a third of them. He still knows all his letters and letter sounds. I'm bought the Leap Frog Scribble n Write for him for Christmas, hoping he'd like to try to start writing his letters. I know he's really not developmentally there yet, but he is getting alot better with coloring, so I figured he's getting better at holding a crayon/pencil. He colored this with map pencils. For a three year old, I was impressed, but I am his mama. ;)

He has also started actual drawing rather than scribbling. It excites me yet makes me sad to see he is growing up! A little boy, not a baby! As a former student of childhood development ;) it was "a moment" for me when he brought me these pics. It was like overnight he learned to create figures with his pencil. "A horse" and "a spider."





So today we picked up where we left off on our calendar and Morning Message. He seemed to forget a few things, but when I reminded him of "a period at the end of the sentence" he got excited and wanted to do it himself. He remembered a few sight words too from our sentences, so that was good. He still loves to learn. (See previous entries to find out why on earth and how I'm teaching this stuff at a young age. Morning messages are wonderful!)

I need to find a good "Days of the Week" song to help him learn his days of the week. For now, we talk about it when we set the date on our calendar. If it is Wednesday, we talk about how we will go to worship that night, etc. I just associate a day of the week with our routine.

I love his new bedroom. It has a nice nook off of the bedroom where I have put his charts and stuff. I also put his alphabet letters/pics back up around his room. He loves his alphabet---the nerd.

We picked back up on his chore chart. He wanted to do everything on the list right then and there. We also had game time while Eli was asleep. I pretty much let him make up all the rules, and we played as he commanded. Interesting game of Yahtzee and Battleship is all I can say.

I also started doing the Bible Study Guide For All Ages curriculum with Isaac and Leah. This is a great curriculum, and I highly recommend it for anyone!  Even at 3, Isaac loves the timeline and maps. I can't wait to see his progress and what he actually picks up from it. We did the first lesson today on Joseph. He seemed to be really interested. I was proud of his answers. At his age, he is just coming to grips with emotions, so this was a good lesson to talk about hate, anger, and jealousy. I like how the lesson page presented it.

Here is our map. I did this with Isaac today, but learning the actual locations may be more for Leah. With Isaac, I mainly stressed that the blue spots were water and green was land. I did tell him that Canaan was where our story took place. We worked on a puzzle of the United States later in the day after our Bible lesson, and he was so excited, "This is a map like our Bible map!" So he's making connections and learning some stuff.

 Here is our timeline. Leah and Isaac LOVE it. I know they are going to learn so much here. It really is the backbone of the curriculum. I can give Isaac labels, and he can already find where some of them go, and tell me a little bit about them. He is just thrilled that "Isaac" is in the Bible.