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Saturday, March 29, 2008

Easter blessings

As you can see, our two darlings had a wonderful Easter. We were with their Grandparents out of state and were able to participate in the Easter egg hunt at their church. Hannah found the golden egg which enabled her to receive a special prize. She was very excited.
In other news, Hannah is doing well with school. We are having a bit of a time motivating her toward reading. She did ask the other day why reading was so important. If only she knew how the whole world would open up to her if she could read. She did come up with a new word yesterday. We were coloring and when she picked up a blue crayon to color with she said "this color looks a bit lakish, like the color of a lake". I thought that was pretty smart.
Lukie is definitely his very own person with his two favorite saying of late being, "leave my alone" and "I do it myself". I was reminded of another interesting habit of his the other day, he likes to hide in my closet. There is nothing very exciting in there but clothes and shoes but he will sit in there in the dark for a long time and be very content. He often traps our cat Molly in there with him and I'm sure he tortures her. She is blessed with long-suffering however, making her our more spiritual cat. When Luke finally lets Molly out she tears right out of the room.
In the week before Easter I came upon several conversations about death and dying. The thread that wove them together was this, the people had no hope. No idea or certainty of what would happen to them or their loved one after death. This lack of hope fills me with compassion, just like it did another man 2000 years ago. Many times in the New Testament the Bible states that Jesus was filled with compassion when he saw the people because they were like sheep without a shepherd (Mark 6:34). I have never lived without hope. My parents and the church I was raised in, taught me at a young age about hope. My hope is in the Lord. Because of his great love for us, he gave himself to take my place, to reconcile me to a Holy God so that I could live in paradise forever. I have no fear of death, I have no discouragement in life. Jesus came so that I could have life, and have it to the fullest. What a wonderful gift. Praise God, my Redeemer lives!

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Thursday, March 13, 2008

Our first year of Pre-K is completed!


HJ proudly displays her first graduation certificate! She did it! She has come a long way in our first year of homeschooling. Okay, so if you are really paying attention, we didn't exactly take a full school year to do the activities. She was doing so well, that we doubled up on our time with her and completed things in about 2/3 of the time. Now when our DS LA starts to do the same curriculum, we may take things a little slower with him. A lot really depends on the child and what they are truly capable of doing. So with that in mind, my wife and I have decided to start today with HJ's kindergarten program. Now comes the really fun stuff of trying to add in math, reading, science, language arts including a handwriting program, and lots of reading. This next year we will again continue using Sonlight Curriculum. Some of the fun books we will read include a lot of Dr. Sues books, House at Pooh Corner, Cappybobby, Wizard of Oz, and lots of others.

For a complete look at the material we will be using, follow the link to the Sonlight Core C page.
http://www.sonlight.com/cp-c.html Here you will find helpful info on the types of books and programs we will follow. We are kind of using the Core ultra program with some modifications. Basically we chose a few different programs like the math (Horizons) and handwriting (Righting for a Reason) versus the ones that were offered.

On a different note about our son, he continues to amaze us! He has come a long way already since he birth. His speech is progressing wonderfully! However don't try to call him anything but his real name. If we try to say he is "silly" or a "monkey" his response is, "No, I'm just Lukie!" Boy does he get emphatic about it too. He has taken to his real name and nothing else will do. He is also Mr. "I do it myself" stubbornness. I'm not sure where he gets it from, perhaps Papa Bohrer? Or maybe it really is a combination of his parents, but I'll never really admit to it. Well, that's about it from the Eagle's nest for now. And thanks to my sis-in-law for the idea of the background. They have a neat giraffe on their blog. Have a great day and blessings.

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Monday, March 10, 2008

It's Snow Fun


As you can see we survived the big blizzard. Andrea got stuck at work for a few days but after we were all home yesterday we had a lot of fun playing with the kids. This is Snowy the snow man. Luke got his little feet buried under the snowman for a while but had fun helping us build him. We also buried Hannah in the snow and when we suggested leaving her there, she said that she would get so cold icicles would hang from all over her. Anyway, as much fun as we had, hopefully it will be the last snow if the season.
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Thursday, March 6, 2008

We are almost done!

Can you believe it? Hannah has almost completed all of her preschool course. Within the next day or two, Hannah will have gone through an accelerated pace and will complete an entire year's worth of homeschooling. Okay, so someone may say that aren't you rushing things? Well, sorta, but I think Hannah deserves a great deal of credit herself. We have been homeschooling about 24-26 weeks now, and will have completed a 36 week program. Hannah was doing so well with her workbook pages and learning the alphabet, that we started doubling up on the weeks. We covered the same material, and did not skip a thing, we just took some of it quicker. About all that is left now is a few more workbook pages and reading 6-7 more short stories.

On another issue though, in lieu of California's appellate court decision yesterday, I (John) am greatly concerned with the current state of homeschooling in that state. Yesterday, the court made a huge mistake in declaring that homeschooling is unconstitutional. Three activist judges have decided to go against the US Supreme Court and many other decisions by trying to change the constitutional rights of parents by saying that the state is a better parent and that all children within the state should be schooled either in a public or private school, but homeschooling is not permitted. For more information, I would urge you to check out and follow this story from the Home School Legal Defense Association's website, or listen in to Focus on the Family this Friday, March 7th, for an update by James Dobson and Mike Ferris, founder of HSLDA. The website is http://www.hslda.com/