The week before vacation. . .

Our chronological reading of the Old Testament has been going fairly well, and we have finished off the book of Joshua and started Judges this week.  Along with the scripture studies, I try to have the girls read about one Ancient Civilization mentioned in the book we are reading.  This week we studied the Phoenicians.  Although not specifically named in Joshua or Judges, there is mention of Sidonians (from Sidon).

Phoenician ship drawing by  Raven

Notebooking page with a drawing of things Phoenicians traded.

Phoenician man, and a print out simple article about Phoenicians.

Along with the books shown above, we read 2 chapters from On the Shores of the Great Sea; specifically Conquerors of the Sea and Early Pioneers.

Raven also made minibooks for the first three judges of Israel:

In our Polar Animal lapbooks, we have completed all our minibooks and placed them into the folders.  We are now finished except for a cover design for Raven’s lapbook.

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With all the preparation to leave for Wisconsin this coming week, we decided that we were at a good pausing point in our projects to leave them behind while we have a 2 week vacation.

In other news around our house, I have been crocheting up a pile of baby booties and hats for both myself and friends.

This last set is my absolute favorite.  I bought this yarn at Hobby Lobby, and it was baby yarn.  It didn’t even look camouflage when I bought it, but as I worked it up someone mentioned to me that the booties looked like little army boots.  So, for the hat I made a little brim to look like a field cover.  So cute!  Now that we know we are having a boy (woohoo!), I am going to bring these to the hospital and get a pic of our little guy in them for daddy. Hopefully they will fit!

In case you are looking for the patterns for these items, I will share my links:

The baby booties are the easiest pattern I have been able to find, from LionBrand.

The earflap hat pattern can be found here.

The camouflage hat is something I came up with, so I don’t have a pattern for it.

Totally Polar!

The view outside our front door is just gorgeous.  Our neighbor has some young trees that have just turned the most golden color.  On the side of his house, he has planted sugar maples that will one day turn a deep brick red at the onset of fall.

It made a perfect backdrop for my mom to take some pictures of the girls (and their cousins) last weekend when they all visited.

*you can click on any picture in this post to view it larger

This past week, we have started our newest group project/lapbook:  Polar Animals.  I don’t know what it is about this past year, it seems we have concentrated on all things cold!  We did an Iditarod lapbook last spring, and then we did Penguins, now it’s all Polar Animals.

Our theme came from Denna’s workbook she has been using off and on for some time now, called Going On Eagerly by Rod & Staff Publishers.  This is the first workbook in their new Preschool G-H-I Series, and each workbook with have a habitat theme!  We are excited for the whole series to come out.  Each workbook could lead into a lapbook about that particular geographical region.

Here is Denna working on some pages from her workbook, and making a note for daddy to put in his next care package.  It says “Love Denna”.

Our table covered in lapbook making tools and papers.

Raven’s minibook about pinnepeds.  We got the information from this download.

Raven’s drawing minibooks.

What Denna’s lapbook looks like so far.

Denna has colored all these polar animals according to what the instructions say they should look like.

Here are the resources we have used so far for our studies:

Page about Arctic Wildlife

Enchanted Learning- Arctic Animals

Polar Animals Wheel pdf

Polar Animals preschool activities and crafts

Polar Animals lapbook at HomeschoolShare

Seaworld Teacher guidebooks (we used Arctic Animals and Seals, Sea Lions, and Walruses)

Polar theme coloring pages

Links and books for a Polar theme

Library Books:

Deldobuss Bussinger’s favorite books »

Share book reviews and ratings with Deldobuss, and even join a book club on Goodreads.

New Bold Believers Workbooks. . .

During my husband’s last deployment, I went in search of some materials to study Iraq and the Middle East for our homeschool.

I decided upon Bold Believers in Iraq from Voice of the Martyrs because of it’s easy workbook format and the fact that it not only taught about the country, but also the persecuted Christians, and those that need to hear the gospel of Christ.

Recently, I was looking on their site once more for another country to study, and I saw that they have provided some of their workbooks free in download format.  You must register with the site, but it is free.

These are wonderful resources to teach about missions, geography, worldview, religious beliefs, and evangelism.  I will be using these throughout our studies.

Along with the free resources, I have ordered Bold Believers in Nigeria.  We know a young man from Nigeria, and my children have been very interested in his country.  I have been collecting resources and will soon share what we have studied, as well as any links or files we have come across.

Exodus through Conquest Lapbooks!

We have finished our reading through the Exodus out of Egypt and the wilderness wanderings and have jumped right into the story of Joshua.  I decided to wait on the specifics of the law until we have more time, so we covered the major themes and moved onward.

The last couple of days we have found some amazing resources online for the missing parts we had in our lapbooks.  It is really hard to find much for kids after the story of the Ten Commandments.  Since I wanted our study to go beyond just the Exodus and continue throughout the Old Testament, I wanted to include some lessons and lapbook elements that would fill in the gaps.

Here are what the girls have put together:

Raven’s-

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Denna’s-

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Resources:

The awesome story wheels and other printables were found on my new favorite bible lesson sight, Henny Penny’s.

All the other elements I listed in this post.

Here are some study questions and lessons for the first few chapters of Joshua* (these are pdf files):

Joshua and the Conquest of Canaan

Joshua meets Archeology

Joshua study questions

Bible Characters: Rahab

*just a note, I have not checked all of these out as to their doctrinal stances or teaching  We just found them in the last couple days, and I am in the process of putting together our bible study questions and projects.

The Mitten Lapbook

When I was not feeling well a few weeks ago, Denna and I read several books that had coordinating lapbooks at homeschoolshare.  The Mitten was one of her favorites, and so we created the lapbook this week for fun.

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The big mitten was her favorite project, as she got to hide all the animals from the book in it and pretend that she was acting out the story.

The author, Jan Brett, has a wonderful website full of printable activities that go along with her books and characters.

To see the other books we read, and activities to go with them, see this post.