Growing In Grace

This Week’s Posts…

Tracy — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 15:53:28 +0000

A Homemade Abacus—my attempt at a homemade abacus, number line, and counting tool

Homeschool Memoirs: the When and Where—memories of a homeschooled homeschooler

Adding a Little Personality—my preschooler puts a little more of her personality on display

A Living Math Treasure—a fun math lesson taught with counting bears and a library book

Our School Journal: Entry 25—what we’ve been up to this week, what I’ve been learning, and the mishaps behind the scenes

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Don’t Miss Out!

Tracy — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 20:03:07 +0000

I’ll be returning to regular blog posts this week–a homemade abacus/number line, more in geography studies, some homeschool memoirs from my days as a student, and lots more!

Be sure to switch your subscription to my new site at GrowingnGrace.theProverbs31Home.com so that you don’t miss out!

Moving Day!

Tracy — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 09:00:44 +0000

The time has come! For a long time I’ve hoped to be able to own my blog. Right now, WordPress owns all the content and limits what I can do with the blog. But finally, I have my own address.

So, Growing In Grace is moving.

It’s the same content and the same mission, but a whole new look and new URL: growingngrace.theproverbs31home.com

Stop over and check it out! While you’re there, read the latest update on my ebook Praying Proverbs 31, and don’t forget to move your subscription. I’ll see you there!

Be Back Soon…

Tracy — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 11:22:28 +0000

I’m taking a brief hiatus from blogging to finish another writing project that I’ve been working on over the last several months. My deadline is approaching, and it really will involve my full attention for the next couple of weeks.

When I’m back, I’ll be able to give my all to this blog, and I do have a number of post ideas teeming in my brain. I just lack the time to develop them right now.

Want a peek at what I’m working on?

Please pray for me as I finish up this work. And I’ll be back soon to tell you more about it.

Room for Improvement

Tracy — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 09:00:27 +0000

Our start to homeschooling last year began with a rocky start, a long break for re-evaluation, and then a much more successful second attempt.

And this year—well, it hasn’t been without it’s own adjustments. It seems that everyday, I’m tweaking our schedule, our system, and our material. And everyday, I’m closer to where I’d like to be. Of course, there are those days when success comes to a screeching halt and triumph throws a tantrum in my school room floor. But then, I call it a day, re-evalutate (again), and tweak a little bit more.

It’s been in the midst of all that tweaking that I’ve come to appreciate a few of the opportunities that come from the fine-tuning. Keep reading here.

Monday Motivation: Finding a Focal Point

Tracy — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 09:15:49 +0000

Sunday morning before we left for church, I spent a few minutes looking over a my notes for a Sunday School lesson I would be teaching.

My three year old little girl—the little girl who is bouncing, running, twirling, bounding, wiggling from the moment she leaps out of bed till the moment she climbs back into it—my “Tigger-ish” little girl was sitting quite still next to me in her pink corduroy dress, white tights, and bright pink shoes. Her little legs were crossed, and she had her pink New Testament opened in her lap. Keep reading here.

Preschool Play and School

Tracy — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 09:00:30 +0000

I thought I’d spend today updating you on the little one’s activities. She has good days and bad days in the school room; and though overall I’d say we have a blast, we still have days that are much less than successful. Of course, I don’t often think to grab the camera during the fits, so all you ever get to see is her sweet smiling face. But just to encourage you, my little one also has days when nothing is going to make her happy.

On our better days, however, we play with some of our Letter of the Week activities.

Then, she usually has a couple of fine motor skills activities: cutting, threading/lacing, and other coordination fun. This time, I had her balance the pom-poms on top of the pegs. She was thrilled with this, and experimented with different sizes for awhile to see which ones worked best.

We also love our teddy bears. I pull these out 2 to 3 times a week and use them with both of the kids. With the little one, we practice color sorting, size sorting, counting, and filling shapes.

Last of all, we tackle some counting and number recognition. I went ahead and pulled out my pumpkin cards the other day, just for the fun of fall.

She always amazes me with what she is learning, many times picking up on lessons when I thought she was most uninterested or resistant. I don’t force her to do “school” with us, and sometimes she’ll opt to go play rather than finish her pockets. But most of the time, she loves being with us and having big girl things to do just like her brother has. And, of course, we love having her playing alongside.

Appreciating Renoir

Tracy — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 09:00:45 +0000

We’ve been working on our second piece of art from Renoir, Still Life with a Bouquet. And my little artists have been meticulously creating their own rendition.

I was thrilled with the little one’s project this time. In my last post on art, I mentioned how she likes to express her creativity. But this time, she really got into the project. I worked with her a good deal, helping to point out the colors. And the fact that she had new coloring pencils probably helped.

With the little one, my priority is just to get her to match the colors with the original.

The challenge with my son right now is getting him to relax when he colors. He doesn’t think he has colored a page unless it is covered with the richest, waxiest color his crayon can produce. And he attempts this same strategy with his coloring pencils. Of course, it kills his hand muscles. To combat that, we’ve been discussing the light and dark areas in the picture, and I’ve been showing him how to hold his pencil to change the intensity of his color.

For my son, the task is to get him to recognize lights and darks.

He loves this activity, and contentedly spends days at at a time creating his final piece.

Learning Casually

Tracy — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 09:00:59 +0000

My newest experiment with our schedule has been our casual Fridays, breaking up the week with a little more informal learning—rather unschool-ish.

One of the fun activities that we got to do the other day was play one of our Dr. Seuss board games.

The particular game is based off the Dr. Seuss ABC book, one of our family favorites that I happen to have memorized. (I’m sure I’m not the only mom who has one or two of their kid’s favorite books on immediate recall. Please tell me I’m not.)

The game is simple. A spinner lets each player choose to go a certain number of spaces or to go to the BIG or little letter nearest to them. Each space is designated with and upper or lower case letter, and after landing on the space the player gets to find and collect the matching card that has both the letter and Dr. Seuss phrases (from the book) that use the letter’s sound (i.e. “A”=Aunt Annie; “a”=alligator). The object is to collect the most cards before the first player crosses the finish.

A little bit of a review for my son, but lots of fun for him to help teach his sister her letters and sounds, and definitely a lot of fun for a casual school day.

Nigeria, Part 2

Tracy — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 09:00:00 +0000

We’ve been wrapping our study in Nigeria, and I wanted to share a few of our highlights.

During the last part of our first week, we finished our country and flag notebooking pages.

Coloring the country of Nigeria

Coloring the Flag of Nigeria

In addition to learning where Nigeria is on a map, we studied their flag. The green represents the agriculture (“farming”) and the white stands for unity (“lots of different people coming together as one country”).

In week two, we cover culture and missions. In addition to our prayer cards, we read a couple of pages from Children Just Like Me and complete a notebooking page. For the little one, I have a fantastic sticker dolly dressing book from Usborne. The book features people from around the world with sticker clothing to match. The little one gets to find the outfit that fits the person from the country we are studying (with quite a bit of help, but it still intrigues her).

The countries don’t always match up with our study, but when we do get to pull out this activity, it’s a big hit.

Then, we finish our second week with a missionary story. This week, we read about Mary Slessor, a missionary to the cannibals of Africa (thankfully, the story was about her work with orphans, confronting the false belief in “evil spirits”, and showing the African women the truth of God).

I really appreciated the missionary book we read from, Ten Girls Who Changed the World. At the end of each short story, there is a little discussion section that ends with a sample prayer to pray. The discussion and prayer was about allowing God to use our personalities to serve Him, and boldly standing up for what is right.

Do they comprehend everything we cover? Probably not. But I’m a firm believer in over-estimating rather than under-estimating what they will pick up. And what I cover today is laying a foundation for covering the same concepts more thoroughly in the future.