Special Connection Homeschool

BiblePlan.org I have been utilizing BiblePlan.org to read the bible in a year. I am actually following two separate plans, one to read the Old Testament and the other to read the New Testament. The daily readings are emailed to me and I read it right here on my computer first thing each morning. They offer a large variety of reading plans as well as bible versions. Lately Gess has been getting up while I have been reading and sometimes reads it with me. So as we enter the new year I thought I would have Gess read with me intentionally from now on. Beginning tomorrow I will have Gess join me with the New Testament readings. With this plan you simply read 1 chapter a day Monday - Friday and have no readings on the weekends. This will lead perfectly into our schooling each day. I have been searching for a large print bible for Gess as she still seems to read better with larger print. I have not found one that is suitable for our needs yet. Because of that I have found reading the

I really want to teach Gesserine that Christmas should be more about giving than receiving, so I always try to have her give to others. We started by participating in Operation Christmas Child which is something we have done for a few years now. All you do is choose whether you want to give to a boy or girl and decide what age age group you want to buy for. Then you fill a shoebox full of presents and goodies and Samaritan's Purse sends them around the world to children who are in need. It's really a great program and an awesome way to teach about giving. Gess enjoyed helping me pick out the gifts, I added some essentials and then together we packed our boxes. This year we chose to do both a boy and girl ages 5-9 since that is the age bracket Gess would be in. Next we tried to find things to do for our personal family and friends. This year we decided to make homemade Christmas cards. We found some Christmas coloring pages online for her to decorate them with. I fou

We study each holiday as it rolls around and each day we do our calendar so that we know what the date is including the month and year. We have also studied the seasons and what each season brings such as summer is warm and sunny and winter has snow, etc. So as we start this next year I want to really focus on tying it all together. I started by making the following activity. I divided a large piece of paper into 4 sections and labeled them Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall. Then I printed up the name of each month and cut them out. I had Gess pick a month and try to place it in the correct block. She actually did pretty good and got at least half of them right. Of course, since this was her first time I helped her until we got them all right. We then added our weather symbols from our weather board so she could visually tie in the weather with the months that belong in each season. I wasn't really certain how to symbolize fall, but those were all we had left anyway. I don&#

Gesserine was so anxious to put up our Christmas tree that she suggested we do it before Thanksgiving was even here. It was so cute, as I was sitting at my computer one afternoon she came up to me and said, "I have an idea, let's do Christmas!" I reminded her that we needed to Thanksgiving first and to that she replied "Oh, ok." Well, each day she kept asking for the tree, so the day after Thanksgiving she finally got her wish. I wrote a poem when my boys were younger that shares how each part of the tree is a reminder of the time when Christ was born. Here is how it goes: A Message From Your Christmas Tree As Christmas nears there is a lot to do, shopping, cooking and decorating too. With all this bustling it's easy to leave out, what Christmas time is really about. So this year when you put up your tree, tell someone the secret meaning of me. I'm an evergreen tree that you choose to use, like Jesus' love you will never lose. The lights on me th