Catching Up

This post will be a little crazy as I try to catch up over the past week and a half.  Now that I have added homeschool to our lives I am not sure how I will do my posts (or how often).  I have been doing a weekly post and a weekend post for a while now.  I'm not sure if I'll just throw homeschool into that or do a separate post for that by itself.  I'll get it worked out but in the meantime here is what we have been doing lately.

We made a follow-up visit to the village of Corral de Piedras.  We took our last team there to do some prayer walking and we needed to go back and revisit a few key places. One of those was with the village leader.  He was happy to see our boys.  They sure help open the door for us when we are out. 

David and the boys hiking in Corral de Piedras

One of the key people we were wanting to see was this girl that the team met.  She is a believer from a town several hours away who married into a family that lives in Corral de Piedras.   She said that she is the only professing Christian in the whole village.  She said she feels lonely and isolated.  We wanted to visit her, encourage her, and pray with her. Would you join us in praying?  She has two small children about the same ages as my boys.  I love that I had that connection with her.  We plan to continue to make some more visits there and are making plans for our October team to do some evangelism outreach in that village.  Pray for an open door for that also.

Last fall when we returned from the States I had the boys a nice bookshelf built for their room.  I have since moved it to our homeschool room and that left a lot of toys just sitting around on their floor.  On our last trip into Guatemala City we purchased this metal shelving unit to put in their room.  Here they are helping their daddy put it together.

 I know I have mentioned it before but we LOVE our evening walks.  It is one of my most favorite times of the day.  Here are David and the boys on a recent evening.

And this was a sunset view we saw on another evening walk.  I love the mountain views that we have all around us.

 Here are my boys recently having fun on their Big Wheel.  These two keep us well entertained.

We got some much needed rain two afternoons this week.  Here are the boys outside playing in it with their new umbrellas I bought them.  

and just like every other toy they have their umbrellas quickly became swords and they were battling each other. ha

We had a GREAT first week of homeschool.  I was a little anxious about it but it could not have gone any better or smoother.  If every week could be like this one we'll be alright!  Here is an overview of our school week.

So far I am loving our Bible lessons.  I am using Abeka for Bible.  One of my main goals for homeschooling was to give my boys a firm foundation in God's Word.  Living on the mission field my boys do not have Sunday school teachers, family, and friends to help teach them about God.  That responsibility lies solely with us parents.  It is a big responsibility and it challenges me to teach them well.  I love how Abeka uses Bible stories with pictures, songs, hymns, memory verses, and Doctrinal drills.  We are starting off with a Salvation Series and this week learned about Heaven and the first sin. 

Here is Cruz's drawing of Heaven.  He drew the River of Life and the Streets of Gold.  I love the little fish he added to the river. ha

Ben colored a Tree of Life and later wanted to add some oranges to it so I cut him out some circles and let him glue.

Our memory verse for the week was Matthew 6: 9-13 "The Lord's Prayer".  I thought it was a little long for the first week of school but Cruz did really well with it.  I was very proud of him!  Here is a video of him trying to recite it.

Here he is waiting on me to "grade" one of his papers. Language was more of a review of Readiness skills this week and we will begin with letter "A" next week. 

Both boys loved math this week.  The lesson was recognizing numbers 0-9 which Cruz already knows so we did more flash cards and review games along with his worksheets.  Any time I can turn something into a game my boys always love it.

 Here he had to match the amount of shapes to the correct number.

more counting and matching numbers

counting noodles for each number

yeah, math was fun this week!

Our science lessons are simple, hands on, and fun.  This week we learned about observing the world around us.   We took a science safari/ nature walk to find things we could hear, smell, and feel.  We talked about what each thing was like.  It was super fun for me and the boys!   We made a Science Notebook and Cruz recorded what we did.

I had him write things in each category and then he had to pick and draw one thing from each category.  He drew a leaf, water drops (from a sprinkler), and a piece of concrete that he said felt "rough". 

 One day he had to do an observation of his bedroom and draw some things he saw.  Here is his work.

We reviewed shapes.

I made this sheet for Ben to color while I worked with Cruz.

 I love his fudge bar mouth from snack time. ha 

We ended the week with another nature walk.  This time it was to look for shapes.  We saw square windows, rectangle doors, and so much more.  We finished reading "My Father's Dragon" and jumped right into the next book "Elmer and the Dragon".  We are all loving this book series!!! Like I said it was a fun first week!

Thursday afternoon we had our regular weekly Bible study in Muyurco.  It had rained on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons so we were worried that it might rain again on Thursday and cause us to cancel but thankfully it didn't.  We had a great turnout and as always loved getting to worship there with them.

my boys with some of their Bible study friends in Muyurco

So, that's us in a nutshell.   If you are still reading- THANKS!  ha  I was all over the map with this post.  Life is a little crazy right now trying to find our groove but all is well in spite of it.