Bet You Thought This Was a Cookie

Nope, it’s the moon. More precisely, it’s the full moon.

We’ve been talking about the moon in our homeschool, coloring pictures of the moon, learning poems about the moon, and singing songs about the moon. Today, we talked about the phases of the moon. Gem learned the difference between the new, crescent, half, and full moon. Caveman learned the following chart (which we made with sugar cookies):

Mojo learned that the moon’s position relative to the earth and the sun is what causes these different shapes. We illustrated using our globe, and we also took our cookies out into the sunlight. When we hold them up between us and the sun, they look dark. This is the new moon. When we are between the sun and our cookies, and the sunlight is hitting our cookies directly, they are bright. This is the full moon.

And then we ate the moon.

“Behold, I Make All Things New”

I had seen this ugly piece of junk sitting on a friend’s porch for several weeks before I finally asked about it. “Are you planning on doing anything with that? How much do you want for it?” You see, every time I passed it by, I thought of all the different things that could be done to fix it up. I thought of all the different uses it could have. I had been driving around town that day looking for furniture and shelves for the girls’ room, and I knew that this old armoire could be put to use in there. My friend dismissed my offer to pay for it. “It was given to us,” she said. “We’ll probably never do anything with it. Go ahead, take it.”

My brother-in-law and husband were nice enough to go pick it up and move it into the house for me. I know they both thought it was ugly. I know that Bear wondered what I was possibly going to do with such a thing. But I had an image in my head of the final product, and I set about making this old piece of junk match the vision I had for it.

As I was painting, this verse kept echoing in my head “Behold, I make all things new.” (from one of my favorite Scripture passages, Revelation chapter 21.) It was exciting for me to transform this old piece of furniture into something new, useful, and pretty. I delighted in each brush stroke. I wondered if that’s similar to how God feels about me? Sometimes, I feel kind of like an old piece of furniture. Sometimes I feel old, not much good for anything, ugly, unwanted. Yet, I know that if I will just allow it, God can transform me into something new, beautiful, and useful. I wonder what I will look like when He is finished with me?

Here is what Gem’s new armoire looks like finished:

I spent about $15 on paint and used some leftover plywood for the shelves. The curtains are from an old lonely pillowcase (and the flower decorations are cut from the same pillowcase.)  Now Gem has drawers for her clothes and shelves to keep her toys organized!
She exclaimed “Oh, it’s beautiful, Mama!”

What We're Doing

I quit my job. Well, I didn't actually *quit*, but I did transfer into the pool, where I will have to work a minimum of two shifts a month to stay active. So that's almost like quitting. We're poor and broke again. But I'm starting to feel almost like my normal self again. I'd rather be poor and broke and a good mother to my children.

So anyway, since I took a little break from blogging about our homeschool for awhile, I thought I'd once again share what we are doing. While I was struggling to keep up with working nights, homeschooling, keeping the house halfway clean, and chasing around a very busy toddler, we dropped down to the bare minimum in our education--reading, writing, and math. I know that Mojo, being the avid reader that she is, has picked up plenty on her own in the science and history realm, so I don't worry about that sort of thing. She's always telling me things she's discovered that I didn't know!
Caveman has also started to take the things I've been teaching him to the next level on his own. And in my opinion, that's how it should be. That lets me know we're headed in the right direction.

Gem is learning about the letter "K" this week, the number 11, the moon, and the shape of a crescent. We will talk about moon phases, bake cookies and cut them into the different moon phases, and learn some poems about the moon.

We are listening to the music of Dmitri Kabalevski (look for the "iPod" to the right of my page, and click on the songs to hear the music we've been learning about).

Our Scripture verse this week is Exodus 20:8..."Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy."

Our saint for the week is St. Turibius de Mogrobejo.
And our virtue for the week is Peace.
"Peace is more than the absence of conflict. It is the tranquility of good order, the serenity that accompanies the agreement of human wills.
Every well ordered society, whether marriage, parish, municipality or nation, is based on peace."

Mojo Turns Nine

Mojo’s special day started with our family attending Mass, where she has recently become an altar server. This was not something that her father or I asked her to do; it was her own wish to serve at Mass. Her father and her grandfather were also altar servers when they were young.
 
This afternoon, we had her party at the skating rink. This was one of the most fun birthday parties we’ve had! A lot of our pictures didn’t turn out well because of the lighting in the rink, but here are a few of our highlights from the day…



    


Even some of the “big people” had fun on skates!

Of course, I enjoyed being silly and making a fool of myself…it’s what Pookies do bestest. ;-P