Second Week of Advent

December 6th, second Sunday of Advent. We're supposed to be making angels but have skipped it due to not finishing the trees yet. But St Nicolas came today and brought a Wii Fit Plus (just the CD-rom, as we already have the basic Wii Fit), which everyone was very pleased about. We particularly like the game where you flap your arms to fly like a bird. I found a whole new set of muscles in my arms!

December 7th. Today Froglet's nursery is being visited by the saint too. He usually brings such items as satsumas, peanuts and cookies (I think I've mentioned this before)

December 8th. The Ten commandments are today's Jesse Tree reading. Time to learn a new memory verse (the last one was Genesis 1:1) - obey your mother and father!

December 9th The Engineer is ill this week so not much is happening. We will have to catch up on making the Jesse Tree ornaments this weekend, but are still having the readings every day. Froglet is very much enjoying them although I think he often doesn't understand.

December 12th. We have chickenpox! But that is not stopping us in the slightest as Froglet only has it mildly. The Engineer helped me paint the kids' hands and feet to make hand-foot angels which we were supposed to do ages ago and didn't get round to. I still have to cut them out and stick them together.

On Isaac

As I said yesterday, the story of Isaac is not a pleasant one. I've always known that, but I think having a small boy yourself must bring it home to you in a new way. It's easy to imagine how terrified Isaac must have been when his father started tying him up on the altar.

And from there, very easy to think that God must be pretty sadistic to be willing to put a small child through that sort of terror just to check whether his dad loves God more than anything.

Yet we are told that Jesus is the image of the invisible God. And it's very hard to imagine Jesus doing such a thing. Didn't he encourage children to come to him? Didn't he show kindness and mercy to anyone fragile or hurting? Didn't he make love the centre of his teaching?

This made me feel quite miserable for a while as I thought about it and considered that even if other local cultures practiced child sacrifice at the time, and this was to show that Jehovah is different to those gods, something doesn't add up.

And then it occurred to me that the something is my assumptions. I'm assuming that God is happy with the way this has happened. That he's fine with putting Isaac through something so horrible. (Just like we sometimes assume that he was fairly happy for Jesus to go ahead and be tortured). But the Bible doesn't specify either way. I just assume that God doesn't do things unless he's happy with them - that nothing can compel God to do something he doesn't want, and yet the Bible is full of examples that show otherwise. God didn't want to kick Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden, yet their sin forced his hand, because he loved them too much to let them stay and live forever in sin. God didn't want to exile the Israelites - after all he put them there in the first place - but their steadfast rejection of him made it necessary for their own good. Just like I don't really want my son to spend his evening doing his homework instead of playing, but it has to be done and because I love him he has to be the one who does it.

So why assume that God was happy to tell Abraham to kill Isaac? We don't know the context because we weren't there. Perhaps this really was the only way to convince Abraham (and his descendants after him) that child sacrifice was not going to be accepted by this God. If we believe in a loving God, the God whose visible image is Jesus, then we have to believe that this was the only way possible and that God was not pleased to have to do it. No other explanation works.

Advent week 1

Please forgive the lack of photos. Our old computer died and the new one is a Mac... needless to say, I have not yet worked out how to move the photos onto it from the camera, or how to find them once they have been moved, let alone put them on the blog! A task to add to this weekend's list.

November 29th, first Sunday of Advent, we put up our tree. Nice and high so Nutmeg can't get at it! Although the baubles are mostly child-safe (papier-maché). Froglet helped decorate the lower branches, while Nutmeg tried to eat everything within reach.

November 30th, first Monday of Advent, we started the Jesse Tree. There are some nice family devotions over at rca.org. We have brought the potted kumquat tree in off the balcony to use as the Tree. It's a bit big for the table but otherwise perfect. Kumquats do badly on their own stock so they tend to be grafted onto some other citrus fruit tree - meaning that there is a clear stump with the kumquat branch growing from it. Almost ideal for a Jesse Tree... of course Christ was not grafted onto Jesse's stock, but we gentiles are grafted into His family!

December 1st. No activity because Froglet goes to nursery all day on Tuesdays, which wears him out. We just did the reading, having coloured in the bauble the previous day. And I hung up his advent calendar. Photos may follow...

December 2nd. The story of Noah. Froglet is mildly obsessed with floods. Every time it rains he asks if there will be one (the last one we saw was the summer before his birth!) so he's fascinated by Noah. I make sure to stress God's promise that no flood will ever wipe out humanity again! We also tried to make Christmas cards by painting paper and then using a cardboard comb to make designs in it. Not hugely successful so we settled for painting on the table, drawing in it with our fingers and making prints from that instead.

December 3rd. Today's activity is one from my to-do list (over there in the sidebar): paper plate Christmas trees. What with waiting for the paint to dry and Froglet not feeling like doing crafts, we haven't managed to finish these yet!

December 4th - finish trees *cough* or not.

December 5th. Story of Isaac. Not a very pleasant story! I have another post on this coming.

Planning Advent

...is one of the many reasons I have been so very absent this month.

I love Advent. As a child it was a really special time. We had a list of special things that would be done together, one for each day in Advent, pinned up on the fridge where we could all see it. We got to suggest meals we wanted to eat during that time (I guess we could have done this at other times too, perhaps it didn't occur to us!)
Very simple things, like having hot chocolate with candy canes - candy canes are more special if you don't live in the States I think. Or decorating the Christmas tree. Or going to a Christmas market - often the one in the centre of Brussels, where we lived, but sometimes a trip to nearby Germany.
During Advent the classical music that was a staple of our background noise - at least when my dad was in - was replaced with lovely Christmas carols. Not that I don't love classical too, but Christmas carols are wonderful! I have no idea how many CDs of them we must have had. I now have four of my own.

So of course I want Advent to be special for our little ones too. Last year I looked all over the blogosphere for someone who might have laid out a plan of Bible verses and so on to go through in Advent. Couldn't find anything at all. This year, quite by accident, I came upon Hubbards Cupboard, where they have exactly that. Unfortunately it doesn't quite match the order I had in mind, and some days rely on various books we don't have and have no access to, but I was thinking it was pretty good anyway, until I came across something even better:

The Jesse Tree
Jesse tree family devotions

The tree is such a lovely idea, one new decoration each day, each one reminding you of that day's scripture as it leads you gradually through the Old Testament showing God's faithfulness and anticipating the promised Messiah. I'm surprised I haven't come across the concept before, being interested in traditions and also having lived mostly in parts of Europe where Catholicism is the predominant branch of the Church, but thrilled to make a new discovery. Check out the links if you've not come across it before either.

I still want to do the other special things for Advent too though. Here's what we did last year, when Froglet was three:

Day 1: Light Advent candle 1, Put up tree
Day 2: Make red postbox (to keep cards in), make cards
Day 3: "We 3 kings" song, wise men story from Bible stories book
Day 4: Make a star for the door
Day 5: learn "O Christmas Tree"
Days 6-9: No activity (in UK for weekend)
Day 10: Light Advent candle 2, Christmas story with donkey
Day 11: Bake scones, have cream tea
Day 12: Put up nativity scene minus shepherds
Day 13: "Deck the halls" song
Day 14: Open red postbox and hang up cards
Day 15: Light Advent candle 3, Christmas party with Froglet's godparents
Day 16: Shepherds' story, "While shepherds watched"
Day 17: Add shepherds to scene
Day 18: Wrap gifts, "we wish you a merry Christmas"
Day 19: Make gingerbread for house
Day 20: Decorate gingerbread house
Day 21: Froglet to nursery for special Christmas crafts morning, "Silent Night"
Day 22: Light advent candle 4, add Jesus to scene
Day 23: "Away in a manger"
Day 24: To Brussels for Christmas with grandparents

Each of these activities was written down on a slip of paper which I read out to him in the morning when he opened his advent bag containing the paper and a chocolate coin or small gift. We bought a small box of Lego bits and divided them up between some of the bags, which was a big hit, but we're not doing it this year. He has so much Lego already!

To finish with, here are some more links. Use Advent Celebrations to teach Patience by Maren Schmidt, whose Montessori blog/column I enjoy very much.
And What are we waiting for this Advent, which is the start of a series hosted by Christine Sine over at Godspace. Enjoy!

MTM - Bonfire Night

Remember, remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder treason and plot
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.

We had our muffin tin on Friday to celebrate Bonfire Night. Which was actually on Thursday, but never mind. Bonfire Night is when the English, and presumably the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish as well, remember the attempted blowing up of Parliament in 1605. (Story below) Here is our tin:

We have fire-coloured tins containing mung bean sprouts (no reason for these), Yorkshire parkin and custard, marmite on toast "guys" with a chocolate penny, sparklers and cinnamon stars for fireworks. The meaning of these becomes clearer once you know what bonfire night is about!

The brief story is that James the first and his government were very repressive towards Catholics. (And I do mean very). And so some Catholics got rather tired of this and decided that a new government was needed, and they filled a cellar under the Houses of Parliament with gunpowder in barrels, and coal and wood. And they intended to blow it all up at a time when Parliament would be in session on November the 5th. But someone tipped off one of the MPs and they were discovered. Guy Fawkes was the person there at the time and so he was tortured for the names of his friends, which he refused to give. Eventually the conspirators, or at least some of them, were caught and sentenced to an unpleasant death, and King James ordered bonfires to be lit in the streets to celebrate that Parliament (and himself) had been saved. Incidentally, this is the same King James as he of the KJV. Not a very nice person, although he was slightly gentler towards the Catholics in later life.

You might wonder why anyone nowadays would celebrate such an unpleasant happening - an attempted act of terrorism foiled by an equally unpleasant government - and the answer is because it's traditional. Nowadays everyone has fireworks (for the gunpowder) and a bonfire on Bonfire Night, and pretty much everyone, at least of my age, knows the rhyme above. Children used to make a "Guy" out of old clothes and trundle him round the streets calling out "a penny for the guy" so people would give them some money to buy fireworks. I imagine they may still do this in some places but probably not most. That's where your word guy meaning a man in general comes from, by the way. :-) And parkin is traditionally eaten on bonfire night too, at least in the North.

But I told Froglet the story so we could talk about how when people are cruel to others, sooner or later the others will turn around and do something unpleasant back (in this case I mean James being almost Inquisitional towards the Catholics and them responding by trying to blow him up).

Froglet school week 2: A

Literacy:
This week we revised letter X with some writing, and learnt letter A using the Starfall sheets and website. Although the writing exercise lets you do capital and lower-case letters, we're mostly focusing on lower-case.

Maths:
Froglet got two new pages of raisin maths adding up to 8 and 9. I like to mix the results because otherwise I think he would quickly work out that the answer is always 8 (or whatever it is). When he's putting the raisins in the boxes, he always arranges them neatly: the first four in the four corners, then number 5 in the middle, number 6 at the top, number seven at the bottom and eight and nine on the left and right. Not sure what he'll do when we get to ten!

Telling the time:
We worked on recognising that it's "something o'clock". I discovered that although he can count up to 15 quite nicely, he actually doesn't recognise numbers beyond 9 at all, and is rather hazy on 6, 8 and 9. (7 is fine). So that's something else to work on.

Froglet school week 1 - letter X

Like the blog title says, I'm not really homeschooling... but I do want Froglet to learn to read in English before he starts school in German next year. I've been teaching him sort of vaguely for about a year now, and he knows all the letters but just doesn't do much in the way of stringing them together. So now we are starting to work at it properly, every day.

Last week we concentrated on X, which is Froglet's initial. He played the x game on Starfall, as well as quite a few of the other letters for fun, and we read two phonics books that include x: The Red Hen and It (Floppy phonics). Then we printed out the x exercise sheet from Starfall and he learnt to write X. Last time I tried doing one of these sheets (a) he wasn't very interested but i think now he's four he must be just the right age because he did it quickly and happily and then we played noughts and crosses together. He even helped me draw the noughts-and-crosses board!
We also watched the "when two vowels go walking" song from Starfall and the longer version from Between The Lions, as we're reviewing EE this week too, and did the ee game on the starfall website.

We read the story of how Jesus washed the disciples' feet, and learnt the verse that says "I have set an example for you, so that you will do just what I have done for you." I'm trying to do a verse and story for each letter. Here the relevant word is example. Then we talked about how we can/do serve others. (After this Froglet went down to the basement all by himself and got the washing out of the machine for me!)

We also did some raisin/smartie/peanut maths. We have these in a transparent folder so he can put the smarties straight on the page and I can just wipe it clean afterwards. So far I've only done pages that add up to 7 - next week we'll add up to 8.

And finally, something I've never done with him before either, patterns. He wasn't so excited about this but he enjoyed playing with his peg board for a while after he had copied a couple of the patterns and then tipped everything out again.