Today was the end of week 1. It was a very good week for everyone. The twins were soooo excited to do "school". They have a little notebook with their names on it and it's filled with "worksheets". The bulk of their "school" is learning how to read. We're using Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. I used this book with my oldest and I thought I would never use it again. There are things I like and things I dislike about the book. First of all it's not EASY. Learning how to read involves work and although it is a good work, it is work nonetheless and work is seldom ever easy. However; having taught one child to read, there are some things that I now know that I wish I would have known with my oldest. I chose this book originally because I needed confidence that I could teach my child to read. It has a parent script and a child script and I thought, "it just doesn't get easier than that". The book gave me tremendous confidence, I would say verbatim whatever the book wanted me to say and I went about it very systematically. Everyday we did a lesson. That was mistake number 1. When it says in 100 lessons I took that to mean that I should do a different lesson everyday. With the twins we'll do the same lesson for several days or even a week. I only do the book with them for about 5 minutes and that's it. Then I break out those sandpaper letters I worked so hard on and we play with those saying the sounds. I took an old cereal box and wrote their sounds on the box and cut the sounds into squares. I let them match the squares to the corresponding sandpaper letter or they get to do another activity with the cereal box square letters. Now I use the book only as a guide, but I incorporate the days lesson other ways throughout the day.

It's been a good week for my oldest. We're both learning to pray for the fruits of the spirit as we need them. Several times when I was teaching something that I didn't know how to quite get across, I stopped and prayed silently for wisdom and patience. This made my week much better. My oldest needed to do the same when he got discouraged that his letters weren't perfect or that we couldn't get his word problem.

This first week we read Chp1 in Story of the World Vol2 which is about the Fall of Rome. We learned about Gladiators and the Colosseum and what it was used for. We went to the library and got a few books on Gladiators. I picked out a chapter book that took the Time Warp Trio back in time where they were fighting a Gladiator. I thought this would be a good book and good practice with reading chapter books. But the kids use phrases like "what the heck" and "I swear". The book is also quite heavy into magic and spells. My spirit was troubled, so after the first chapter I told him we'd find a different book, much to his delight. He isn't thrilled to read chapter books anyway so he was pleased!


We learned about Roman entertainment at the Colosseum. Boys like to hear about men fighting lions and gladiator fights etc. I read a small portion of Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up while he was coloring history pages.(This is a life changing book, not meant for kids, I only read a paragraph. I can't wait until he's old enough to read it on his own) We learned how the early Christians in Rome viewed Roman entertainment. They refused to go to the theater, Tertullian wrote "How can it be right to look at the things that are wrong to do?" This was the best lesson of the week. We live in a culture that sacrifices morals, integrity, and purity for the sake of entertainment. Entertainment is a huge part of our society. We talked about how it is wrong to pretend to sin! God hates sin. Why would you pretend to do something God hates? That's why we don't play cops and robbers. We don't pretend to kill. Killing is a sin. We don't pretend to sin. That's all there is to it. We often let our culture determine our standards for entertainment. "Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil".(Is 5:20) I am so weary of hearing "It's not that bad". Can't our sights be a little higher that? "They not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them"(Romans 1:32). Many people will cry in protest "Then what am I supposed to watch?! or even better, What do you watch?" Entertainment has it's place I'm sure, but it isn't a spiritual discipline. And as for what I watch? Usually people don't ask because they're interested but because they're looking to find fault in something I watch in an attempt to validate what they watch. I'm not the example, Christ is. Christ continually prunes me. I read about a pastor who counseled people to get rid of their TV. He said no one ever came back to him and said, "I just can't have good quiet times without the TV, I just can't spend as much time with my family, in the Word, or in prayer, without the TV. I served Christ and the body so much more when I had the TV"(paraphrase) Be warned that we are in the last days. God said that in the last days people will be "...lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God." (2Tim 3:4)Is it not true?