“The Power of the Pen”

In the photo below, you can see one of our students from Art Club Jr. looking super proud of the strokes he made on the paper with his thick black marker. Certainly, when a child does something they’ve never done before, they feel powerful! You know what else is powerful? The Word of God. The SEEDS learned about the power of the written word as we studied Hebrew this week with guest teacher, Mrs. Yassette. She came in with an excellent class that showed us how amazing God is by declaring His power and LOVE through his written Word.

Scroll below to see this week’s home readings

Family Book Package Readings

The readings listed below are optional, but are great ways to reinforce the lessons taught during this week. The entire family, from the youngest to the oldest, can explore new topics and enjoy great stories together.

Our Family Memory Verse for this week can be found at the end of this page.

The Bible - the Book of Matthew

Matthew 16: 5-28
Matthew 17:1-13

Window on the World

p. 140-141 Saudi Arabia

Children’s Atlas to God’s World

P. 64-65

Additional Readings

Living World - pp 18-19; 114-115

THE GARDEN

This week for worship, we have continued our theme of Living Water and spoke about Jesus and some storms mentioned in the Bible. We learned that when Jesus speaks, he calms the storms. We also studied the story of Peter walking on water. As long as we are always fixing our eyes on Jesus, we will be able to go through the storms of life. Jesus gives us peace like a river, love like an ocean and joy like a fountain, as our new song says.

One of this week’s highlights would have to be when the children played at the water table with a new element: ice. “Cuando le eches agua se va a derretir”, said Emiliano as they were pouring water over ice. The kids also enjoyed refreshing themselves by passing some ice on their face.

At park time the children enjoyed the jumping bags and playing volleyball.

For activity this week, we had drama time. The children re-enacted the story we read this week called Cuaquito. They also acted out our Five Little Ducks song. They enjoyed drama time very much!

SEEDS

Worship

In several of our stories this week during Bible time, we saw how the Pharisees, scribes and Sadducees became offended at the words of Jesus. He was not concerned about this. In fact, Jesus was clear that His desire was to honor the Father and not the traditions of men. The Seeds kids saw this as we discussed the tradition of hand washing. While this is a good practice, the Pharisees' insistence on keeping this tradition at the expense of hurting people who were looking to draw closer to God was unacceptable to Jesus. He called them hypocrites in chapter 15 of Matthew, reminding them that people are not defiled by things from the outside, but rather from the evil intentions that come from inside of man.

Geography

This week, we made the transition from our study of Africa by crossing the Red Sea from Egypt into Israel. Israel, as our gateway into Asia, is the first country we will be exploring in our next unit. In our introduction, we learned that around 60% of the world’s population lives in Asia, which makes learning a language spoken in Asia a great skill for those interested in mission work. While we spoke about several different languages, we got a special Hebrew lesson from Javvah’s mom, Mrs. Yassette. Read more about that class in the Studio Time section.

Science

This week we worked on our Summary sheets of the Grasslands that go in our binders. We used our atlases to color in the grassland areas in the world map. The older students also filled out important information they remembered regarding the climate, distinguishing features, animals, plants, and other interesting facts. The younger children chose of their favorite animals from the grasslands that we studied together and made a drawing of it as well.

Studio Time

In music, with Mrs. Emily, the students reviewed the musical notes on their notebooks and began working on the first verse of the song “Not Alone” It is such a precious sound! This week they will work on the second verse, so take some time to play it at home and review the song.

Here is the link to the song:

On Friday, we finished our drawing our King Tutankhamen portraits with pencil, flair pen, and some color. We also had the special blessing to have a Hebrew class led by Javvah’s mom, Mrs. Yassette. This was a perfect addition to our travels to Israel. Mrs. Yassette and her special assistant, Javvah, taught the children how to say hello and goodbye by saying “Shalom!” They also learned how to say their names and ask others what their name was. They worked in pairs and everyone who wanted to participate had the opportunity to do so. Mrs. Yassette also brought a Torah scroll and unrolled it for the children to see. They marveled at the symbols and the fact that it is written from right to left. Then, Mrs. Yassette divided the group into two teams in search of special letters in the Hebrew scriptures to reveal a special code. When they found the two letters (the first letter and the last letter of the Torah), she explained to them that those two letters together made a new word: “lev,” or heart in Hebrew. God’s own heart is in His word and in it we can find the greatest treasure. When we open the scriptures, God’s heart is being opened to us. How amazing is that??!! In order to have them remember this beautiful truth, she provided a paper with a blank scroll for them to copy the two Hebrew letters.” Mrs. Yassette finished by teaching them a fun and popular song: “Shalom Haverim” We are so thankful for this great time together.

THE OAKS PROGRAM

Worship and Park

In Oaks, we looked at the accounts in Matthew 15 from a theatrical perspective. The students were challenged to act out the stories we read in order to remember that EVERYONE there was impacted by what Jesus said and did. In one story, we see Jesus confronting the Pharisees about their hypocrisy, but one thing to remember is that his disciples were there watching Him and hearing every word. By acting out the part of the disciples, the students were able to imagine the impact that Jesus’ words must have had on those who were present. Jesus was willing to defend those that the religious leaders wanted to reject. In this way, we can see that Jesus wants us too to follow Him, and not traditions made by man. He says, “Follow me and sin no more.”

We put up the volleyball net this week as well and has been a hit with ALL the groups.

Geography

World Geography continues to get more and more interesting as we enter into Asia, the continent that is the home to both the highest and lowest places in the world. Mt. Everest and the Dead Sea take the titles for these two honors, and yet these places are thousands of miles apart. In short, Asia is huge! During this unit, the students will be choosing a country to study and present a country report by the end of the year.

Science

To culminate our study of the grasslands, the students colored in the world map sheet with the areas where they are found around the world. After that, we began our discussion about ecology and conservation. We began by addressing the question: “What is a biblical view of ecology?” Our Properties of Ecosystems book has a wonderful article that reminds the students that God made man in His image and gave us the responsibility to steward the land and to make it fruitful. As believers, we must care for the Earth God has given us but we are to guard our hearts against worshiping creation rather than the Creator. Even though we don’t have the power to save the planet, we trust in the one who holds creation in His hand and out of love for Him, we manage creation responsibly. Finally, we took some time to go through the rubric for their next research project on Endangered Species. We went over expectations and how to organize our writing. They each chose an animal as homework. This week, we will have a writing time together.

Studio Time

The Oaks students had the opportunity to choose between to drawing activities for Studio Time. They could either sketch King Tutankhamen like the Seeds students, or could design their own cartouche, a piece of jewelry from ancient Egypt that included hieroglyphics. These symbols were chosen to represent the essence of the person, not necessarily spell out the person’s name. They first had to draw a cartouche with their name in hieroglyphics and a second one with their own made up symbols to represent them. They included symbols like a cross, music, gaming, favorite animals, arts, etc.

Memory Verse #19

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?...But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

— Matthew 6:24-25; 33