“Take the Leap!”

The Oaks students were quick to devise a game of “leap frog” as their final class of the month landed on February 29, a “leap” year. It’s fun to watch our oldest group getting silly every once and a while. They also took a big leap forward by presenting their endangered species reports this week. Read below for more.

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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 19:16-30
Matthew 20:1-28

Window on the World

pp. 52-52 - Gonds

Additional Read-Aloud for this week:

HERO TALES

Pp.33-43 - Amy Carmichael

THE GARDEN

This week for worship we studied Jesus and the children. When the disciples tried to keep the children from bothering Jesus, he told them to not impede the children from coming to Him. We highlighted to the children how much Jesus truly loves each one of them. Having said this, Mrs. Vivi was going to introduce a new song, and right before she did Estela said “Mrs Vivi can we sing ‘Jesus Loves Me’”?. Little did she know, that was the song Mrs. Vivi was about to introduce and sing for the first time. It's amazing to see how the Spirit works, through children and adults alike. On Tuesday, we read our Bible story and on Thursday we reviewed and the children drew their favorite part of the story. They will start making their own book of stories from the Bible.

This week we focused on colors and painting. We read some books that were about mixing primary colors and guessing what color they made. The children had the chance to draw a duck step-by-step following Mrs. Vivi’s instructions and they surprised us with how great they turned out. They are really becoming great artists.

We also finger painted using primary colors to make the secondary colors. After mixing red and blue, yellow and red, and blue and yellow, the children had a chance to paint freely what they wanted. “Como marrón en un tren. Hice el cielo. Muchos besitos”, said Césare. “Estoy haciendo un masterpiece”, said Emiliano.

SEEDS

Worship

This was a very special week at worship because we celebrated two birthdays! Both Elise and Estrella were honored as girls “made by God” and in whom He delights. These celebrations occurred as we have been continuing our study in the book of Matthew. In chapter 18, Jesus began teaching about forgiveness and restoration of broken relationships. This was important because we all have conflict with other people and God does not want us to remain angry, or unforgiving. He desires us to mend what’s been broken and with His help to heal what’s been hurt.

One of our birthday books this week was a biography on Amy Carmichael, a passionate missionary to India.

Science

Mountains are impressive geological formations that are found all over the Earth, even underwater. There is not one single ecosystem that is associated with mountains. This is because the climate and the terrain change dramatically the higher up you go on a mountain, and this alters the ability of the animals and plants that can live there. On Wednesday, I gave the students a tub of playdough and asked them to mold several mountains. I asked them to first line them up to form a mountain range. After that, we made a gap in between two of them so as to form a mountain pass. Finally, they put all of their clay together to make one big mountain and pointed out where the summit, or highest peak of the mountain actually was. On Friday, we learned more about the mountains of the world and used our worksheet and a map to draw the highest mountain range in the world, the Himalayas, as well as the Andes, the longest mountain range in the world.

Geography

We began our study of India this week and it has been a lot of fun. So many cool things were invented in India, like buttons, flushing toilets, and the game Chess. We also learned how important spices are to India’s culture, and we had the chance to mix and taste some of them. Besides reading about the country, and learning more interesting facts, we were able to play some games together. In the photo gallery, you can see Estrella playing a game of Chess with Joshua.

Art

The tradition of Indian miniature painting dates back to Emperor Akbar in the 16th century. These very small paintings showed animals, people, or landscapes. They were frequently decorated with gold and silver trim. The students received the challenge to make a small watercolor painting of an animal, person, or landscape. They were all eager to jump in. Those who finished were challenged to make them even smaller. Eli was very enthusiastic and made super tiny landscapes. Estrella and Noah made several ones as well. This week they will add gold and silver details if they would like to.

THE OAKS PROGRAM

Worship

Our focus in worship was in Matthew chapters 18 and 19. Here we find Jesus teaching through the parable of the wicked and unforgiving servant. We discussed the idea of debt and how the servant in the parable had a debt that was too great to pay. In his goodness, the Master cleared the debt, but it didn’t do anything to the heart of the wicked servant. Rather than appreciating the forgiveness he received, he showed no mercy to another man who owed him money. In the same way, when we have understood the great debt of sin that we could never repay and that Christ has paid our debt to God in full, we should be filled with joy and mercy towards others, for we have received great mercy. We watched this modern take on the parable to help us understand even more.

Science

After several weeks of preparation, the students brought in their second project of the year to present. We worked on their endangered species project at the center. We helped them to find different sources for their work and organize a coherent report. They learned how ro reference their sources and how to make changes from a first draft and then hand in a clean copy of their report. Although they were all in agreement that doing the writing was the hardest part, it was a joy to see how much more confident they are becoming in presenting in front of other people. They are building their skill sets and each assignment is helping to add to that. They will apply what they have learned to their final project of the year, a country report.

On Thursday, we began to learn about mountains and discussed several vocabulary terms. We learned about Mt. Everest and the highest mountain range in the world, the Himalayas. We watched a video that described how hard it can be on a person’s body to go up such altitudes. This week we will continue to explore the mountains of the world, including Puerto Rico.

Geography

For our study in India, I brought in some Indian spices for us to smell, taste (with some yogurt, lentils and Naan) and even try mixing together. It was surprising to see what the students thought of them. Many liked the smells and flavors, while others, not so much. We discussed how at one point, spices were used as currency in India and was one of the reasons why India was so attractive to the rest of the world. We also began talking about our final “country report.” We will be using India as a model to begin building a class report together before the students choose their own to write about. We reviewed how to cite and reference material from books.

As always, we enjoyed a lot of outdoor time and played leapfrog in honor of leap year last Thursday.