Elijah

Next up is my big boy Elijah.

He had a great summer. As you have seen by the previous posts, he was very busy this summer with swimming, summer camp and family activities. Then August rolled around and we decided we were going to homeschool him for this school year. We fixed up the second bedroom (which was suppose to be a craft room) into a school room. It turned out well, if I do say so myself.

 Elijah's desk and Caleb's "desk". Shelves with Caleb's busy toys.

Reading nook, blackboard and school books. (Also more Caleb busy toys)

After we got the room ready, it was time to start school a few days later.

At first it was rough, but now that we are in the groove of things it's getting easier. We are doing a mix of things this year. Horizons for Math, Reading, Spelling and Health, Abeka for Social Studies and Science, God made music 1 for music, Handwriting Without Tears for handwriting and How to Teach Art for art. We are chugging along with our good days and our bad days, but in the end he will have learned everything that he needs to.

Although the school year just started we have taken quite a few field trips. We went to the Science Center, Downtown Baltimore, Port Discovery and Washington DC. They were all a lot of fun. We hope to go to more in the coming months. We are tentatively planning a trip to New Jersey and New York City in March. Elijah has been asking to go to New York City for a couple months now. If we go up to the aquarium in New Jersey during homeschool week, we will be an hour and a half away from Manhattan (without traffic). We plan on making it a long weekend, but will have to see how our money situation pans out.

Along with regular subjects to study, we also needed to include a Physical Education of some sort for him. So he is doing skating again and we wanted him to do something else, also, since everyone was concerned about his social interaction with other children. We asked him what he wanted to do and he decided he wanted to play soccer.

Joe found this great organization, Christian Youth Athletics, so we signed him up. It's Biblically based, so they pray before and after games. The other things like giving it your all and being a team are also presented based on the Bible. His coach is really nice and encourages him all the time. We really like the organization and hope that Elijah will be able to continue playing with them in coming years.

That's it, in a nutshell. God has a wonderful way of sorting things out to make things possible that you never thought would be. It's kind of awesome when you think about it.