Baptism

Well, it has been a week and I just realized that I never blogged about Tyler's baptism. Time sure flies when you are busy. Tyler is 7 (and 1/2) and a couple of weeks ago I sat him down and explained, with the use of a tract, how to get to Heaven. He has heard this all his life, but I wanted it to be personal. In fact, lately we have been reading from the book, "Leading Little Ones to Christ", which is a great book that just takes baby steps to tell you about Jesus and what he did for you. I had felt for a while that I should do this with him, but the right time never came. So, on this day, after he finished his math work we sat under a table (he is a boy, you know) and I read the tract to him. It was a children's version and very good. At the end I asked him if he would like to ask Jesus into his heart. He said yes. We prayed and he acknowledged he was a sinner and asked for forgiveness. It was so sweet. Then he had to call everyone and tell them what he did. Now my little boy has the assurance of going to heaven. What a wonderful gift God has given us. I am so thankful for my assurance as well. How about you? Do you have that assurance?


His dad helped him out that day. Doesn't that look like one proud Papa.


Sister had to lend some moral support.


I thought he looked like an angel in his robe, so I had to play with this picture. LOL


A view from our vantage point.

Thanks to Mary Ellen, we got this picture.

I Did It

It finally happened!!! Tyler read his first book all by himself and he did it pretty fluently. OK, it didn't just happen. He worked hard to get to this point. Reading has yet to be his strong point. I owe this progress to our new curriculum, Spell to Write and Read. You may have heard about it if you read one of my previous blogs. Tyler had to first learn cursive in order to write in his log book. His printing was awful, but the cursive is pretty good. We started that in July and by somewhere near October he could write in his log book in cursive. It took a long time because he is only 6 and a boy and those 2 factors alone should say enough. While he was learning to write, he was also learning his phonograms. There are 77 in all to learn. They are like magic cards that unlock spelling first with almost no exceptions to the rules. That in turn unlocks the reading. So far he has learned 120 words and we are spending the last few weeks of school reviewing the few that he had trouble with. I have also been having him read from the log book lists and timing him. The words were marked with the spelling markings that SWR uses. That is so helpful to see the phonograms. For example we would underline /oy/ in the word boy because it is a multi letter phonogram and /sh/ in the word ship for the same reason. That way when he sees it he will know to say /sh/ instead of /s/h/ individually. He has also learned the 5 reasons words have silent final E. Do you know them? I sure didn't. When he sees one marked he knows how to read it. We did it that way for a while, but then I took the markings away and wrote sentences with the words. He did well seeing the phonograms and sounding them out. Each time he read them he got faster. Today I pulled out the book No! No! Word Bird. It had words in it with the same patterns that he has been working with. I was shocked when he read the entire 31 pages. He was so proud and so was I. Not only can he spell the words and knows why they are spelled the way they are, but he can read the words. We will continue to read our lists and sentences I make from them. In a few weeks I will have him attempt another more difficult book written by Wanda Sanseri, the writer of SWR. It uses all 120 words he has learned so far and a few more. I really think he will be able to do it. It won't be long until he can read anything he wants

RA Glider Race

My first grader is a RA (Royal Ambassador) at our church this year. He loves it. He has some awesome teachers. Last night they had their annual glider races.

Each boy is given a glider to assemble and decorate with their dad.

Then they take it to church and race it. They race for distance and speed down a fishing line strung from one end of the room to another.

Several boys participated. Tyler didn't win anything, but he loved the experience. Next year will be even better because we will be better prepared.