Mystery of History

I'm not sure how many other people are using the Mystery of History curriculum, but I really love it. It's a great way to piece together world history (so much of what I covered at school focused solely on the UK!) and covers a wide range of other topics in a chronological way.

The only problem I have had with it is that it's sooooo expensive. I mean, it's fine if you live in the US, but shipping to the UK nearly doubles the price of the curriculum, especially if you get charged import tax by customs (yes, even though it was marked educational resources, they decided to charge me anyway).

So I was super excited when I found out you can get volumes I and II on kindle!! Not only that, but there appears to be some kind of promotion on, because despite each quarter of volume II being listed as £6.34, when I bought it I was only charged £1.06! Not only that, but I had promotional credit from my prime account, so I all of volume two on my kindle for FREE.

Pretty sweet deal.

Sadly it doesn't have volumes three and four, but hopefully they'll be released before we get to them, and with all the money I've saved I'm going to go and download the MP3's so we can listen to volume one for revision in the car. 

Not Back to School trip

This week is Rosh Hashanah, which is the Jewish new year, and generally when we would restart our homeschool after a loooooooong summer break hanging out with daddy. It's a fun day of starting out with fresh curriculum and books; and eating lots of sweet things (we have fruit, yoghurt and honey for lunch!) to remind ourselves of how sweet and good God is.

Our home-ed co-op. however, prefers to start a little earlier, and this year, we decided to join them on a trip to Prestatyn in Wales. It was so much fun to go with our cousins and the kids had a fantastic time.

We went to surf school at Surf Snowdonia, to great Orme copper mines and on a fossil hunt; we played on the beach, in an incredibly mild ocean; we went to Conwy castle and on an audio tour of an Edwardian house.

It was great fun to catch up with old friends, as one of Cosmo's favourite buddies who left our co-op last year made the effort to book in to the same resort and hang out with us all.

On the way home we stopped in at Stratford-upon-Avon and visited the MAD museum. It was incredible and the kids loved playing with all the exhibits, particularly a typewriter that was attached to fishing wires, which tapped glasses that had been tuned to different pitches.

You can see our video of what we did below:

You Are There - Lamplighter Theatre

We love audio books, not only in the car, but Cosmo is really enjoying listening to them at bed time. Audible credits are a cheap way to get regular audio books and we've really enjoyed the Inspired by the Bible Experience audio with Samuel L Jackson, Denzel Washington and some other really big names. We also love the Adventures in Odyssey series for fun and light hearted entertaining stories.

By far and away though, my children's favourite audio we've ever bought has been the Lamplighter Theatre plays. The stories are incredibly engaging, with fantastic truths hidden in them and really inspirational heroes. They are exceptionally well produced and every child (and adult) I know who has listened has loved them. So I was super excited when Lamplighter brought out the 'You Are There' Series.


It's a dramatisation of Bible stories for young children. The bible experience is word for word scripture read and acted, which is fantastic; but this is something different, so I don't mind investing in both. Thanks to YNAB we had some money in our 'homeschool: Curriculum' budget, so when I saw that Lamplighter had a half price deal on I jumped at it. We got the MP3 downloads (shipping to the uk is pricey!) and I can't wait to start listening to them with the kids.

Here's the promo video:

And some longer interviews about the series:

If you order them quick, they are down to $99 for the entire set (that's about £62 in English money).

Enjoy!

Music Appreciation

I found a link on pinterest for How to Teach Music Appreciation The Charlotte Mason Way and I've decided to add it into our schedules this year.

The author suggests picking one composer each term, listening to a piece of their music daily and changing it each week (easily done whilst we are on copywork or something else). We then also need to discuss and learn about the composers life and learn about them.

I think part of the reason I'm so excited about it is that we have really been enjoying a fantastic audiobook which includes the story of Johann Sebastian Bach and I had no idea what an amazingly faithful overcomer he was.

We're going to start with Debussy this term, because I like his music, then do Bach in January (for contrast and because I already have a biography of him) and the Chopin in the summer (because I like his music too.

If you are interested in doing this with us, I've made youtube playlist with some of their music so you can play it easily on your phone, tablet, laptop etc... whilst your littles are working to help familiarise them with the music.

Bach
Brahms
Chopin
Debussy
Mozart

And I'll add more as we get through them, so just keep an eye on the playlists in my channel, or let me know if you make your own and I'll add a link to them.

Thanks.

Knowledge Quest Geography

Just a quick heads up for those of you who, like me, have a little geographobia (despite having a geography teaching husband, I have never studied geography and find my lack of knowledge in this area disturbing!) Knowledge Quest have kindly made their 'GLOBALMANIA: Master world Geography in 7 months or less' text available as a free download (RRP $14.95)

It's a big file, but they've split it for smaller downloads too.

Enjoy mastering the world!

What's in the Bible discount

In case I haven't made it clear enough in the past, we LOVE 'What's in the Bible?' DVDs from JellyTelly.

JellyTelly actually have a tonne of free videos that you can watch, including some episodes of 'Adventures in Odyssey' and, my children's personal favourites, 'Clive and Ian's Wonderblimp of Knowledge' (how do they come up with this stuff?). My personal favourite's are Dr Von Schniffenhausen's science lessons.

Anyway, as much fun as the freebies are, the 'What's in The Bible?' DVDs are out of this world great. They bring together short, funny clips on a theme and introduce children to concepts such as 'salvation' and early church history in easy, manageable ways. My children have learnt loads and we've really enjoyed it too.

They make an excellent addition to any christian home, and right now JellyTelly are offering 20% off through a referral scheme. You get 20% off, I get a $10 gift certificate. Win, Win.

Click here for 20% off

And just to whet your appetites, here's a clip of one of my favourite songs from one of the DVDs. 

Synonyms and the Book of Centuries

As with most homeschooling blogs we've been a little slow over the summer. One of the joys of home educating is being able to enjoy the sunshine whenever you like and not having to stick to a schedule.

With that in mind, we don't actually break for the whole summer like some other families do. Although we don't formally hand in registers to our co-op, we continue with a relaxed pace - nothing to strenuous, but a little now and then to ensure that we don't get completely out of the habit of learning.

One of the games we've been playing is called synonyms. I made it up, but it's really fun and Cosmo loves it. We basically wrote lots of words on lolly sticks (actually they're waxing spatula's from my old beauty business, but lolly sticks would work just as well) in categories. For example, ten of the sticks have words that are synonyms for 'big', such as huge, gigantic, enormous, massive etc... and ten have words for 'small', ten have words that mean 'delicious', ten have words that mean 'brave'...etc...

Then I flipped them over, shuffled them and continued to do the same with more categories.

The game is then to shout a word, such as 'small' and then everyone has to try and snatch as many sticks that contain a synonym for that word. The winner is the person with the most sticks. They then get to chose the next category.

I'm trying to introduce games that a) broaden Cosmo's vocabulary and b) make use of grammatical terms. Being an avid reader, he has already grasped many grammatical rules (such as where speech marks should go, that a capital letter should start a sentence etc...) but you can't absorb the vocabulary to diagram sentences from just reading. Someone has to explain to you the difference between a noun, adjective and a verb for you to understand what those words mean.

I've been reading a bit more about the Charlotte Mason method of teaching, and I've fallen in love with the idea of a Book of Centuries. It's the perfect accompaniment to the Mystery of History curriculum that we already use.

A Book of Centuries is basically a timeline in a notebook. You have a double page spread for each century, and as your child finds out about a person or an event, they can write about it, draw pictures, or create a lapbook in that double page spread. It's a fun way to record what they are learning, and keeps it accessible to flick through and revise. Everything is in order, so it helps the child to get an idea of what happened when.

I know that since we started our timeline in our hallway, I have a much better understanding of how different cultures evolved world wide, and how the pieces of history fit together. I'm obviously a visual learner, but this stuff has never sunk in for me before.

As great as our timeline is though, there is not a lot of space for information, just a small picture to remind us of an event. I think the book of centuries is a great accompaniment to go with it.

If you'd like to start your own book of centuries, you can find a template for it on Simply Charlotte Mason and the best part is that it's free to download. There's actually some other really great resources on that site so I'd encourage you have a look around whilst you are there.

I suspect we are going to have to do a section on the olympics soon as Cosmo and Daddy have and such a great time attending some of the events. I'll blog about that soon, but in the meantime you can see a couple of the photos on our travel blog.

St John's Ambulance

So we had a horrible scare with my nephew this week, and it's made me so grateful for my minimum wage lifeguards job. It was years ago, but worth every chlorine soaked minute.

It's also made me realise what a simple, but under taught, life skill CPR and first aid are in general. It's something I feel should be an important part of our children's education.

I've done a little research and St John's ambulance take children from the age of five years old (which is William in January) and run something similar to scouts, but based around first aid and survival skills. It's mixed sex so both my children will be able to attend (once Lila is old enough) and when they are ten years old they can move up to cadets, where they actually get paired with adults to provide first aid at various community events.

Make first aid a part of your children's curriculum, even if you can't get to a St John's Ambulance group. There are plenty of courses you can do, and even watching a video online is better than nothing. Knowing what to do in an emergency could save a life, and most likely it will be someone you loves. 

Free Resources

We have been plodding along with various things this term, and whilst I enjoy following whatever subject Cosmo is interested in at the time, I feel like we could probably start introducing a small amount more structure next term.

Although he thrives on being able to follow his own ideas of what he wants to study, poor Lychee rarely gets a say in what we are doing and I feel like until she is verbal enough to ask questions or make it clear what she wants, it would be nice to follow something that progresses - rather than changing topic on a whim.

I found this amazing FREE resource today called Lesson Pathways and I think it is going to be so useful to us.

Okay, so the video is a little annoying, but I genuinely love the resources they've put together. It's great to be able to jump in when you have some free time with the children and not be worrying about what to do next - just click on the next lesson and you are good to go. 

I especially like the language arts section for Cosmo. Although he is very good at reading fluently, his comprehension could use some work, and I'm not sure he understands grammar. Having the groundwork done for me makes a huge difference. 

Speaking of having the groundwork done for  you, I've also been using Homeschoolshare.com a lot recently. It turns out Cosmo LOVES lapbooking, especially as you can choose just about any topic and there is a unit study for it. Volcanoes and Tsunami's are his topic of choice right now, and whilst the resources are in an easy to use format and even a four year old can understand them, his vocabulary and knowledge in that subject area now rivals his daddy's GCSE classes.  

The best part about lapbooking for me is that there is a LOT of cutting and gluing, and laying out on the page, involved. Although I do the vast majority of the cutting, he does practice with his plastic scissors, he uses the hole punch, and (although he often finds it frustrating) he is getting better at using the pritt stick. Art is something I've struggled to get him excited about, but combining some of these skills with topics he's interested in (rather than just art for arts sake) has led to much more successful mastery of these skills.  

Lychee Update

We talk so much about her big brother on here and Lychee tends to largely get ignored. This is for the most part because I feel like a lot of the posts would be very repetitive if I told you what we did with One child and then repeated it when the next one came along!

However, with regards to reading the children have learnt VERY differently. We tried the flashcard and YBCR system that worked so well with Cosmo, but had very little results with Lychee. She just wasn't interested. However she loves Starfall.com and we noticed that unlike her brother, who learnt using the whole word system, she was able to name individual letters by their sound. 

With this in mind we started using the hooked on phonics videos with her a little while back. Today she started sounding out words that she had never seen before by herself for the first time. She still pronounces each letter separately ('T-H-I-S' instead of 'Th-Is) and annunciates VERY clearly (it takes a long time to read when you pronounce each letter as a syllable) but it is a great leap forward developmentally and a step in the right direction decoding sounds ready for reading. 

I'm absolutely thrilled. If you want to see the video she was working on, it's here. 

Confessions of a 20-something unschooler...

I went to school.

I didn't know there were other options.

As an adult, and a stay at home mum, I am finally in a place in my life where

a) I can choose what I want to read (no course texts or reading lists) and

b) I have time to read (when I was working I had freedom of choice, but no spare time)

I love it, and I'm learning new stuff all the time. I actually feel like I'm 'de-schooling' myself.

For example, I recently started reviewing books for Booksneeze.com, and the first book they sent me was 'The Promise of An Angel', from their 'Amish Romance' section. Now I'll admit Amish romance was a genre I'd never heard of before, but what a treat! I loved the book so much that my mother bought me an Amish romance 'Quintology' (I think I just made that word up. It's like a trilogy, but with five books) for Christmas.

As I read them it started me off on other journeys, looking up recipes that they talked about and discovering what mennonites and anabaptists were. Church history that I had never thought about now became a fascinating research point.

And suddenly I'm converted.

Unschooling really is the easiest and most fun way to learn!

So, although we have curriculum which we sometimes follow, I'm becoming more and more relaxed about letting my children (within reason) choose what they want to do. It's amazing how many questions and research points come up after watching an episode of Wonder pets...

Catechism

The Puritans used catechisms, creeds, and confessions to disciple their flocks.  A catechism is the process of instructing believers both young and old in the basics of the Christian faith.  The Greek word for "instruct" or "teach" is katecheo from which we get our English word "catechize."

 

Catechisms provide basic summaries of the church’s teachings to ensure that all members of the church understand the essentials of the faith for themselves. Most catechisms generally have questions and answers accompanied by biblical support and explanations.

 

The Puritans developed their own catechisms, including theWestminster Catechisms in the 1640s. Written to provide children, new believers, and church members alike a short but comprehensive summary of the Reformed church’s doctrines, theWestminster Catechisms are the most important and influential of all the Reformed catechisms.

Helpful Catechism Resources

• The Good News We Almost Forgot: Rediscovering the Gospel in a 16th-Century Catechism, by Kevin DeYoung


• Big Truths for Young Hearts: Teaching and Learning the Greatness of God, by Bruce Ware


• The Big Book of Questions and Answers, by Sinclair Ferguson


• Small Children’s Catechism, by Chris Schlect


• A Catechism for Boys and Girls, from Sojourn Church Louisville.

 

Have any good ideas on how we can use catechisms in the church today?

Let me know in the comments section.

 

My Baby can read too!

I write a lot about Cosmo's development on here, and not so much about Lychee so far. I feel like this is fairly predictable as she is so much younger and doesn't do much at the moment.

However we have had a fairly major break through recently, and using the YBCR system she is now (at 9 months) consistently recognizing the words 'tongue', 'wave' and 'hi'.

It's a little earlier than Cosmo (not surprising as we got her started on the system earlier) but also a little less consistent than he was. She started to recognise words a month or two ago, but didn't always respond to them and only recognizes a few. Cosmo showed no signs of recognition, but then at around 10 months he could suddenly read with a startlingly wide vocabulary.

Not sure if it's a boy/girl thing, just thought it was interesting to note.

If you are interested in using the Your Baby Can Read system, you can buy it here.

 

How did I teach Cosmo to read?

I get asked this question sooooo many times, so I have finally got around to becoming an affiliate for the program. If  you would like to know more about it, ore purchase a copy to start teaching your little ones to read (I highly recommend it!) they are doing a 30 day money back guarantee at the moment, so it's well worth a look.

Your Baby Can Read

Get Your Baby Started Reading Early

Proven System. Money Back Guarantee

www.yourbabycan.co.uk

Letters and Sounds

Just a quickie today as we have had some friends over who have turned the house into a disaster zone! I only have an hour to clean up before the children wake up and I can't find the carpet shampoo (and yes, I do need it!)

I do love it when Cosmo has people over to play though, he is exhausted after a hard morning running around and I got to catch up with a new friend, which was a lot of fun.

Anyhow, back on topic!

A teacher friend emailed me this website letters and sounds for Cosmo to have a play with. There are loads of interactive games and teaching ideas on there for phonics. At first I thought it was too simplistic, then I realised there was more than one level (duh!) and although it's not particularly challenging for him, he does enjoy playing with it and I think it's good to practise even the easier stuff.

Anyhow, I may use it with Lychee before she gets to the reading fluently stage.

So I've posted it here in case anyone wants to try it out. I think it would be a great tool for slightly older (e.g. computer literate) children who were struggling with reading. Cosmo is the other way round though (doesn't have the dexterity to use a mouse) so it's not so helpful. I end up selecting all the choices whilst he just reads out the words.

In summary: Good for some, fun for us :-)

The Mystery of History

The Mystery of History Part One - Creation to Resurrection has arrived!

I'm so excited. I've been flicking through and it looks like we are going to have a LOT of fun with this. I will warn you though, that it comes ready for a 3 ring binder. I have yet to find anywhere that sells these in the UK :-(

Still, it's not so hard to punch new holes in the pages.

We read through the introduction to this quarter this morning, and although I'm sure Cosmo didn't absorb all of it, he enjoyed being read to and the conversational style of the text. It asks question like 'Are you curious about how the world started?' which he loves answering 'yes!' to. I also think it's great that he is becoming familiar with new words. Every time a word popped up that he hadn't heard before (such as 'Cuneiform' or 'Kushite') he asked me to stop and point to the word in the text for him.

This afternoon we are going to make flash cards of all these new words and add them to a new file I am starting. When we re-read through this next (I'll start the curriculum again when I feel that he is old enough to be following the content better) he will already know these words and should make the absorption of information easier for him.

To be honest, I'm flying through it myself whilst he is napping. It's so exciting to me, having never studied history, to be able to see where different events and people around the world fit into the time line of biblical history. To be honest, I've never heard of most of them. I obviously didn't listen much in school, but it's fascinating me now.

So far this curriculum gets five stars. I'll let you know if we encounter any problems as we go along.

Living in a Sukkah

When Cosmo was still fairly small I heard someone say that a Jews catechism is his calendar. My ears pricked up, because I was starting to think about ways to introduce the gospel to him. Sure I sang songs to him and we had a children's bible we read from, but I knew that I wanted to teach him the bigger picture in a way that he would understand.

The Jewish calendar of festivals is great for this. If you haven't tried it, I thoroughly recommend you do. It can seem a little heavy at first (particularly if you already celebrate Easter, Christmas, thanksgiving etc...),  so maybe try introducing one new festival a year and build up the traditions slowly. If you are going to do that, I recommend starting with the feast of tabernacles, or Sukkoth as it is sometimes known.

So many people jump in with passover because it sounds familiar to us as christians, and it should be. It's mirrored so perfectly in the Easter story, but this can be pretty heavy for small children. Sukkoth, on the other hand, is enjoyable for children of all ages.

We start buy building a tent or shelter (the Sukkah) which we are supposed to live in for 8 days. Now, I'm going to cheat a little (because I'm no longer bound by the law and I can!) so we built our 'sukkah' out of sheets in the spare bedroom. We tented pretty much the entire room and covered the floor with a mattress and pillows to make it cosy.

This temporary shelter is to remind us that we are only temporarily here. Jesus has returned to His Father's house to prepare a place for us. Our permanent residence is not here.

Next, we decorate the Sukkah. It's fun to put up bunting or any other autumnal decorations you have, kids can draw pictures etc... We incorporated pictures of some specific tree branches in ours. Traditionally the Jews would have processed with these four branches to collect water for the tabernacle.  Here is the symbolism:

Water - Jesus is our living water. It was on the seventh day of sukkoth that he announced this in John 7:37-38

Myrtle,  Willow, Palm and Citrus - one has no fragrance no fruit, one fragrance but no fruit, one fruit but no fragrance and one both fruit and fragrance. The Jews would say that the fruit represents knowledge of the Torah and the fragrance represents acting out the Torah.  If your kids are slightly older you can parallel these with the four types of soil found in one of the kingdom parables (Matt 13).

We made our tree branches scented by putting orange oil on the citrus branch and jasmine oil on the myrtle (I have no idea what myrtle smells like, and luckily neither does Cosmo!). Cosmo loves sniffing them all to double check that they have 'fragrance'.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="720" caption="Preparing our Sukkah for our first evening meal."][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="720" caption="Cosmo explaining the four branches over breakfast"][/caption]

Notebooking

I love the idea of notebooking. Building your own custom exercise books makes your children's work so much easier to look through and they look super cute! I love the idea of having their work all laid out neatly, and the best part is you can download notebook pages for different subjects, or create your own.

For example, your science pages might include spaces for their prediction, hypothesis, method and results. Your bible study pages might have spaces for memory verse, chapter, what you learnt and prayer notes.

Cindy Rushton produced the following blog about notebooking for history:

''Yes! Notebooking for History Studies! Notebooking for our History Timelines!

What great literature does to feed the mind, Notebooking does to deepen the studies, teach research skills, and record the real education that your children are receiving. Old path? Yep! But not a path that has been overgrown.

Notebooking goes as far back as eternity.

In Scripture, we find that the kings were trained and prepared for leadership by copying the law and keeping it in a book (isn’t that too cute??).

Want to know something even better? We find that EVEN God has a Book of Remembrance that He is keeping until that day that we join Him in heaven for that “Heavenly read aloud time” we will enjoy some day soon. Oh. Don’t worry! We will ENJOY this time. His Book of Remembrance does not contain a list of sins and transgressions that we have committed that He wants to be sure not to forget. Instead, it is filled to overflowing with precious quotes of praises that His servants speak to one another (My PERSONAL goal is for Him to have PLENTY to quote from my life!).

Up until about a hundred years ago, Notebooking was used in the education of every child. But, something called textbooks and “progressive” education eliminated them from the education of children today. With that elimination, we find the need for more and more artificial methods of education. Well, until we find this old path.

My friend, of all the ideas I could share with you as you homeschool your children, this one is certain to change the atmosphere of your home while equipping your children to learn more deeply now AND more voraciously for the rest of their lives.

Although I cannot begin to do justice explaining Notebooking in one simple article, I have to tell you a few perks (if you want more help in this area, take a look at my book Notebooking! YES! You Can Be A Binder Queen Too!). You have to know that this is a WONDERFUL way to teach more than just the historical facts that we want for our children to learn. There are LOTS of perks!

First of all, Notebooking encourages deeper research on topics of study. As my children have found a “place” to keep their special “finds” along the way, they have had more interest in hunting for more information on every topic they run across. They may think of this as a treasure hunt, but while they are having a blast finding great ideas, facts, and heirlooms, they are learning the skills of researching that will serve them all of their life. That is not all! While our children are building notebooks on topics as they study, they are also learning how to record what they are really learning. Besides relieving mom of the pressure of keeping records of every minute of their day, this teaches them the skill of record keeping and keeps a more accurate account of what is being done each and every day. Oh, and need I mention, Notebooking also teaches our children Language Arts skills and techniques the EASY WAY!

So, how do you use this old path as you teach History the easy way?

First, find great resources that can be used for building notebooks.

I am constantly on the lookout for great resources with neat Copywork. My children began using Copywork when they were very little and STILL use Copywork for building their notebooks in High School. There are many, many great resources. The very first thing we used was a large print edition of the Bible. It was easier for my young readers/writers to copy from. I also look for books with poems, quotes, narratives, songs, speeches, etc. As we travel, my children also look for special mementos to add to their notebooks. Anything from art prints to recipes to maps to pictures of the people and events from History are game for their notebooks. The key is in having a “place” to keep the information that contributes to each and every study. That place is our notebooks!

Second, encourage your children to USE those notebooks every day.

It is so easy to put projects on the shelf only to collect dust. It is also easy for us to let the children do work that we pile away in a box to put away later for them. Notebooking is NOT another thing for YOU TO DO! Well, unless you are going to keep a notebook for your own studies.

My dear friend, the greatest benefits come from our children doing the work for themselves. Sure, you may have gone to every local Scrapbooking crop in your city and state. But, this is not a contest for the most creative memory book. It is a discipline that we can pass on to our children so they can learn the skills of writing, researching, recording their own education, and collecting information in a logical and understandable way. Simply find some great resources for them to copy from…buy just ONE NOTEBOOK (3-ring binder) and sheet protectors (to keep their work stored nicely in each day)…and turn them loose! The fruit you gather along this old path is simply too good to miss!

Happy Homeschooling…the easy way''

If you do want some notebooking resources I thoroughly recommend the notebookingpages site. There are loads of free and very cheap notebooking templates you can download for you or your students.

I'm an affiliate, so if you do end up purchasing, please make sure you have clicked through from here so that I can get some commission :-)

Thanks. Happy notebooking!!

Children's Catechism

I used to think 'what's the point?' and considered children's catechism a form of brainwashing. More and more though, I'm realising that someone else is brainwashing our children. Even the small children's section in our library consistently puts forward the idea that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago and that we evolved from monkeys.

The fact is, that if I don't give my son a biblical account of creation, Cbeebies will ensure he gets a non-biblical one. How do I ensure that my son grows up with a basic idea of God the creator? Catechism.

Children learn through repetition, and I apply this to everything else (reading/flashcards/numbers), so why am I afraid to apply it to our faith? Because I know that judgemental atheists will slate me for it. So the question becomes 'do I care more about what they think of me than my sons relationship with his creator'? Even voicing the question makes me feel ridiculous for worrying about it. I know what I need to do.

That said I came across this website http://www.reformedreader.org/ccc/cc.htm which has a basic catechism for little ones. I think we will break down the lessons to be a little shorter (Cosmo is only 2 after all!) but I look forward to working through them with him. As he gets older, hopefully he will ask more questions and we will be able to explain more fully the theology and apologetics behind them. But we have to start somewhere, and a 2 year old really doesn't need advanced scientific explanations.

When he is a bit older I will probably introduce Kids 4 truth (http://clubs.kids4truth.com/) which I believe caters for 4 year olds through until 6th grade.

It's so hard as an adult to initially get your head around the fact that your teachers were not infallible, and that some of what they taught you might not be completely true. I hope that I can instil in my children the ability to question what is being taught to them by adults and the media, and come to their own conclusions regarding their beliefs. I hope this will include questioning me, but I want them to have heard both sides of the argument in a fair and balanced way, rather just having atheism and evolution drip fed with no alternatives offered.

Memorizing Scripture

2 Timothy 3:15 says
'...that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work'.

Obviously I want Cosmo to grow up adequate and equipped for every good work, but the truth is, I have never memorized scripture.
I grew up in a fairly traditional catholic church, and memorized tons of prayers and responses, some even in Latin, but no-one ever taught me the value of memorising scripture.

Psalm 12:6 says
'The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.'

How I wish someone had taken the time to explain to me the importance of these precious words!
I really want to try to memorise scripture, and encourage Cosmo to do so as well. At two, there are not many things memorised in his little head, but if he can learn to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, then I'm sure he can learn scripture too.
A brief search through the bible tells us that God definitely values the memorisation of scripture:

These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door-frames of your houses and on your gates.
Deuteronomy 6:6-9

Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the door-frames of your houses and on your gates, so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land that the LORD swore to give your forefathers, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.
Deuteronomy 11:18-21

Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.
Joshua 1:7-8

Let the word of Christ dwell in your richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.
Col 3:16

So, our curriculum will now involve us reciting and learning scripture, and singing songs to the Lord on a regular basis.
Hopefully it will educate me as much as Cosmo!