Capture Your 365

April 24, 2013

Another peek into my week of photos from the Capture Your 365 Challenge!

ISO 100, 50mm, f/5.0, 1/160 sec

Day 106 – A Pile: Here is a pile of books I have read through recently. I love to read and usually have a bookmark in at least three books at any given time. What book(s) are you reading?

ISO 100, 200mm, f/8.0, 1/250 sec

Day 107 – A Sign: I love to see this sign hanging in my backyard in my beach retreat area!

ISO 100, 50mm, f/4.0, 1/25 sec

Day 108 – Passed Down: My wedding dress, which I am planning on passing down to my daughter. It took me six months to hand stitch all of those pearls and sequins onto the lace bodice. One day we will cut my dress all apart and create a beautiful new dress for my daughter to wear on her wedding day.

ISO 100, 68mm, f/4.2, 1/3 sec

Day 109 – On The Edge: There are some days during our homeschooling week that we don’t even leave the house, which makes it quite interesting to try to find creative ways to capture these photo prompts. Then I thought, oh, the globe! So I captured a photo of our globe with Colombia just off center. One day, God willing, I would love to travel there and give Lina a great big hug!

What did you photograph this week?

Mystery of History – Take 2

April 19, 2013

I first discovered the Mystery of History curriculum years ago in a Timberdoodle catalog. I was looking for something that would include biblical history as well as world history. This curriculum has not disappointed us!

Matthew and Kelsey with their Joseph coat cookies – picture taken April 2006

A lesson about the Nile – picture taken May 2006

Volume One takes you from Creation to the Resurrection. My favorite parts of this curriculum are the lessons, the activities, and the timeline. When reading the lessons, you almost feel like Linda (the author) is right there with you, telling you the stories. Each lesson has at least three suggested activities, with age appropriate lessons for each age group, younger, middle, and older students. And the timeline!

We put together our timeline on a project board that could be folded up and stored away when we weren’t doing school work. This is the timeline the kids created from Mystery of History Volume One.

The kids made their own timeline figures based on the description provided in the book. For each week of lessons, Matthew would create two of the timeline figures and Kelsey would do one.

These figures are from Mystery of History Volume Two which spans from the Early Church through the Middle Ages.

Volume Three covers The Renaissance, Reformation, and Growth of Nations.

So our three completed timelines cover from creation until 1707!

I was really hoping that Volume Four would be completed before Matthew finished school, but Volume Four is still in progress of being completed. Looks like Kelsey and I will be working on that timeline together!

One of the really nice things about this curriculum is that even though we have gone through all three volumes in the past, Kelsey and I are starting to go through them again. This year we are working our way through Volume One and have been able to do some things we didn’t do the first time through. Like go to the Rosicrucian Museum!

We plan on using Volume Two next year which makes one less thing for me to have to purchase for school for next year. Yay! The catalogs have already started arriving so I will be making decisions on some other subjects soon.

What is your favorite history curriculum?

Capture Your 365

April 17, 2013

Are you taking a photo a day with the Capture Your 365 challenge? Here are my three photos from the last week of prompts:

ISO 100, 55mm, f/6.3, 1/10 sec

Day 100 – 100: 100 days of photo prompts! Now I know I haven’t taken photos for all one hundred of the photo prompts that have been sent out. But I can still celebrate, right? I was trying to figure out a way to be a little creative with this prompt. Then I thought, chocolate chips! And yes, after I took this picture, I did eat all the chocolate chips…yum!

ISO 100, 50mm, f/4.0, 1/640 sec

Day 101 – Overgrown: My poor garden area! Maybe once this wind dies down, I will take some time out there to get rid of these weeds and actually plant some summer vegetables. Home grown tomatoes taste so much better than store bought!

ISO 100, 50mm, f/3.5, 1/1600 sec

Day 102 – A Touch of Yellow: Yellow is such a happy spring color. The wind we have had sure is giving all my flowers a beating. But this one has endured so far.

What did you photograph this past week?

Not sure what to photograph each day? Join up with the Capture Your 365 Challenge!

Guest post: Compassion Sunday

April 15, 2013

Hello, it’s me again, Kelsey. So my mom asked me to do a post on Compassion Sunday. I hope I do a good job telling you all about it.

When my mom asked me to do Compassion Sunday, honestly, I freaked out. I have never liked public speaking because I have to talk to tons of people staring at you. And that is just not my thing. But my mom really wanted me to do it so I did a little research to help me prepare and get ready.

I was going to write out my own speech but I decided to do the speech in the Compassion Sunday packet. It took a little while to get a date set but we finally set one. Me and my mom went on to the Compassion website and ordered our packet.

When it came I was pretty excited! I pulled everything out and looked at it. I also looked at all the children. When we get child packets,, I love looking through all of them and reading about where they live, what they like to do for fun, how many children are in the family and all the fun stuff.

A few days later my mom told me that there were some videos that Amy Coddington had made to show you how to prepare before, during, and after. The videos helped me a lot.

As the day was drawing near, I was getting nervous. I kept thinking that I was going to blow it and it was going to be terrible. But I remembered that God says to not worry and to trust in Him. So I prayed and prayed and prayed that I would help these children get sponsors and I wouldn’t get so nervous.

On the day of, my mom and I set up a table in the lobby with the child packets and pens. After that we went to Sunday School and my sub teacher told me I was going to do great and to not worry about it because most people get nervous and it was totally normal.

I had been given a list of when things were going to happen during the service so I knew when to come up to the front of the church. When it was my turn I was shaking so much. I said a quick little prayer and started. Looking at all those people made me nervous. My mouth went dry while I was speaking but once I started getting into it, I was able to talk without freaking out. It went smoothly after that and I was proud of myself. After I went to sit back down I was still shaking a lot, but I had finished and I did it. I thanked God for helping me get through it.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/62272657 w=500&h=281]

Compassion Sunday Presentation from Yvonne Reynolds on Vimeo.

So, after the service my mom, my brother and I went into the lobby and stayed at the table. That day we had three children sponsored. We were so happy! Our pastor let us keep the table up for another week and the next week we had one more child sponsored. So, total we had four children sponsored! Even though it was just four children, four of those lives were changed that day.