Of Words and Roots

I just love being in the garden and it seemed extra special today. I felt close to God, close to my “roots”. Grabbing handfuls of soil and sifting it over newly planted seeds reminded me of God’s hand taking a handful of soil and making......me!

Let's ever remember the origin of man as stated in God's Word:

 “In the sweat of the face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken:  for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
I also love studying root words and the Word!

This year we learned the root words HUM and HUMAN while studying the excellent book "English from the Roots Up". We really enjoy and highly recommend this book.

We found it interesting to consider all of the following words which include these roots:

Humus:  earth; ground

Humanities:  Studies and interests of a cultural type which enrich the spirit of mankind

Exhume:  Take out of the ground; unearth; disinter

Humble:  Lowly; unpretentious; as, an humble person, meek

Humic;  Derived from the soil; as, Humic acid

Humicubation:  Act of lying on the ground in penitence; self abasement

Humility:  The quality of lowliness; meekness

Humiliate:  To humble; to shame; to abase

Humiliation:  Feeling of shame; degradation

Human:  Belonging or relating to man

Humanify:  Make into a man

Humane:  Marked by sympathy compassion for other human beings and animals

Humanize:  Make human; render humane

Inhuman:  Lacking the qualities of a humane being

Humanity:  The quality of being human

"Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord and He will lift you up"

 I find the words and their roots quite interesting! Maybe I'm a "verbophil"! (Yes, I like playing with words too!)

 Verbum (word) + philo (love) = verbophil J

I think it is a good thing to love words! After all...
"The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. 
John 1:14

Out of the mouth of (sisters) babes :)

Joseph is a wiz at Math but he doesn't at all relish wielding a pencil and transcribing his knowledge onto paper. Not at all! Well, today while doing so he got a bit discouraged and posed the question: "Who made up Math, anyway?" Ruth quickly replied with this: "All things were made by Him; and without him was not any thing made that was made" which she quoted from our recently memory work in John 1. Yeah!
That did the trick, Joe swallowed hard and got back to work.

And Jesus said unto them, Yeah; have you never read, Out of the mouth of babes and infants you have perfected praise? Mathew 21:16


Isaiah 55:11
So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth:  it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.



I

God's Lesson Plans

It is always my goal and desire to be reading a chapter book out loud to my children.  So the other day, since I have been slacking in this area, I picked up "The Twenty-one Balloons" which is a novel by William Pene du Bois, published in 1947 and awarded the Newberry Medal for excellence in American children's literature 1948. The story is about a retired schoolteacher whose ill-fated balloon trip leads him to discover an island full of great wealthy and fantastic inventions. The events and ideas are based both on scientific fact and imagination. In the introduction he claims that the story is half truth and half fiction, which  is intriguing for the children. I can really see the wheels turning in the children's minds as I read.

There was no particular reason for me choosing this particular book which has been on our library shelf for years.  I've never read it or seen anyone else read it or heard anything about it, good or bad. The children keep asking for "one more chapter" which is a good sign. Jeff overheard us reading it; turns out he read it and loved it when he was a boy too!

I am writing this to give Glory to God who does all things well, including teaching children through an earthen vessel (cracked-pot) like me! I could never plan lessons the way He does!

About three days into our story, we were all sitting at the breakfast table and James announced that he could see a HOT AIR BALLOON in the sky! We do see those beautiful balloons here from time to time but only in the spring (as far as I can recall) and this is February! It was cold and windy that day...not a hot- air- balloon -sighting type of day AT ALL! We had fun viewing it through our binoculars and  spotting scope. Later Peter drew this picture:

Peter's Hot Air Balloon

I often think of the story of the loaves and the two small fish that the little boy brought to Jesus. It was all he had but he trusted the Lord to use it as needed.  And God multiplied that food until there were leftovers! That's what we home-schooling mothers need to do. Bring what we have to the Lord and trust Him to add whatever else is needed. It seemed God was showing me that HE is aware, interested and involved in even the small details of our little home-school. I thank Him and praise Him for that!

The following poem has always encouraged me to read to my children:

The Reading Mother
by Strickland Gillian

I had a mother who read to me
Sagas of pirates who scoured the sea.
Cutlasses clenched in their yellow teeth;
"Blackbirds" stowed in the hold beneath.
I had a Mother who read me lays
Of ancient and gallant and golden days'
Stories of Marmion and Ivanhoe,
Which every boy has a right to know.
I had a Mother who read me tales
Of Gelert the hound of the hills of Wales,
True to his trust till his tragic death,
Faithfulness lent with his final breath.
I had a Mother who read me the things,
That wholesome life to the boy heart brings-
Stories that stir with an upward touch.
Oh, that each mother of boys were such!
You may have tangible wealth untold;
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be--
I had a Mother who read to me.

Proverbs 3: 5, 6
Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

The Way We Learn

Last week we traveled to Half Moon Bay to visit Grandma Joan for a few days. Yippee thought I, we'll be near San Francisco and at the beach....so many learning opportunities...Alcatraz, museums, the Exporatorium; no end to my list of things we could do. But things didn't go exactly as I had hoped. Jeff wasn't as "into" the my great ideas as I was. It rained some and it was New Years and we really just wanted to be with the Grandparents as that's the most important thing and it had been too long since we had visited.

I needed to something that has taken me a L O N G time to learn to do...relax and let my ideas go. So I did

Grace, Ruthie, Sarah and Mary enjoying the surf.



We all went to the beach and of course it was beautiful and a great learning experience all on it's own (without lessons, books or even tide pools). We played tennis, mini-golf, pool and walked the nature trail. We cooked and cleaned and ate and talked with the Grands. We watched "The Yearling" for the umpteenth time (after all it's still sort of new to Pete and Joe) it's a family tradition.

A lovely dinner with Grandma Joan.


Walking with Dad.




Games in the courtyard.

On the last day of our visit Grandma and Grandpa treated us to outdoor dining at a seafood restaurant for lunch. We had clam chowder, crab cocktail...the works! It was delicious! After that we walked along a pier where all sorts of small ocean going vessels were docked. A man pointed the way to a boat named "Promise" which had just returned from crabbing. So we ventured down to the boat and bought five live crabs! Sarah declared that she wants to be a crab fisher woman someday.


Pete and Joe with dinner guests


You can guess what we studied next day when we got home...crabs. First we looked up cooking crabs on the internet. Then of course, we cooked them. After that we read all about crabs, sketched them in our Nature Journals and noted the classification. Later that evening we cracked, picked and finally enjoyed eating our crabs just dipped in melted butter.







These are Mary, Peter and Joe's nature journals. You can click on them to view larger.


God wanted to bless us and He did. We enjoyed being with Jeff's folks so much. The children were sweet and behaved quite well. The learning thing happened naturally by taking time, explaining things and answering questions. Even the lesson "plan" that I couldn't quite pull off came together beautifully when I let God lead. I'm so glad I gave up because His ways are always above our ways and His thoughts are higher than ours.


Science class around the dining room table


Extra thoughts of note:
1) The day after our crab boat visit the morning news reported that a local crab boat capsized in Half Moon Bay...that really got the children's attention. Thankfully the crew was rescued.
2) I thought of asking Jeff if we might buy some fresh seafood to take home but thought better of it so he got the full blessing of his generosity.
3) I really wanted to suggest getting some clam chowder at the pier but didn't. I'm always telling the children that a treat isn't a treat...if you ask for it.
4) I came home rested since we didn't have to "be anywhere" or "do anything" ☻

God is good and GREATLY to be praised! I think we'll look up some ocean passages and use them for copy work tomorrow. Oh, and certainly we'll write thank you letters to our generous grandparents with our very best penmanship and grammar.