Prepare and Pray Lesson 8: The Rainy Season

In Chapter 8, the Robinson's are preparing for the rainy season by gathering and storing provisions such as manioc potatoes, coconuts, sweet acorns, sugar-canes, sowing the corn and housing the animals. They then retreated to the tight space of the hollowed out tree trunk to wait out the rains. We talked about what it must have been like to live in such close quarters and practiced playing "small" and talking with our hands using signals. We read that log cabins for large pioneer families were rarely over 350 square feet!

We compared that to how we live now, examined our lifestyle and asked ourselves some good questions:

Could we obey God, as Abraham did, packing it all up and walking away from city-comforts, or do we have too much stuff? We would be radical homesteaders if we could! And yes, we have too much stuff - still. We have downsized three times over the last 2 1/2 years and realized that a smaller home = less stuff. We almost doubled our square footage since our last move and more space = more stuff. Most of it is given to us and when you have the room, it is hard to say no!

Could we make it as a family in any "wilderness" God has for our future or would a lack of character or contentment reduce us to self-centered traitors to the Gospel? We talked about the fact that "It is not what you have that proves your character. It is what you are when you have nothing."
We prepared for a rainy day by learning how to make a homemade poncho and backpack cover out of a shower curtain and plastic garbage bag.

We learned some new vocabulary words: cicatrize, expedient, colonial, gourmand, ventured, obviate, horticulture, flax, panniers, onager, plunder, card (carding), pitiable and ret.

We talked about grafting, where it originated and why. We read the verses in the Bible that contain the words graft/grafted in them. We talked about how we are spiritual seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and therefore are grafted in to the common wealth of Israel. If you believe in the God of Abraham, then chances are "ewe" are one of his sheep! When we understand that we are His covenant people, we can understand why we are to follow after His teachings and precepts found in the Torah (Law of Moses).
We read about using goats for milk and packing small children and loads.

Mr. Robinson discovers New Zealand flax and brings it to Mrs. Robinson who thinks it a "delightful discovery" and makes plans to have it rested, carded, spun and woven for use in sewing clothes. So we researched how that is done and did some projects using wool and felt.

First we set about to acquiring our own drop spindles. Using some old wooden knobs, a drill and some dowels, here is what we came up with with my mother-in-law's help:

We read about how to use the drop spindle and watched how-to videos on You Tube. Here is one that we thought was good and also where we got the idea for the homemade drop spindles. We will try them out as soon as we get some wool!

The boys learned how to do needle felting with some friends. They took a felting needle and pushed the wool through the piece of felt to make a design.


Here are their designs that they felted onto some brown felt that they will make into a bag.
 
We also did some knitting projects. Here Nathan is knitting a handle for his bag that he will hand felt when finished. Jordan is knitting a scarf on the loom. Dylan is knitting what we think may end up being a sock on the round loom. He is using 100% wool and I think once it is felted, it may be the perfect size for a slipper sock.

 
Mr. Robinson and the boys discovered the depth of the hollowness of the tree they shared with a hive of honey bees, in which they carved a set of stairs leading to the treehouse on top after they saved the bees in a hive, extracted the honey and saved the wax. So we investigated bee-keeping as a source of food and small business and learned all about the honey bee! We have many local bee keepers and made plans to visit them in season. Meanwhile, we decided to do a lapbook to learn more about honey bees! The links I used are at the bottom of this post.

Here Dylan and Nathan are working on the Honey Files worksheets that we put in a pocket in our lapbook:

 

 We worked on the lapbook together and even did some Honey Math. Here is the finished lapbook!
We had so much fun working on it! (If you click on the picture you will be able to read what some of the mini books say). And I love this storage idea idea, from Our Homeschool Creations, to duct tape the side, hole punch it and put it right in our notebook! I think seeing this got me excited about lapbooking again.

We also talked about what to do if stung by a honeybee, wasp, hornet or yellow jacket and we learned how to treat anaphylactic shock - pray fervently!

Delightful Links:

This curriculum alone covers Bible, lifeskills, science, health, language arts, history/geography/social studies and art . We usually work on it 1-2 days a week as a supplement to our other studies during the school year.

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