God's love!

This month in our newsletter I was able to share some parent feedback about how they see their child growing in God's love! I wasn't able to put all the quotes into the newsletter, but since each story was personal and a great testimony I thought would share all of them here on the blog.

Enjoy!

-Our son is a very affectionate child. That being said, many times his reactions isolated him and it is hard for him to relate with others. The topic of love has been a great welcome to him from the school. I believe he will learn to relate to others and build relationships with all people through love, which can be shown through actions and patience. The most incredible thing is to hear him speak of God's great love for us through his creation. Through the PK classes he has learned that we were all created with love for God and from that love we can love others.

-During the very short time that our son has been at ECA we have seen in him an interesting process of growing in love. We have seen significant changes in him regarding obeying, respecting others, and playing safely with with others. It has been a permanent process to discipline him at home, we know that this is just the beginning of a long-life process, and we have found that ECA has greatly contributed to this purpose. Probably the most important purpose God wants to see in our lives is to shape our character to grow in love.  Thus growing in love means many things for our son such as respecting others, helping others, being disciplined, sharing, supporting, having good manners, and so on. During this period, we have seen clear improvements in our son’s behavior, and the way he gives love to others. This is reflected all around him: we see that in his actions, his relationships, his creativity, his happiness. We are delighted with ECA’s approach to teach children how to grow in love. We consider that this is extremely important for the entire life of our son. As a family, we know that it is our responsibility to cultivate love in our child, with our everyday examples, with our life style, and encouraging our son to love others. Then we are pleased to know that ECA’s approach is an excellent complement to our efforts to discipline our son and to show him the only right way to grow in love: trust in the word of God.

-As parents we have seen how our daughter has grown to understand the love God has for us and she has begun to understand there is love our in our home because God loves us and we love Him. Our daughter has a love for ministry and values preaching, telling us that she wants to do what God has called her to, according to his purposes. We believe this is God's purpose in her life and it makes us so excited to think that the Lord will use her for things we can't even imagine. We are so proud of our daughter and have seen how ECA is a part of her process in realizing the work that God is doing through his creation and in the blessings that we receive.

((and the quotes from our newsletter in case you missed it))

-We are so happy to see our son growing in this area (of love) and understanding God's love for us. He is often telling us how great is God s love and that He made the sun and the moon and the stars. He is expressing gratitude for every little thing. We are so encouraged every time he says, "Thanks God for..... "

-Our son is growing in love all the time! Now he is more affectionate, is more gentle with his sister, and he knows that "obey" and "respect" are ways to love. He is more expressive now, with words hugs and kisses (including trickle wars) and says: te amo más lejos que la cabeza de Super Dios! (My love is bigger than the size of Super God's head!).

-We have seen our child grow in forgiveness and showing love. We noticed that he has a gentler spirit and can speak with clarity about lessons he is learning at school such as solving problems using love. We keep hearing him say "we always need to forgive everyone" and it makes us so happy to think that even at a young age he is building this type of foundation for the rest of his life.

-The other day my daughter was at church singing and dancing during worship. She was so involved and focused. Afterwards I asked her about it and she said "I love God so much and I want to worship Him with everything that I have to show Him I love Him."

-Our daughter has become more interested in the needs of others.
Spending times with boys is a challenge for us as a family because we see that she wants to imitate fighting and rudeness, but we see it as an opportunity that the Lord has given her to teach her as a woman she can love and work her friends. When she prays she gives thanks for her school, her classmates and for help to be obedient every day.

Off to a great start!

PK has had a great start! We have been enjoying our first unit studying creation. As we continue to work hard to clarify and perfect our curriculum, I am overwhelmed by how blessed I am to build in my students a strong foundation of the Bible. My students get hands-on learning experiences to know who God is and what he has done for us. 

We start every year by studying God's perfect creation. Then as we see how man feel away from God but God still loves us. We see His plan come into place through the arrival of the Savoir. As we discover the life of Jesus we can see how we are to live in a way that honors God. At the end of our year we see that Jesus radically change the world through His followers and their legacies.

Units:

Creation

Fall of Man (Adam and Eve, Noah)

Christmas

Jesus' Life

Easter

Early Church

Here are some highlights of our creation unit so far:

Creation week 1- Yellow day!

Creation day 2- water!

Creation day 3- Making a land collage!

Day 3- Making land and plants with playdough and pipe cleaners

Day 3- Land and plants!

Playing with moon dough

Antarctica 2015!

This Christmas break Ed and I had the amazing opportunity to visit our 6th continent- Antarctica! Due to a wonderful gift from a family member, amazing last minute cruise deals and Ed's awesome deal skills we embarked on a 20 day cruise from Santiago, Chile to Buenos Aires, Argentina with stops along the way in various small cities in Chile, Cape Horn, Southern Chile, Southern Argentina, Antarctica, Falkland Islands, and Uruguay.

I plan on sharing pieces of our trip in stages as I reflect, but will start with the icy continent.

We spent 3 days floating around the waters of Antarctica, viewing wildlife, taking lots of pictures of landscapes and enjoying the pleasant summer weather (hovering around zero degrees). We had some of the most amazing weather I could have imagined: sun for 2 days and low clouds for the third. This allowed us to want to spend times on the decks and get a wonderful view of the surroundings.

We saw so much wildlife: penguins, whales, penguins, scientists, penguins, seals, and more penguins. Did I mention penguins?

As part of our cruise we had 3 experts on board giving lectures and leading our sight seeing. They offered around 20 different lectures on topics such as: historic explorations, birds, the Antarctic treaty, living in Antarctica, and current research. Our experience was enhanced by their wonderful information and detailed commentaries as we floated along. We also stopped at one of the US stations (Palmer) and picked up 10 scientists and support staff who gave a talk and a Q&A session.

Here are ten facts I learned about Antarctica that I thought I would share with you!

1. Antarctica is not "owned" by any one country. There are 7 countries who claim territories, but that is not really counted. Antarctica is governed by the "Antarctic treaty" which was written in the 60s and any country that wants to do research or have any entrance to the continent must sign it. It governs environmental laws and the use of military.

2. Icebergs are fresh water pieces of ice broken off of glaciers.

3. The ice on Antarctica is over a mile thick. Scientists have been able to drill all to the way to the land underneath. They have even found fresh water (not frozen) under all the ice.

4. There are many rules to going to Antarctica that we had to follow: no eating or smoking on outside decks, the ship was not allow to use or carry heavy fuel, no loud noises, etc. This is to protect the natural environment and keep it as pristine as possible. We also were not able to leave the ship. The rules state that there must be less than 500 people on board (we were with about 1400) and only 100 can disembark at a time.

5. The Drake Passage (between southern South American and Antarctica) is considered one of the roughest seas in the world (we hit a great day and it was very calm).

6. There are only a few land dwelling animals native to Antarctica, the biggest being a beetle measuring 3mm in length.

7. While we were there it was just after summer solstice and it was light for 22 hours of the day.

8. Antarctic waters begin at 60 degrees South Latitude. We were as far south as 55 degrees.

9. The USA has 3 research stations. One is on the Antarctica Peninsula (where we were), one is closest to New Zealand and the third is at the geographical South Pole.

10. Antarctica is bigger than the continental United States. It is also home to the world's largest desert.

Well... there you have it! Now for some pictures!

We saw many whales jumping and blowing!

Around the Chilean research station were a ton of penguins.

The Chilean station... the brown is because of penguin poop :)

Creation- end of unit

It's the end of the first quarter and the end of the Pre-Kinder unit of creation. To celebrate we invited parents to join us. Each family chose a day of creation to dress up as, then we came together to share lunch and an afternoon. Here are some of the highlights:

Pre-kinder fun!

Pre-kinder has been loving learning about creation. Here are some of our fun activities the past few weeks!

This kiddo decided to be "super moon" and made his own costume :)

Learning about the sun, moon and stars!

Our mural keeps growing- this is after day 4!

Practicing our reading!

Painting bird-watching binoculars!

Painting is so much fun!!

Bird watching at it's cutest!

Our kiddos decided the jump rope was a great phone!

This kid spent a lot of time painting his binoculars.

Black and white day block building!

Creation week #2

Pre-kinder is up and running! We've had a great few weeks getting to know our new students and introducing them to their new school and jumping into our unit on creation.

This week we learned about day 2 of creation- when God created water. We looked at water above (weather) and water below (oceans and seas). Here are some of the fun activities of this week:

In art class we made kites for our windy weather!

Some of the girls realized if they tied the kites to the swings it would fly.

Finger painting with blue- our color the week- was a little messy :)

Friday was "blue day" and we played with blue balloons

Taking advantage of a moment of sun, we headed outside to draw with chalk

These boys made a big tic-tac-toe game

Drawing with chalk can be a little messy!

For other posts from our creation unit check out  Days 1 and 3 or days 5,6, and 7 from last year