With renewed vigour due to this, we've taken out new exercise books and I'm getting my children to write the Bible verse of special mention during that morning's devotion time.
Today's verse was John 15:5 because we were still talking about our bean plant! Now it's gone all stringy. It led on to talking about how growing plants too close together will cause them to fight for nutrients and sunlight, making them weak. And we also talked about Jesus being the vine and us the branches that are to bear fruit. I plucked one sprout to show them that if the "branch" doesn't abide in the "vine", the branch will die. What a precious lesson from God's word!
The writing exercise is somewhat differentiated because no. 1 (almost 8) will soon be writing in cursive (he's doing that in his Word Building PACE now), no. 2 (almost 6) is still learning to print her letters neatly and no. 3 (almost 4) hasn't formally started school yet. I wrote out the verse for him to trace over. So sorry, you see I have a spello in there? :OP Distracted by baby no. 4 on my lap.
I was so surprised that no. 3 got the strokes right! He had benefitted from sitting in and listening in the first part of this year while I was going through ACE's ABCs with Ace and Christi program with his older sister. THat's so good, right? 2 for the price of one. :O)
THat's something about learning in a mixed age, mixed ablilty classroom like a homeschool: the younger ones sit in and absorb more and earlier. It's really very natural.
This is no. 1's best handwriting. He finished first so I asked him to draw a vine. He went on (as usual) to draw the vine, the fruit, the roots, the "husbandman" (the farmer) whom he said represents God (from the same passage in John 15), and other vines that have withered. See also some bullocks ploughing in the distance? ;o)
It's wonderful for them to draw out what they've learned and then we can see what they've learned. 
No. 2 wanted to give up near the end because she knew she was going to be the last to finish. Had to encourage her along and she did a fine job in the end! She wanted me to draw some vines for her too so I did my usual stylised ones. 
From my home to yours,
Suwei
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