He's back!

Last month I perfected spelling words like "medieval" and "renaissance," and this upcoming month promises better spelling with words like "pharaoh" and "sarcophagus." Translation: we're leaving "Excalibur" and moving on to a new series "Exodus." I'm not sure why we keep getting drawn to series titles that being with "Ex-" this time of year. We had "Xtreme" and "Exodus" two years ago, so I guess we're building up a year's worth of curriculum that starts with an "Ex."

Today was a huge work day, where unfortunately Madison was up with us pretty late. She stayed until around 10:30 or so, and of course Daddy left a lot later than that.

Looking back, today was a rhyming sort of day. Though nothing in particular rhymes with Exodus, we have discovered that with Madison, the concept of rhymes has finally sunk in. It has been pretty funny as of late. Madison is finding rhymes for any word at all, pretty frequently too. This is interesting, because to begin with she wasn't really getting the concept at all. But now, she's suddenly pointing out to us, "Hey, that's a rhyme!" And pointing it out a lot! It's been fun, of course, and as parents we're happy to see her learning in this direction. We looked at the kindergarten first quarter rubric (which is such a fun word to say), and were pleased to see that Madison has mastered quite a few of these concepts listed. She's already met many of the goals for the first quarter. Other goals, like getting to twenty, she's close to getting. To help out, we've printed out worksheets that she happily takes with her and completes. She's been really enjoying doing her homework lately, which is pretty thrilling for us, because I don't know about you, but I did not like homework!

Tomorrow is Palm Sunday, of course. That's the big day we've been preparing for. It's a very special time of year, and we are so happy to see something with Madison. She has a children's Bible, one that she's had for some time actually. But she's suddenly taken a very huge interest in this of late. She actually has it with her at night as she sleeps. She takes it with her, just like she takes with her some of her stuffed animals. She opens it up and asks Daddy to read, which of course he's happy to do. We've been reading the stories of Jesus this week, as it is a special time of year, but not because Daddy picked the stories out. Madison has asked to have us read to her these stories. Tonight as Daddy got home late, he saw her Bible was open, an illustration of three crosses left there for all to see. It was a moving moment. We're so happy to see her into the Bible so much, so early. Of course, Daddy will be reading that to her a lot over the next few weeks. With our current series, we'll no doubt be reading about Exodus - and learning about that nasty pharaoh (which rhymes with barrow, arrow, narrow, taro, marrow, sparrow, and possibly sombrero).

Speaking of "Exodus," Daddy was reading from a library book the story, and we came upon the plague of hail. I was explaining the concept of hail to Madison, but she didn't remember the one time she saw it before. I was wishing she did remember, because that would make it easy to know what hail actually was. SO, a couple days later, guess what happens outside? It just so happens we were walking nearby a window at church and sure enough, there was hail outside. Lots of it! It wasn't in plague proportions, but there was quite a bit of it. Daddy ran outside, got pelted, and brought a few in for her to examine. "Brrrr!" she said, "It's cold!" It was so great that I had a teachable moment there, on multiple levels. It was seriously only two days ago that I was wishing for her to see hail, and then she saw it. And then... she saw this:

Yep, a rainbow right there at the church. Neat stuff! Daddy snapped a picture of the rainbow as soon as he could - it's always fun to show "what's at the end of the rainbow." In this case, it was where we pretty much spent the day: at church.

Tomorrow should be really good day. Although that's not what the Egyptians thought...

"So at this time tomorrow I will send the worst hailstorm ever to fall on Egypt in its entire history." Exodus 9:18 NIrV