$5 each
James to the Rescue - early reader chapter book
Mothmans Curse
A Whole New BallGame.. autistic child as main character
Dinosaur Boy Saves Mars - interesting story

$5 each
Light romance with a touch romance.  Easy reading book, standard christian romance.

Amish Fiction.    $5 each.

Interesting mix of books.   $5 each.  All have a mystery component.

$5 each.   Mystery with a touch of romance.   Good reads.

REVIEW HERE.   Story of Jonah and the Whale.   Excellent condition.   Read once or twice for review purposes.   Told from point of view of the whale.     $5.

Bible activity books, the one red one for older students has some pages used, but most of it is NOT used.      $1 each  

Reader on the 10 commandments.   I do not know if the book is supposed to have a cover, it came to me like this.   It's overall in good condition.  50 Cents.

You can find the review here.   Book is in great shape.  $5.

150 easy devotions for children.      Simple scripture, easy text good for 5-8 years approx.    Good shape.   $5.

Easy beginning readers bible.  Is actually A TRUE beginners bible with simpler language for children to read themselves.    $2.

Family Guide to the Christian faith: God, the bible and the Trinity.   In good shape.   $2.

Two missionary books.  Thoroughly enjoyed these books.   $1 each.  in fair condition.

Are you part of a Presbyterian church?    Is the Westminister Confession part of your history?   Here's a nice way to teach your children the shorter catechism.

My son's favourite bible when he was young.   Can you tell?   It got bumped around a fair bit.  Best offer takes it homes with them.  :)   Pages are all fully functional just the hardcover binding is a little battered.

Good to preschool children.   As far as I recall no pages done    $1 each.

Kindergarten books.   No pages done.  Journeys in Math K is a good resource book.   $1 each.

In good shape.  no pages done.   $2

We verbally made our way through this book.   $2.

Practice your addition in this book.   $1.

Learn to tell the time.       $3 for the set.  Clock is double sided.  

50 cents each or make an offer.  happy enough to just give them away to as part of an order.   :)

We talked our way through this book.   Unmarked, in like new condition.   $3.

Has not been used.   $2.

Simple easy games for young children to help with reading.   Like New.  $2.

Have never been used.   Came as part of a larger set.  of which part of lent out and never returned.   Good for young children.

Good resource for learning word Families.   $2.

$5 for the lot.   Grade 2 spelling.

We copied this book so didn't have to write on pages or tear them out.   Like New.  $4.

$2 each.   Haven't been used.

We simply didn't get to this book.   $3.  Like New.

Extras of photocopied sheets included.   $2.

In Like New Condition.   $2.

50 cents each.   Either an older book or has been slightly used. 

Fridays are a day to celebrate being Canadian, to follow our hearts when it comes to our schooling, so sometimes our math gets done and sometimes... we explore the world.   As I type this my son is having fun with a fan, string and paper.     Observing air movement while having fun.   It's all good.    He just asked "MOM!   Can this be our science today???"       I told him I would think about it.  :) 

Before he did that though we spent time reading books (currently going through four books) and continuing our Nova Scotia studies.

We also like to do art on Fridays, and if we can find a way to combine the two so much the better.   I originally wanted to do an abstract art but my lad simply couldn't wrap his head around that.  So we switched to pastels.

I gave my son a choice he could draw free hand or use a colouring sheet... He chose the colouring sheet.   He did a good job eh?    Took us a bit of time to determine the angle it was taken from... pretty sure from the water side.   He had fun experimenting with the pastels.   It was our first go with them.

I chose to work on a free hand style of Peggy's Cove. 
Query.. How DOES on draw white so you can see it against a white background????   I chose to outline with black so it was visible but that's not really true to life.   It came out kinda looking like a silo but I have no clue about how to draw edges with white and doing black lines just seemed wrong... So it is what it is eh?   :)

As we coloured and talked we watched a variety of videos.   From learning about the Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, to how to shuck a scallop... did you know that parts of a scallop are poisonous???   This video was so interesting for my lad he actually STOPPED talking to watch it...and almost forgot to do his art as well.    He thought it funny that Canada's oldest recognized flag became Canada's youngest flag.  :)

Have you ever come across an unexpected treasure?
Something that is better than you think it might be?  Or comes in a boring package?

Unassuming little book eh?
Brown cover.   No fly cover.
Nothing really to draw your eye to it.
It has definitely seen better days.
I have to admit... I almost tossed it in the for sale bin... but something, God perhaps, caused me to say.. why don't we read it first?

Written by Joyce Reason, To be A Pilgrim is the story of the Life of John Bunyan.   My son and I have read this over the past couple of weeks.  13 Chapters, reading one chapter every school day.     It was a neat little book.   Published in 1961,

My son and I found it interesting how thick the paper was.   We would often have to double-check that we weren't turning more than one page because that's how it felt. 

Reading this book gave us a good feel for how life was at the time.
How tough it was to be one of the poor people, and not part of the elite.
Before reading this book I knew that Bunyan spent a good deal of time in prison, I wasn't aware that a good portion of it was without justification... judges who didn't like Bunyan refusing to give him a writ of release.

Such an abuse of power.
But God used it to bring about good things.   Without his time of despair in prison, would Bunyan have had time to think about the story of the Pilgrim's Progress?   He would have been so busy pastoring his people.   His time in solitude and confinement gave him time to experience despondency and realize more deeply his need for the Lord.

When we finished reading this book my lad said "I liked the book mom".   I know that he was involved in it as he often asked questions "Why could they do that mom?   Why didn't they make a rule that you had to let people out of jail when their time was up?   Why could rich people do things like that?   MOM!   They destroyed his stuff just because he wanted to go to a different church.. that's not fair!!!"    He was not happy with how the rule of the land was in those days.  

What a great way to teach history and how much has changed, while yet so much stays the same eh?

So one unassuming book... became a book we are glad we read.  :)

Averroes is the Latinized name for Ibn Rushd, an Arabic philosopher who followed the Aristolean view on Philosophy.   He believed that philosophy and religion are not incompatible.

Averroes believed that "only the educated elite are capable of thinking philosophically and everyone else would be obligated to accept the teaching of the Qur'an literally".  (page 82, philosophy book) He said this while believing that the Qur'an was not accurate, but had a poetic closeness which was good enough for the masses...ergo they should believe it as is, but the educated should use philosophy to explain and understand it.

He wrote several books among them the Decisive Treatise on the Agreement Between Religious Law and Philosophy, Examination of the Methods of Proof Concerning the Doctrines of Religion, and The Incoherence of the Incoherence.    His position in life was that of chief judge who worked under the Almohads, one of the strictest Islamic regimes in the middle ages.    They were slowly becoming less rigid, but not at the speed that Averroes was learning/teaching.

Averroes had no issues dismissing or changing some Muslim tenet beliefs if it didn't fit his philosophy though.  For instance, the Muslim belief in the resurrection of the dead, he says we must believe in personal immortality but we don't really have souls it's just our shared intellect that survives.  And our bodies die.. no one really survives forever.

He lived in a time when most Muslims believed that philosophy was not a legitimate form of study.  He ended up exiled (with his books banned) from his homeland for two years because popular opinion was against him.

Sources:
philosophy book
IEP.
Britannica. 
Humanities.

An heir must be found!   MUST BE!!!     Who wants another resort when you can have a ghost-infested historic house to investigate?   Fish and his friends set to work to solve the mystery.

Book Synopsis:
Whooping Hollow bully, Bryce Billings, dares Fish Finelli and his friends to enter the one-legged whaler's long-abandoned haunted house on the night of a full moon. As they prepare for entry, they discover that if an heir to the house doesn't come forward by the end of the week, Bryce's dad will tear it down to build a resort. Determined not to let this historic (if ghost-infested!) house be destroyed, Fish and his friends decode a secret message, explore a hidden tunnel, and tail a newcomer to town to determine if there really is an heir. They're racing against the clock, but will they be fast enough to ensure Bryce and his dad don't get their way?

My Son's Thoughts:
"Mom this was a good book.  I liked it.   Bryce isn't very nice.   Fish and his friends figured out the mystery.   It was kinda tricky but they did it.    Other children should read this book too."   When I asked him what he thought about the characters "they are real boys like me mom, and they figure things out".

My Thoughts:
My son eagerly awaited the arrival of the next Fish Finelli book.   He has so enjoyed this series.   While he didn't come racing down the stairs to tell me the next development in this book, he did enjoy reading it.   E.S.Farber's stories contain well developed characters and good plot lines.  Even though my son dislikes Bryce, this story contains some hope for the future with Bryce (he's not nice, but he has potential).  I have to admit to being curious to see if in the next book (if there is one) if Bryce becomes friends with Fish and his gang.  :)  

Product Details:
Received: Hardcover Book
Title: Fish Finelli: Ghosts Don't Wear Glasses
Author: E.S. Farber
Illustrator: Jessica Warrick
Pages: 170
Intended Audience: 7-9 year olds
Series: Fish Finelli, this is book three.
Reviewed for: Raincoast Books

Every week my son and I play a math game.     We're adding some fun to our math and solidifying skills that sometimes my lad seems shaky on even though he knows them.   So have fun and practice them I thought.

The game we played this week was a greater than/less than game. 

I read about it being played a couple of different ways and I'll get to those later, but this is how we played.  

Two pieces of scrap paper.. if playing a lot you could easily make up a wipe off board but for a quick game, scrap paper, a pencil and different dice are all that is needed.

We played with two dice each.

Set up the game as follows

___ ___ ___ >  ___ ___ ___ > ___ ___ ___

___ ___ ___ < ___ ___ ___ < ___ ___ ___

Nine spaces to fill in each line.
Two die each, the total must be used up.  You have a choice... add them and use the total OR use each number separately, do not use any number higher than 9.

Fill in the blanks.

You can add an optional challenge of who can make the highest number of the greater than and who can make the lowest number in the lesser thans.

You can help with the memory if desired by adding an error to show the biggest to smallest direction (we did this for the first round just to get our brains on the right path).   We played several rounds, some competitively and others not so much.

There are a variety of ways to play.
1. one die each
2. no number used twice in the same number set
3. see who gets the better number in each of the nine sections
4. whatever other twist you want to add in... :)   it's all good.

It was a great way to do quick mental math as it's a fast moving game so you don't want to waste your time either.      It's great for a variety of ages, you can make it harder or easier depending on the participants.. I plan to play it another day with two and three digits numbers where multiplication is the rule rather than addition.  :)    Would be fun to add the twist of .. you can add OR subtract.  :)   Wouldn't that be a fun twist?

My son had a variety of helpers who kept interrupting the game and as soon as it was over crowded around to offer congratulations and to try play the game for themselves.   They had quite the conversation about it.  :)

Learning greater than and less than.   With KHAN academy.   Worksheets.

My son and are are going through the Children's Catechism, from the Westminister Shorter Catechism.   We are now into week three.   These are the questions we have covered so far from days 1 and 2.   I'll do a different post up for day three which we are starting tomorrow.

From The Westminister Shorter Catechism.
Catechism for Children

Q1. Who Made you?
A. God.

Q2. What else did God make?
A. All things.

Q3. Why did God make you and all things?
A. For his own glory.

The book we are using is "From the Lips of Little Ones".  This book was written by a pastor friend Jeff Kingswood.

Each week there is the doctrine to learn and five scripture readings.  We divide these up over two or three days, taking turns reading and then talking about how the scripture passage is highlighted in the doctrine learned.   These are not the doctrines of the Reformed Church, but rather the Presbyterian, but both denominations are very similar in their standards and this book was given to me, so I use what I have at hand.  :)   I do hope when my lad is a teenager that I can find a good book using the Heidelberg Catechism... and look at the deeper, longer answers and talk about them

It's a great time to stop and think about God and what some of the basic tenets of our faith are.   My son NEEDS to know these things so that he has a firm foundation on which to stand.    This book is an excellent aid to help him start to think more deeply about such things.

One highlight for me this past week was this.
My lad and I were talking about how the sky can help you see how big God is.   Our conversation was based on this passage:
Ps. 19:1-4:
The heavens declare the glory of God,
    and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
2 Day to day pours out speech,
    and night to night reveals knowledge.
3 There is no speech, nor are there words,
    whose voice is not heard.
4 Their voice goes out through all the earth,
    and their words to the end of the world.
And he surprised me.. "But Mom, does it matter how big God is?   He can be really really small and still be God.  He says stuff and it happens.  You don't have to be big to do that."   
It surprised me.
I hadn't thought of that before.
Does it matter how big God is?

I did take the time to explain some of the imagery in the bible like how God holds his people in the palm of his hand, how the earth is his footstool.... so that helped him understand just how BIG God is.   But none-the-less his comment sticks with me.

T'is a good thing to discuss the ways of the Lord is it not?