A Net in Time

Curriculum and book reviews, faith, homeschooling and more!

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Hymn Study: Thou Didst Leave Thy Throne

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This hymn fit perfectly the sermon we had this past Sunday.   Speaking to how Christ left heaven to come to earth as a regular person, except he wasn’t.   He was the one the John the Baptist pointed the way to, the one to whom we are called to come to in repentance.  

Written by Emily Elliot with music by Timothy R. Matthews.   This hymn was first sung at St. Mark’s Church, in Brighton England where Elliot’s Father was rector.

In 1870, it was published in the Church Missionary Juvenile Instructor, which Elliott edited. (source)

This was a hymn written to help children understand advent and the Nativity.  (source)

Lyrics

Thou didst leave Thy throne and Thy kingly crown,
When Thou camest to earth for me;
But in Bethlehem’s home was there found no room
For Thy holy nativity.
Refrain
O come to my heart, Lord Jesus,
There is room in my heart for Thee.
Heaven’s arches rang when the angels sang,
Proclaiming Thy royal degree;
But of lowly birth didst Thou come to earth,
And in great humility.
Refrain
The foxes found rest, and the birds their nest
In the shade of the forest tree;
But Thy couch was the sod, O Thou Son of God,
In the deserts of Galilee.
Refrain
Thou camest, O Lord, with the living Word,
That should set Thy people free;
But with mocking scorn and with crown of thorn,
They bore Thee to Calvary.
Refrain
When the heavens shall ring, and the angels sing,
At Thy coming to victory,
Let Thy voice call me home,
Saying Yet there is room,
There is room at My side for thee.
Final refrain
My heart shall rejoice, Lord Jesus,
When Thou comest and callest for me.

Review: Shark Week

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I have to tell you about this wonderful resource I was sent by Raincoast Books.  It’s called Shark Week by Martha Brockenbrough.   This book is named after the Discovery Channels very popular Shark Week.

I have thoroughly enjoyed this book, it is so full of interesting facts.
Did you know that there is a shark almost as long as a school bus?
Or conversely a shark only about 10 inches long?   I know amazing isn’t it, the differences?!?!
How about this fact… not all sharks breathe the same way and some can switch how they breathe?
Or another that lives in volcanoes?
And this interesting fact… some sharks can have babies WITHOUT mating!!!

I know.. it’s fascinating isn’t it!?!?!!   🙂

Full colour images.

 Sufficient text to give good information without being too succinct. In-depth information without information overload…just enough to make a person want to look deeper.   Learning about sharks that live in a volcano led me to look for more information.


 Interesting facts, with a good break in the text, pictures fitting with what the text is talking about.

 Facts to amaze and astound, like comparing the great white to the kodiak bear.

Shark Week runs around 150 pages, teaches more about sharks than you might believe possible, I was SO fascinated, and I think you will be too.  Imagine..shark week.. in your own hands to enjoy for much longer than a week.

From learning about the prehistoic Whorl Shark, to how sharks hunt, breathe, reproduce and where they live.   Learning how much they are the same to each other, and yet how different they are as well.

This book is for every shark fanatic who
wants to get even more up close and personal.   Now you really can live every week like it’s shark week.

 Feiwel ; Friends
Author: Martha Brockenbrough
8.99 x 10.92 · 160 pages
Ages 9-12 years
Shark Week: Everything You Need to Know

Four Top Minecraft Channels For Children

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My son, probably like any number of your children, LOVES minecraft.   But not only does he love playing minecraft, he also likes learning from other people how to do things on minecraft.

Therein enters the wonderful world of youtube.

I have to admit, I trust my son with youtube.  He’s a responsible boy who takes life seriously, has little to no tolerance for bad language or inappropriate conversation, or people who put down faith in God.   So when I asked my lad what shows I could recommend for other children he quickly gave me a list of what’s good to watch.

First off Stampy.

My son says that at the very beginning Stampy didn’t always talk nice, but now he talks nice.   This is the fellow that my son admittedly watches the most and gets a lot of good ideas from.

Second: Squid also known as BallisticSquid. 

I know from listening to the odd Stampy video that if you know Stampy,  you’ll meet Squid.   One leads to another, they play games together and have fun making minecraft videos.

Recently my son has added Ibxtoycat.

I want to call this fellow a boxy cat and that makes my boy giggle at me… and correct me each and every time.. I still get it wrong.   BUT I’m getting used to conversations that start with “guess what I learned from Ibxtoycat today mom?   Did you know that if you do mumble mumble and then can get mumble mumble.  I tell him show me.. and it’s neat the things that he can make.  Just fascinating.

Number four is the newest addition.. probably watching Mumbo Jumbo for a couple-three weeks. 

I haven’t heard a lot from my boy about mumbo jumbo but the videos keep popping up in my feed and then I’ll hear the lad chortling from his room, or from the sofa or…. wherever.  So I’m guessing he’s funny and his videos are good.  🙂

Every once in a while my lad will try a new minecraft specialist but “Mom, he’s not good for children” or “mom, he doesn’t talk nice” or “mom, he’s boring…why are some people boring with videos??”   So these four have made the top list for minecraft videos.

Perhaps your children will enjoy them as well.  🙂   May you listen to hours of giggling and have many conversations over minecraft as well… or better yet…. see the fantastic creations your children come up with given the correct inspiration.. like blowing off the top of a mountain with a TNT cannon!  Pretty cool eh?   🙂

If your children have favourite youtube channels…share, share away please in the comments below?   I want to know, perhaps my lad will like them too. 

Reading, knots, and more

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This day being one of continued pain, and foggy-headedness due to pain meds, and being a typical Tuesday of “I WANT TO PLAY MOMMY!” (late Monday nite returns do this to a boy child), we did computer work, reading, some play, and art.  If I get myself mentally together we will do some science/practical math later on.


Today we started off our homeschooling day with Suessville.  My lad isn’t really into some of Dr. Suess books (strongly dislikes the cat in the hat), but he likes some of it.   Some of the activity pages are definitely below where he is at, but he enjoyed problem solving with the games and going through some of the worksheets with me.

We then got inspired by these in my son’s words “remote control alien ships”. 🙂

you can read more about it here. 

That video led us to this one, were being Canadian. … watching robots play hockey is just a given.:)

Caused lots of questions to be asked which is always a good thing in our household. 🙂
on to some reading.
We continued reading about Knights and Castles in our world history book.
We read a new book, called “bad kitty gets a bath”.  This is just a fun book.  I got it to encourage the boy child in his interest for reading.  he can read the simple words of kitty, bath, cat, hate etc.  

It’s just a fun read for a child.  It also has a remarkable number of good scientific facts in it as well.  Always a bonus.
We started a new book called The ultimate guide to wildlife in North America.  We’ll read a page most every day.  Today we learned about the virginia opossum and I told the lad how one day I found one.  Thought it was dead, poked it, picked it up and what not and decided that yes indeed it was dead, came back five minutes later and it was gone, and how another time my dog trapped one under an old stump and it hissed and growled at us.   Fun to share those stories.
In the fall when we went to the creation seminar in Kitchener we had picked up this book called “the lamb” by John R. Cross. It’s the story of the bible for children. 10 easy lessons. We started that book this morning.  It’s a good read.

I had the lad learn how to do a simple overhand knot, and I showed him how to make a slip knot and then tied him up.   This helped him learn the importance of tying knots.  He will need to continue to practice though. 🙂

Math, Science, Leap Year and more

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we started the day with playing some computer games.
The tooth brushing game.
Slice Geome.
We tried this one.. it was too fast.
the lad enjoyed the count the cubes game.

 Then 22 words had linked to a video on youtube about the leapyear.  I never knew the calculating the leap year was so complicated.



 Leap year every four years, except you skip a century, BUT if the century is divisible by 400 you don’t skip it.

World History


We continued reading about Knights and Castles.

Checked the Triops.  Overnight the temperature dropped so… We have no triops hatching.  We’ll continue to problem solve and see if we can’t figure out how to get them to hatch.

then off to london to go to goodwill for their 50% off sale .. I think. 🙂   Will need to check the roads to make sure they are safe for driving.  Will update the post as the day goes on.

It was fun.. on the way there the lad and I told a progressive story.  Which actually did three…but one of them didn’t work very well.   But two of them were great!   I would tell a line, the lad would tell a line and then I would.. and so on and so forth.  The lad’s reaction “Mommy… that was the best story we ever told together!”.  🙂   We’ll be doing this again.

We hit three goodwill stores.  We bought a variety of games, books and a few clothes.   We met another homeschool mom at one of the stores which was nice.

Today we learned

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Started off our day before breakfast watching Donald in Mathemagic Land.

My voice was finally back enough that I felt confident in reading from World History

We continue to learn about Knights and Castles.  Today the focus was on feast and how the great hall was used in castles.   Tomorrow we’ll learn about dragons so we had a discussion on whether dragons truly existed or not.    One would think with so many stories about them in regards to knights … and we KNOW that knights existed, that there must have been some type of large lizard/dragon as well.

There was fun to be had watching this:

we then played a lego game….it involved cops and robbers and was complicated…

This afternoon we’re off to London to go to Eldon House with K.I.C.K.  🙂