This morning, big fluffy snowflakes were gently falling like floating white feathers from a cloudy, pale gray sky.  Everything seemed quiet and still as the snowflakes made their decent from the heavens above.  After spending days cooped up inside, I longed to emerge from seclusion beyond the heavy doors and stretch my arms up high to feel the cleansing white flakes.  As I watched from my living room windows, I noticed how the snowflakes were such a beautiful bright white, and I was reminded of the following verses:

"Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge. Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place. Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow."  - Psalm 51:1-7

 When I searched the word "snow" in my Bible concordance, I was interested to see how many times God used snow to describe the purest color of white.  I've learned over and over again that God has put His fingerprints all over His creation in Nature; it is simply FULL of lessons to be learned, that is if we take the time to notice and give Him the glory.

I was reading recently about how snowflakes are formed.  Like rain, they are formed in clouds.  But unlike rain, in freezing temperatures, water droplets in clouds freeze into tiny intricate ice crystals with six sides.  These hexagonal ice crystals are the building blocks of snowflakes.  There are seven different ice crystal shapes, but remarkably, they are ALL six-sided.  Now, each ice crystal is surrounded by water vapor in the cloud.  The tiny water vapor droplets freeze, and attach to one of the ice crystal's six sides.  That makes the ice crystal grow branches off of it's six sides, and by this amazing process you have the remarkable creation of a breathtakingly perfect and pure white snowflake.

When I think of the beginnings of a snowflake, when it is still a snow crystal, while I'm sure it's very pretty, I can't help but think of how after God is done building and adding onto it, how much more beautiful and full of splendor it becomes.  Just like us, as the verse states above, even from before birth and at birth, we are sinful, cute, but sinful.  And as we journey through this life, our Creator is carefully creating and adding more crystal branches to us making us more into His glorious and beautiful image, if we allow.  All until the day we are formed perfectly and uniquely into His magnificant image.  As you probably already know, every single snowflake that falls from the sky amazingly is unique.  And as you probably know, snow is not actually white, it's the reflection of the light which makes it appear pure white.  Just like us, it's His reflection in us which makes us perfectly pure.

This entry will be the first in a series that I plan on doing as I begin putting together our study on snowflakes.  We will probably complete most of it in January, however if we feel motivated to take a break from our Christmas school, then we'll hop on into the study a little earlier.  In the meantime, below is a link to a website with a snowflake primer, a good starting point for study.

A Snowflake Primer

We're hanging in here at our household.  Thanksgiving dinner didn't happen this year due to too many sick people in our house.  And from what I hear, lots of people were in that boat this year.  My son is going on 3 days of not keeping anything down he's so sick with a stomach virus.  The Sprite and Gatorade are on constant demand.  And we are all praying that the misery is over soon.

In the meantime, I checked out a couple dozen new books from the library, mostly Christmas, but also some new Nature Study related books, and I found two new gems that I wanted to share with you!

I will be teaching a Nature study class beginning in January to the 4th grade students at our co-op, and I will be using Nature in a Nutshell for Kids, by Jean Potter as our primay resource, however I will now also be using the following two wonderful finds:

Explore Winter: 25 Great Ways to Learn About Winter, By Maxine Anderson

Explore Spring: 25 Great Ways to Learn About Spring, by Maxine Anderson

Both of these books give great HANDS-ON projects, activities, and experiments to teach loads of great things about the science behind winter and spring.  And what I like even more is that all of the activities, etc. are VERY doable, using mostly things you would have laying around your house.

As I said, I've also checked out armloads of Christmas books and am going through them one by one and am also finding a few great gems in there too.  I have plans to begin featuring those here at my blog through December.  And I'm currently putting together a study on SNOW that I want to begin with the kids after Christmas.  I'm really excited at the way the study is shaping up, and I'll be sharing that here on my blog in the future too.

So I have simply wonderful plans for our Christmas school and beyond, that is if we can get off this "sick boat"!!!  In the meantime, I think I'll go watch A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving with the kids for the fifth time.

Sorry I've been missing in action this last week.  My son has had scar revision and hernia surgery last week and on top of it all most of the family has been sick too with colds/viruses, including me.  YUCK!   But, in the midst of it all, the Lord is continually showing me ways to be thankful.

So hopefully we'll be turning the corner soon on all this, and be back in the saddle again.

I have some wonderful Christmas school planned that I'd LOVE to share with you all very soon.  If I'm not back to post again before Thursday have a very, very blessed and thankful Thanksgiving!!

It may not have been much...

...but, you know how exciting that first snowfall is!!

Here are some photos from our Nature time.

 It was coming down in huge wet flakes.

That tasted really good.

We were all bundled up for fun.

And a little bit of school too.

(we never get tired of looking at snowflakes under a magnifying lens)

Goodbye strawberry bed.

Hello pretty snow.

They pulled out their pretend box houses and made a Wendys drive thru.

Can I have your order please?

And snow always puts you in the mood to decorate with Christmas lights!

Could I be so bold as to ask you for your vote? My blog has been nominated for the "Best Homeschooling Methods Blog"!  The prizes are pretty great and I'd love to win! SO, if you think my blog is worthy and you like what I do here, click on the button below, then on the side bar click on the VOTE button, scroll down and click on #24 "Best Homeschooling Methods Blog", and vote for "In the Sparrows Nest"!   THANKS so much!!

"The crocus, like the snowdrop, cannot wait for the snow to be off the ground

before it pushes up it's gay blossoms, and it has thus earned the gratitude

of those who are winter weary."

~ Anna Botsford Comstock, Handbook of Nature Study

Just as Autumn is taking it's last breaths, and as the artic air is beginning to settle in for the Winter, our thoughts are already turning towards Spring.  Why you ask?  Because we have been planting Crocus!

While I love all the changes of seasons, and Winter has it's place in my heart too, by the time Winter is drawing to a close, I'm longing for Spring.  And the Crocus is one of the first flowers to bloom at the end of Winter, even being known to bloom in the snow.

Yes, their promise of Spring to come is priceless to me and my family at that time of year.

So, recently on one of our last warm days, we set about planting Crocus bulbs all around our backyard.

All ages can be involved in this, and it opens up great opportunities for discussions on the seasons and why the bulbs will not grow until the first of Spring.  And why I see them as a promise from God that warmer weather will return.  And there's always hope.

Last Spring we did a study on the Crocus, you can find that lesson HERE.

About a week and a half ago I posted an entry entitled A Divine Duty.  I thought this video was a great compliment to that post.  For I know first hand that upholding this Divine Duty is not for the faint hearted.  Whether we are becoming overwhelmed in the struggle with our children, our husbands, or our family life in general, this is a great reminder of why we do what we do.  We do not work for them, we work for Him.

What a beautiful Autumn day we've had today!!  Sunny and temps in the low 70's made for a great day to take a Nature walk and bring a little Math into Nature and Autumn.   Using a form I found from a fabulous resource, The Busy Life of a Leaf, I had the kids go on a Nature walk and collect information on the colors of the leaves on the trees.

For each color they placed a tally mark on their sheet and then bar graphed them when they were finished.

Hannah had her friend Grace join in with her on the hunt!  They found that yellow and green were the most popular colors of leaves.

Tomorrow I plan to have them try to convert the bar graph into a colorful pie chart.  And by my friend Jennifer's suggestion, I'll first have them try to guess what the pie chart would look like and draw it on their own.  And then teach them how to input the data into Microsoft Excel to make a pie chart, and compare to see just how close they got it!