Organizing the Zoo and Other Things We Do During School

The Yahoos' favorite subject is science.  We use Apologia Science.  Each year we focus on one subject.  It sounds regressive, but it works for us.  This year we are studying land mammals.  I find that if you can target the kids where they are at and study what they are presently into, they tend to retain it easier.  So for the last 8 years my kids have been into cheetahs, lions, monkey, etc.  They live and breathe it.  Sometimes Ninja Yahoo gets genuinely mad that God did not make him a cheetah.  Oi!

This week their assignment was to design a zoo.  To organize and arrange it how they saw best.  They spent an hour in the basement working on this thing.

Impressive, no?

 Science is my favorite subject as well.  I'm amazed, mystified at how God created these creatures so perfectly.  I could go on and on about how the giraffe has the ability to regulate its blood pressure so that it can bend over to eat and drink without too much blood rushing to its head, or how the arctic fox was provided the perfect coat to protect itself, or how the hippo secretes its own sunscreen to protect its skin from the harsh sun on the savannah.  Glorious! 



But as the kids were working away I was thinking about how God organizes this world of a zoo.  How he groups all of us together so perfectly into families.  He doesn't do it based on similar personalities, skills, abilities, interests (because we know that ALL of my kids are so different from each other).  He doesn't do it based on similar looks (because we all know NONE of my kids look like me).  No.  I can't classify how He does it, except to say He does it perfectly.  He does it to grace us.

grace:  lovely, beautiful, good-will

He perfectly organizes My family to make us lovely and beautiful.  Because of His good-will toward us.  

God makes a home for the lonely; He leads out the prisoners into prosperity

Psalm 68:6

The beginning of that verse gives me chills.  To think that the 6 individual people who occupy our home would be lonely and alone on their own.  But God, who is rich in mercy, put us together and made a home for us.  And now, together, we are a family.  


So, now, when I am bemoaning my career as zookeeper of my home, I will try to remember that this zoo is a beautiful, lovely thing.

And now I believe I will go pull a monkey out of a tree and see if I can chase down a cheetah or two.  Happy Zookeeping!