X is for FoX

For the week on Foxes we spent a lot of time reading fables. We did learn about actual foxes too, but I think our main reason for studying foxes was to learn that God’s Word makes us wiser than our enemies. The fox in old fables is always crafty and sly, just like we are told the devil is. The only way to get wisdom that overcomes the lies of the Devil is to read God’s Word. Because /X/ is the final sound in the word fox, rather than the beginning sound, we used that as an opportunity to learn more about rhyming. We played some rhyming games and wrote poetry. We also talked about how the letter X doesn’t make the sound /ehcks/ but just the sound /cks/. This is why there are so few words that start with x, and when they do, it sounds more like /z/ than /x/. We took careful notice of words like “exercise” and “excited” that seem to start with the /x/ sound, but actually start with the short /e/ sound, just like “elephant” did. For fun fox activities, we sang “A-hunting we will go” marching in a circle, Elmer Fudd style, and when we came to the part that says, “We’ll catch a fox inside a box, and then we’ll let him go” we would catch one person, like you do in London Bridges, and then let them go. We also made a comparison chart of dogs and foxes, to see how they are different (one is wild and the other one is tame, etc.) We gathered pictures of animals and classified them by different habitats they live in. We tried to make up our own fox fable that would teach a good lesson. Make sure to visit Ardara and Huyler's blogs to read the kids’ own fables. A really easy memory verse to learn for this chapter, was Psalm 119:98 “Your commands make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever with me.”