Friday – Today was the first local Home Educators Support meeting for 2006.  We had 2 things on our agenda –

1. to discuss a co-op with the goal of co-operative learning for our children. 
2. to learn from a new homeschool mum, who is a Speech Therapist, to draw from her expertise in pronunciation/articulation.

We have roughly 25 kids – toddlers and up.  They all played either in the facility’s crèche area or in the sandpit.  The sandpit crew built an amazing castle, mess quarters, moats, bridges. The inside crew worked with playdough and paper/card.  They all had a ball and all my kids are on the tired side this afternoon.

The afternoon has been taken slowly with reading, computer time and a few crafts.   Naomi is reading “Muddleheaded Wombat” and thoroughly enjoying being able to read.  She gave me a very good oral narration as she described something in the story.

Saturday – The children finally finished their game of Monopoly.  A friend showed me a long list of good lessons to learn from Monopoly.  I realise that if I want these lessons to be learnt then I am going to have to be closer to the game.  Two of the lessons she pointed out to me…

• handling disappointment when you don’t get the properties you want
• handling the temptation to steal when you are the banker

The kids all worked together to get the house in reasonable shape for visitors.  We have a family of 9 visiting – they have parked their Motor home over at the shed.  The kids love (go wild) over seeing different modes of transport and mobile living in particular!  Nomi gave me a full run-down (oral narration) on how everything fitted in the bus and various precautions that needed to be taken while living in the bus.

Since the visitors arrived the kids have talked and talked and talked.  After a game of Monopoly (which was started within 5 minutes of actually meeting each other for the first time) the boys and girls split into their groups!  Girls went chattering off together, they checked out the bus, the puppies and cat, and then went to the room to do a big jigsaw puzzle together.  The boys found a little nook and are re-enacting a war with toy soldiers.

In dealing with a character issue with Daniel today I asked him what happened when he hurt someone and he knew the answer!!  He told me that his heart and the other person’s heart moved away from each other and it was up to him to get them to be friends again.