Officially school starts today except that it is a student free day here in town!
I was uncertain as to start a full routine today or not. I have a list of writing opportunities I would like the kids to work through, and we have visitors here, so I was a little unsure. As it worked out we had a great day. I little routine here and a little free time there!
Daniel and Nomi spent a lot of time putting together a wooden kit to make a truck. Nomi read the instructions; Daniel did the work! By the end of the day the truck was painted, stickers were decorating it and it was ready for play!
Josh was keen to spend most of his day writing.
Jessica was a little less focused and didnt settle into a project till later in the day when she made two cards for families who have just had babies. She worked with her colour wheel in choosing colours to go together. The colour wheel looks at colour combinations like Triadic etc.
We spent just over an hour doing a Bible study lesson. I was very excited about this, as it has been a while since we have studied the bible, cover to cover, as a family. I have often been stumped in stretching Josh and his very developed understanding of Gods Word while at the same time encouraging Daniel who has a very limited exposure, let alone understanding, the stories of the Bible and the girls inbetween. Studying Heart of Wisdom and Wisdoms Way of Learning myself over the last 12 months have given me a few keys and I was excited to see that come together.
We read the story of Creation Genesis 1. We discussed things like why we read the Bible when we already know the story. What are books in the Bible, I thought it was one book. When God said our image if there is only one God who was He talking to? Which lead to a discussion on the Trinity. We moved to John 1:1 where Jesus was with God at the beginning. For Josh and Jess we looked at the first seed/first mention concept of Genesis (Genesis being Beginning). They will continue this list of first mentions as we read through Genesis.
Their writing came from their Bible lesson. Josh and Jess hand-wrote, neatly, a list, as they saw it, of first mentioned principles. Nomi and Daniel made a poster depicting the 6 days of creation. Daniel gave me a narration, which I wrote on the back of his poster.
They all had to set up new Bible files which was a task in systems as they had to get the tab/dividers in the file right way up, in order and labelled! I mention this because it is a task that I, as an adult, take for granted but to a child it is a task that requires thinking and skill.
I walked in on Nomi and Daniel, who had been given play time together, and they were playing with little boxes that Nomi had made. I stopped their play and had an impromptu math lesson. She had made cubes and rectangular prisms so we discussed cubes and nets. We discussed how she made the cubes (she had traced or re-drew a net) and how she had to adjust it to make it into a rectangular prism. We cut up a box to see it in reverse. We discussed 3 dimensional. For Daniel we practiced saying Cube. Later in the day Nomi and I were bringing in the washing and we went through the concept of 3D again, letting her name things that were 3 dimensional.
Jess spent time reading blogs, trying to find girl-blogs she can get to know. She also wrote a piece ready for editing to put on her own blog.
