I have no idea where the last week has gone – it is a blur.  I know Daniel’s birthday happened last week.  We celebrated with a play date with his friend John and a lunch together with family friends at their poolside.   Jessica baked muffins for him (his favourite).

 

I know it was ANZAC day and Pete was able to rearrange his schedule so he could take Josh to the dawn service and watch some TV with Josh.    This lead to some serious research on the internet;  they were looking at the Battle of Tabrook specifically and then they tried to find family members who were either fighting in the war or doing home duties to protect the country.  Josh needs to complete this activity – even if it is just filing his research into his notebook.

 

I spent sometime reading to Daniel.  We had one particularly great day where we read “Jenny’s Summer Surprise”.  Interestingly enough my other kids never really connected to this book but Daniel thoroughly enjoyed it.  I had intended to follow a few ideas from Before Five in a Row with this book but while we were reading it I just thought o the time we have had recently at the beach.  At the end I suggested that Daniel might like to make a book himself.  He got so excited, “What a book?  A real book?  I can put words like this (title) on it? Really?”  He was soooo excited. 

 

I also broke the book down into 3 sections and as I read a section I asked him for a narration – he did very well.  He did much better than when I ask him at the end of the whole story.

 

The games continue to be pulled out.  Boggle is a favourite with the older 3.  Apples to Apples still brings lots of laughs.  Jessica particularly enjoys Numero though the others haven’t been as exposed to it as she has.  Daniel enjoys a game of Snakes and Ladders or Ludo.

 

We watched Rolf  Harris (a favourite of Peter’s and my childhood) paint a portrait of the queen.  He is an impressionalist painter.  We were amazed to watch this broad paint strokes of very interesting colours suddenly produce an image of the Queen.  We enjoyed seeing the Queen in a relaxed, not official, situation.  We appreciated Rolf’s challenge at relating to her and trying to get a real personality to come out in his painting – not the formal public personality.  But the exciting thing was it made the children want to paint… then and there.  Well, my homeschooling-mum-thing didn’t come to the fore – I sent them to bed!  Painting had to wait for another day. 

 

Monday afternoon the paints came out.  Only Jessica had a shot at trying to copy Rolf  Harris’ broad paint strokes, fuzzy edges, and building up the detail.  She painted a still life – sunflowers.  Nomi painted a garden scene with people strolling (unfortunately a little visitor we had later in the week added his own improvements – read scribbles – which deeply upset Nomi so the painting didn’t get finished).  Josh painted a castle from his imagination and Daniel painted an underwater scene also from imagination.

 

Nomi is finding something to write nearly every day – just in her free time – she has written advertisements, wanted posters, a continual story, and letters.  Her spelling really does need work done on it.  I am going to address this by copy work, and by editing some of the writing she does.  We need to look at the pattern of the words she spells incorrectly to see if there any phonetic rule she needs to brush up on.

 

We have guests here this week so Saturday the kids got the house ready for visitors.  The girls did the guest room – I had to go out so this was entrusted to them.  Josh and Daniel tidied the outside of the house.  It was such a blessing to come home and find the house in order, to find relationships in harmony;  all I had to do was vacuum!

 

I continue to try and spend some one on one discipleship time with my children each week.  So far, I am only getting to Josh and Jess but that is a start.  We have been working through “A Young Man after God’s Own Heart” by Jim George with Josh and for Jessica we have been reading “Beautiful Girlhood” by Karen Androlea.  It has been a great time to not only read a challenging book (that is a book that challenges you to grow) but it has been a time of conversation and sharing with each other.  We have often finished by playing a quick game like Numero, Boggle or Mastermind.  Jessica is keeping a handwritten journal – we went shopping for just the right pretty girly journal.  Joshua on the other hand is typing anything he wants to remember before he goes to bed and keeping a digital journal of his thoughts.