Monday 29^th June 2006 

Here we are trying to get back into our routine after a couple of loose weeks.  Not to say that those weeks haven’t been productive – they have been and I’ll write about last week in particular shortly.

Today I didn’t get myself organised till close to 10.00am, which is about 1 ½ hours later than my perfect start to the day!  But while I was wandering around the house, doing the housework, and getting myself organised the kids kept themselves occupied. 

Josh had to open and set up a new electronic gadget, which included reading instructions and charging up the battery.  He then continued reading “Ivanhoe”.  Jess helped with an extra laundry chore and then went outside with Nomi and practiced their Netball skills; netball started for them last Saturday.  Daniel has been inspired to build a pirate ship from wood using the tools we bought him some months ago.  He is diligently working on making a mast and sail.

They were all very reluctant to come indoors but lessons had to happen!  I cringe when I hear myself say that but I guess they do have to have some discipline in their days.  We started with discussing and reviewing the blocks of time that we will have in our regular days and presented the concept to the older two that if we got held up with a late start again there is no reason why they can’t work on their independent work, i.e. their Discipline studies and Notebook pages.  Jess is going to make a couple of posters that reflect our discussion, I’ll show her how to laminate them and they will be a permanent reference for our routine (it is not connected to time slots though) and also a record of our filing system.

Our Bible Study on the first 10 generations, Genesis 5 etc, didn’t go as well as I would have liked.  I think I need to do some more preparation; thinking through what I want to achieve in this block of time.  The lesson for Josh and Jess included the hidden meanings of the names of the first 10 generations and how they reveal the intent of the Gospel.  They also reviewed their “First Principles” list as we continue our way through Genesis.  For Nomi and Daniel it was a story of Cain and Abel.  I also wanted to introduce to them to the fact that man was playing musical instruments and making metal tools way, way back in Adam’s day.  We have begun to make maracas with tearing of paper and making glue, for Papier Mache,  and though they enjoyed this they didn’t make any connections to the Bible times.

Then came our Discipline studies for Nomi and Daniel – Nomi worked on some Bible Verse copy work and Daniel with his Reading Made Easy which ended in reading a book on Manners.  Josh and Jess both had copy work and writing assignments coming from their Bible study so I left that as their Discipline studies for today. 

Earlier this morning Joshua drew a conclusion from two historical fiction tales based on what have become myth-type characters.   He mentioned that in the two stories, he felt that the authors had kept the heroes mythical status by writing in a prophecy that said that the hero would fail at battle and/or die.  Therefore their failure/death was fate rather than weakness.   It was a good conclusion and I have asked him to write the thoughts he discussed with me and to conclude with a Biblical perspective on fate.  This was his Discussion study for today.

Jessica and Nomi sat with me and we read “The Germ Hunter”.  At the end of the chapter I got Nomi to give me a narration (She actually gave it to me twice, first time without a keyboard, second time I typed as she spoke).  She intends to make a notebook page including a photocopy of a picture from the book.  Jessica wanted to copy write an experiment that Louis Pasteur conducted.  I gave her the added assignment to include her thoughts as to why it was important he conducted those experiments.  I also gave her some copy work on the definition of “spontaneous generation” and again, asked for her comments, on the Biblical perspective of this theory.  She completed these notebook pages after lunch.

In Nomi and Daniel’s free time they have been busy constructing.  Daniel has continued on his Pirate ships’ mast and sail while Nomi has made a quiver for her arrows (Josh made a huge bow and arrow set for himself and Nomi over the weekend.)