Monday

I had every intention of getting our full Discipleship lessons done before we headed out to join another homeschooling family today but with the weather so nice I let the kids play outside for an extra while and I worked on housework.  The house really needed some extra tender loving care too!

We did have a little time with Proverbs – we are working with Doorposts “Hidden Treasures”.  I need to think through how we “do” this as I don’t believe we are getting maximum value with our study.  We did discuss various things that came from the Proverb and then Josh and Jess filled in a study chart.

We then went to spend the rest of the morning with the Conley’s.  The idea was that after morning tea we would play Numero together.  The Conley girls are into building and playing in their own little town (a result of Roxaboxen from FIAR) and they just had to share the game with our kids so they spent hours playing there.  Eventually they came inside for Numero.  They split into two groups where one played just addition and the other played with the wild cards of subtraction.  MC spent time with her little boy and Daniel playing number recognition games.  We then had lunch together.

The kids had their quiet, reading time at A.BB’s as I had a quick visit with her on the way home.  I was running a bit late for my next appointment so decided to take the back farm track home (silly because I had told my friends not to use it for a few weeks) and sure enough, I got bogged!!  So we all traipsed home through very boggy black soil, some patches were so saturated we actually waded through puddles as well.  Is black clay-ee soil good for your pores?? 

Jessica and Daniel spent ½ hour together with a Bible story and discussion.  Daniel didn’t flow with her for the activity and since I was with a customer I couldn’t enforce it.  Obviously, we are going to have to work with this new idea of sibling activity time for it to work.

The rest of our afternoon was spent either outside playing with the dog or quiet table time.  Nomi and Jess are making board games.  Daniel is drawing Captain Hook and Peter Pan drawings.  Josh created a big map of an imaginary country, which is where his current lot of stories are based.  He also wrote a lot during the day both on his story and with his chronological history. 

The Value of Play:  Today was such a relaxed, though very full day.  It was such a pleasure to see the kids delighting in their game.  I know they were learning.  They were learning first and foremost how to play together, how to interact, fix relational challenges, flow with other people’s ideas etc.  During their town game they learnt and reinforced ideas of how a community has needs, how those needs are met, responsibilities within a community, responsibilities of running a business.