THURSDAY

Today our focus was our creative projects.  Jessica worked on her quilt top – she has completed the 4 blocks, sewn them together and is now ready to work on the border.  This is her first sewing project for 3 years and she is doing really well.  Since the seam allowances are 1/8” and ¼” she had a little quick impromptu lesson on fractions.

Joshua is working on a model airplane.  Yesterday he got in such a mess with paint and turps all over the place.  We discussed having a system, keeping tidy and organised and today he did really well.  He put some thought into each step before he started which really kept him neat.  The benefit of this is that his actual work is neat too.

Meanwhile Nomi and Daniel spent time outside in the shed.  The desperately wanted to take the wheels off an old bike and old pram to make a go-cart.  Their plans were thwarted by lack of understanding in how to remove a wheel but they have plans to ask Peter to help them!

We had visitors in the afternoon – the kids all played well together – they built a train track and then played outside with bikes and cubby etc.

Somewhere along the morning the dog got injured.  She spent her day lying down or sleeping – very placid!  When Pete, the Vet, got home nothing was broken, didn’t seem to have any internal problems though she was definitely in a lot of discomfort.  So a shot of anti-inflammatory painkiller and she settled down for the night.  This was a good mini lesson on caring for pets, as well as the nature of medicines.

Pete’s birthday today so the kids had made various bits and pieces to help celebrate.  Daniel made a trophy from the box of boxes, the girls made cards.  Jess set the table nicely, candles and all!

FRIDAY

Once again our day didn’t start at 8.30 but we have had a productive day.  It started with the kids doing a deep clean in their bedrooms – change of sheets, dusting, cobwebbing etc….

Then they all went outside for a “nature walk” down our farm road.  They were to come back with something interesting to draw in their nature journal.  Josh found 2 flowers – one made around a hexagon and one made on circles.  Jess found a yellow flower, which she not only drew and wrote about but later identified with Peter.  Nomi found a different yellow flower – yet to be identified and Daniel brought back a handful of stones!

During morning tea we discussed math coming from the perspective that we use math everyday that it isn’t only a workbook subject.  I surprised them by showing them that they used math in their nature journal activity – Jess needed numbers to use an index and table of contents and Joshua noticed shapes in God’s Creation.

We then read Mr Archimedes Bath … and talked about displacement / volume.  We went outside and did our own little experiment (Josh was relieved to hear that we weren’t all going to jump in the bathtub like they did in the story!!) We discovered the volume of our hands.  To record this we made a Dinah Zikes folded book to show 1 cup, ½ cup, ¼ cup, etc.   They also filled in a chart (in the shape of a measuring jug) the volume of their own hand.  Daniel was just over ½ c, Nomi’s was 1 cup, Josh and Jess surprised each other by being the same at 1 ¼ cups and mine was 1 ½ cups.  This included a discussion on ounces as a weight measure compared to a volume measure.

In the afternoon Nomi and Daniel went to town with Pete.  One of their tasks was to track down materials for their go-cart.  Josh and Jess stayed home.  Josh worked on his project and Jess worked on her poster for the Ag.Show.

SATURDAY

Today was the last day for cricket for Josh and Daniel.  They will miss it.  Unfortunately the items that are handed out, as recognition of their good play and improvement etc, didn’t arrive so the wrap up was a bit of a fizzer with just a sausage sizzle and then everyone dissipated.  It is frustrating for Josh, a keen cricketer, that there is not more effort put into making games happen for the young boys.

The girls played netball though they have another 3 weeks after the school holidays.

Pete picked up an old cupboard from a garage sale for us to put our sports equipment in outside on the veranda.  Nomi cleaned it up and has organised all the bats, balls and bits and pieces.  She took on this project without being asked and did a very good job.

Jess worked on her quilt again this afternoon and is progressing well.  She also made pizza for dinner.  This gave us an opportunity to talk about yeast as she used cold water initially and the yeast didn’t froth, we also discussed the importance of following the recipe and related that to the care that Pasteur had to take in his science experiments.

We spent our evening together, with most the family eating pizza, watching Bonanza!   (Flashes from my childhood!)

SUNDAY

Saturday night I was asked by Daniel to wake him up early because he wanted some quiet time.  So this morning every one was awake early and I woke Daniel up at 6.00am (which isn’t particularly early in this household but it suited for a Sunday).  I reminded him that everyone was having their quiet time with God and he needed to do something quiet too.  At 7.45, when we called everyone for breakfast, everyone was having table time and there was this quiet murmur of contentedness as everyone worked on their thing at the table.  It was lovely to see.

After church we had people coming out to catch up with Pete before his next job.  We had all worked hard to make sure the house was in order before we went to church (It kind of deteriorated while we watched those two episodes of Bonanza last light – not sure how that happens!) While we had our visit out on the veranda, the kids once again occupied themselves down in the family room.   Later in the afternoon they headed outdoors with a bit of a buzz but I didn’t know what was going on till after our visitors left – they had built a complete drum kit, including microphone for drummer to sing into, from stuff found on the veranda – baby pool, baskets, sticks, saucepans etc…  Nomi beat-out a fairly neat rhythm to show off their creation.  They had also turned a cricket bat into a guitar – strings included, and made microphones out of defunct skipping ropes.  So I left them to it – becoming the next amazing band to hit the streets!