Monday

Today my goal is to do as much of our routine day as we can do, but for me to keep my focus on Daniel.  I think we have achieved this.

 

Early in the morning Jessica received a phone call from Liesa about the up and coming Pizza Party.  That raised a few things we needed to discuss.  The party has been a great opportunity to speak about parties, invitations, and some of the life challenges that happen once people start having exclusive invites.  Jess finds the whole concept a little hard as it breaks her little sanguine heart not to include everyone and not to be included in everything but it is a great lesson to learn.   The party is also offering lessons in kitchen science as they create their own concoction to serve to their friends (I can’t say just yet as it is a surprise).  They will also get the opportunity to shop later in the week, decorate the party area and then actually organise the party-activities themselves.

 

We started our lessons with reviewing the memory work for the Character Trait Determination.  Then we went to our desks and discussed each “I Will” statement and helped break it down to our everyday language, situations and expectations.  This was a great session.  They drew a little sketch of something to help them remember our conversation and their copy work for the day was to write the “I Will” statement on each drawing.

 

While I am thinking of Discipleship lessons today I have, as one of my “Daniel Focus” goals to sit with him again for morning devotions.  We have let this slip over the last few weeks.  He excitedly got his Bible and Jesus Journal (his words).  We read the story of the Seeds and Tares.  He understood the concept of his heart being the soil etc and could identify a rock in his own heart that stops the Word of God growing in his own life.  After the story we always have an oral narration, which often leads to discussion and prayer.  Often before we pray he dictates something to me for his Jesus Journal.    We finished our time together with us reading the previous entries and when there was a word especially a “tricky” word that I knew he had learnt I would pause for him.  He was doing really well, not only recognising “the” and “has” as words I expected him to, but also he sounded out words that haven’t been stressed in his lessons, such as “to, is, he”.  It was a very positive reading time.

 

After morning tea we have our Discipline Studies.

Joshua worked on Math, filing, and printing off finished writing pieces.

Jessica worked on her Math and writing.

Nomi worked on Math and completed her Character First work from earlier this morning.

Daniel worked on some exercises from the OT, then subitising with Dominoes, and then our Reading Made Easy lessons where the focus was reading sentences, tricky words, beginning and ending of sentences.  

 

I didn’t get to move onto Daniel’s discussion lessons today due to some office work I needed to complete for Peter but I did read “Rosie and Mack’s Outdoor Adventure” to him before we got off the couch.  This story included a recipe for Damper so mid afternoon Daniel and I cooked Damper and served it for a late afternoon tea.  It was yummy and he was just beaming for having had the opportunity.

 

Joshua read the introductory pages to his new Science curriculum – Apologia, General Science.  We discussed the best way for him to organise and file his work and he organised a shopping list for me to get the bits and pieces for his lab work.  He read the first little section and completed the first question.

 

Jessica worked on research and recording one of her questions of interest in regards to Egypt.  I have yet to read her work and help her edit it.

 

Nomi and I began to read a book on adventures in the rainforests but the writing was so descriptive and “flowery” she was getting lost in the verbose-ness of it all so we dropped that.  I think she needs a little more direction with her Dog studies so I will formulate some questions – and help her complete her notebooking after reading “7 True Dog Stories”.

 

Jess spent another ½ hour time slot with Daniel today.  He chose to do something creative rather than physical so she set up wax resist paintings.  They used a roller, a sponge as well as paint brushes.

 

Pete had a horse arrive needing to be Pregnancy Tested so that was something interesting for the kids to watch.  They weren’t so impressed with some of the horses habits but we tried to tell them that was just horses!  Being outside to watch their daddy lead to all sorts of adventures, in particular making a ladder to climb trees.

So as far as my goal to keep Daniel occupied he has had his Discipleship studies, his OT exercises, Math, Reading, Writing, Story time, cooking time, reading rest, Lego, outside time.  He has had a very full day.  There was a few times he had to wait for me and he read books each time.