Today started with some great plans – of which all came to nothing much.  Last night we sat up and watched the tennis and then the cricket so everyone was a bit sluggish and slow to get going.

Our first task for today was “Bedroom Blessing” which is what we call the hour or so that the children give to their rooms most weeks.  It is as if the bedrooms are their own little house and they have to do a weekly Homebless  – cobwebs, fingerprints, window, floor, a quick clean out of toys, clothes, books (hotspots) and changing sheets.

Joshua helped me finish off some photocopying.  This may sound like a fairly basic job but there is always a learning opportunity in all things that go on around the house.  We often take skills so for granted – until, that is you have a child who is challenged in this area.  You then realise how the so-called simple task needs to be broken down step by step, and the child may have to practice, practice, practice.  Josh can drive a photocopier easy enough but the system of keeping photocopying in order – that is another matter!  He did very well today, keeping the system going, and even thinking and taking initiative.  I believe that organisational skills are one of the things that we need to teach our children.

We had to go to town to pick up Pete from the airport.  We took in our current Read Aloud – Brother Andrew.

While driving to town the girls were singing along with Colin Buchanan at the top of their voices and Josh asked us if we could listen to a paragraph he had just read in one of GA Henty’s books.  He read of power and money corrupting people, (a demise in people’s values) and in the end being a part of the end fall of the empire/nation; this lead to a great discussion covering both history and moral instruction.  We concluded with wondering if the same conclusions could be made on an individual perspective.  We believe so.

Peter is reading a book called “Too small to be Ignored”, a biography of the President of Compassion.  He shared a story with the kids while they waited for me to do the grocery shopping.  Later in the afternoon he read a couple of chapters to me – I was in tears.  The horrible things that are done in the name of religion!  It is a very moving book though Pete says not suitable for the kids as there are a couple of chapters he wouldn’t want them to read.  We are considering it for a read aloud.  If we don’t do it as a read aloud Pete will continue to share bits that are touching his life.  This is just fantastic to see the learning that is coming from their Father reading a living book!

The kids spent the afternoon in quiet activity while Pete and I spent time talking.  They have played monopoly as well as Table Tennis.  Daniel has created a police badge using a clipart programme.  He needs a little help to find the icons since he can’t read/write but he knows his way around formatting things.   The girls pottered around with a bit of writing, reading and filing things away.

Late afternoon I decided to spend an hour with building our timelines.  We have been trying to get to our timelines for many years.  This year I am working on the things that give maximum individual learning opportunities – notebooking, timelines, nature journals.  The photocopying that Josh helped me with were the timelines from Knowledge Quest.  We worked together starting at 5000BC and filed timeline pages upto 2010 or so.  Once again it was a great opportunity to keep the kids thinking systems and organization as we had bits of paper flying everywhere!  I was surprised to hear Daniel following the page numbers well past where I thought he could count to.  He worked out 49 – 50 and from there on I knew he understood the counting system.  He may not have it memorised but he knows the system.

After we had filed all our pages we gathered all our clip art disks and worked out how we would transfer a figure from clipart to a word document, size it to fit our timeline and print.  The kids couldn’t wait to get into it…. But that will be tomorrow as the dog needed a walk and dinner needed to happen!

After dinner we sat down to watch Steve Irwin’s last documentary:  Deadliest Sea Creatures.