Daniel still not well though he has been able to focus mainly on his lego.  We are continuing to try and sort out his lego into smaller boxes (kits) since Daniel seems to be able to focus better when offered a smaller selection.

While Daniel was occupied with Lego the girls and I got into his room and sorted, ditched, and tidied.  We threw out 3 bags of stuff.  I am sure Daniel doesn’t know what is missing but he sure does appreciate the tidier room.  He is now looking forward to playing in there, having his Room Time there occasionally.

We reviewed our lessons on Orderliness, discussed what key habits we needed to fine tune and what aspects of our lives challenged orderliness.    We also read a picture book, Minnie McGranahan, which we all thoroughly enjoyed (even Josh!).  It was easy to see different aspects of character in "Minnie", especially orderliness.

Joshua’s quote for the day – All good systems allow for emergencies.

Josh and Jess then resumed their Bible Study on “The Blood of the Lamb, the Blood of Christ”.  They are using a Thematic approach for their study.  They have asked themselves 5 questions they have about this topic and as they search the scriptures the aim is that they will find these answers.  I am very excited about this approach to our Bible Study time this year.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get to Nomi and Daniel’s Bible time.

Peter and Josh have been busy discussing various forms of government and how different countries respond to the different models.  He blogged his thoughts here.

Jessica is also busy trying to keep her blog upto date too.  Jess  also spent several hours with Nomi teaching her the ins and outs of blogging, but Nomi isn’t going to have a public blog for another year yet – but she is practicing!

A few weeks back I had Cooking School with Jess – every day of the week, even when we had visitors for dinner, Jess cooked the evening meal.  We chose simple recipes that she could do by herself.  I was on standby should she need me – she rarely did.  We had a break from Cooking School last week since we went away for our planning time, but this week it is Nomi’s turn.  Nomi has spent less time in the kitchen with me so she is more my helper and taking on one dish rather than the whole meal.  Today though we were cooking a meal to give to a family where Mum is recovering from sickness and surgery so Nomi had a big day in the kitchen.  She used the food processor to slice vegetables and made the Scolloped Potatoes by herself.  She learnt about thickening with cornflour, dicing meat, and  slow cooking casseroles.

We have tweaked our chore rosters, to make room for the fact that kids are growing, skills are improving and priorities are changing.  The kids have responded well to these changes.  The biggest change is that all jobs are being rotated, whereas last year Josh had the outside/boy jobs.  One of our reasons is that Josh needs to learn to do some of the household chores a little better.