No idea!! I know that we’ve been getting things done. Jess was sick on Monday and Josh sick on Wednesday.
Jess has nearly finished her quilt. She has about 30minutes of handstitching to go. We must go to the hardware to buy some dowling to use as a hanger for their quilts. Nomi worked on hers a little on Wednesday though needed me and my mind was else where.
We continue with our lessons on “Virtue”. We start out the lesson all together and then split into two groups. The older two are responsible for reading an article about our character trait and writing the lesson to be learnt (notebooking). The younger two and I discussed the idea of garbage in, garbage out. We need to protect our hearts from bad stuff so that our mouth and actions have good stuff coming out, kindness, encouragement, joy, loyalty, resourcefulness. As we daily make choices to do what is right we develop virtue in our life. Nomi and Daniel created a notebook page representing this discussion.
We also had a discussion along the lines that if we want integrity in our lives we need to be making hard decisions and often that means we may be doing something by ourselves (if our friends don’t want to do the right thing with us.) Daniel reminded us that this was like the narrow road that we needed to walk if we were following Jesus so that became the theme of our notebook page today.
We spent Wednesday jumping every time the phone rang as our friend was having a baby and we were eagerly waiting to celebrate with them.
Daniel is progressing with his language – he is reading a new reader each day which is very exciting for him. It is hard to find reading material that is of any interest to him (nearly 9) but at his very early reading stages. He stumbled over the word “waves” expecting it to be”water” so we built the word water with the THRASS magnet tiles so he could compare the two. We then discussed that it was important to sound out the words, so that we could read the words that the author chose to write. From the picture it looked like he was talking about water but he chose (as the author) to use the word “waves”. I then asked Daniel if he was an author would he like people to make up words or to read the words he wrote. He saw straight away my point. It is always exciting to see the light go on!!
The kids are doing well with getting their afternoon jobs done in a timely manner. I showed them, with a simple drawing on the whiteboard, that they had 1 hour (1 circle) to complete 4 tasks, ie 15min. each. They know some don’t take that long (especially if they have cleaned up after themselves during the day which means they then get free time. This has been a motivator though I must be fair on my side of things and not give them extra things to do.
Daniel, with Nomi’s help, has turned himself into Weather Man (aka Magic School Bus). He has lightening flashes on his shoes, on his shirt, he brandishes two big flashes of lightening in his hands, and he has a heavy burgandy cape. I might be able to get a photo later on.
We have begun Reading Journal Workshop. We are reading a book of short stories about life in the Australian bush around the time of the depression. My hope is that as the children listen and then discuss things that we will be able to isolate the questions they verbalise, the ideas they have, and the topics they discuss and see them objectively so that the kids can see that those very things that happen verbally is what I am looking for in the Reading Journals. Our first session was cut short by some one arriving but Josh asked to have the time period confirmed, and a descriptive phrase he felt was worth remembering for his own writing, Jessica copied down pidgeon English as she thought that taught her something about writing conversations, Nomi had a dictionary definition. So though our reading was only about 5 minutes long they were all engaged in thinking as it was read. A good start to our workshops.
