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Weekly Wrap up – Week #39

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Three Little Ladies.

We have had a good week on all fronts this week but the area that strikes me with having the most change/improvement has been our ability to focus on our study time. I have been working on a few ideas and this week they seemed to all come together.

They were:

1. Reduce how much I expect to teach my children in any one day
2. Do the most important first

Simple principles but… there has been great fruit this week. We have been consistent in the things that are important.

What is important:

1. My spirit – to keep it gentle and focused on my kids heart training instead of focused on to-do lists.
2. To take the time to instruct my children.  To give them the understanding of the values I want them to live by rather than just directing them to do what needs to be done.
3. Bible study – Nomi and Daniel are doing a study “Finding Jesus in Genesis” – it is focusing on the covenant God has made with man.  Daniel was reading his Bible and he found a verse that mentioned God’s covenant with Abraham. He was so excited to find another ‘covenant’ verse.  When my children talk about our lessons during the other parts of our day I know we are doing something right. 
4. Living Math – I am focusing on one major study other than Bible for a season and at the moment it is living math.  Once again the kids started talking about the things we’ve learnt during other activities.  This is real learning as it is applied to other aspects of life.  Yay!!

Other highlights:

Intrapersonal Growth:

Josh is back from Canberra – it was good to hear him throughout the week make observations and connections.  He wrote a short speech to deliver to the homeschool kids talking about his trip.  He learnt a lot about himself, namely, he likes who he is, what he stands for, and his relationship with his family.  He maybe different from other kids but he is okay with that! 

Our Homeshool Co-op – we meet once a month, and though the intent is for the kids to have some learning situations it is relationship focused.  We are just a group of mums who get together with their kids and if a need arises that is greater than our planned activities that is okay.  Every month we have a short time slot for oral presentations (which is show and tell for the young ones, report giving for the middle ages and apologetic speeches for the older ones) then we do a session on a character trait (this month was loyalty) and then we have 1-1.5hour of planned activity.  This month we did reading responses.  The younger kids did a FIAR book and activity.  The older ones made a resource folder with prompts and ideas for their writing / reading journals.

What made this day even more special for me was that just at the end of the Character session we got some sad news that a friend had a trampoline accident and had broken his neck.  The older kids and I sat together and prayed for him.  It was a delight to see these young kids pray so naturally in a group.  God is good – the young man who had the accident will recover fully.

Talents – I am always on the lookout to see individual talents showing in my children.  There are clues that I need to jump on and use in both encouraging and developing my children.  Just recently Daniel put together 4 bookcases following the instructions by himself.  Though he can’t read fluently he can follow diagrammes very well.  Josh brought home a model aeroplane kit for Daniel and he has worked very well at this even though it is fiddly.