I have been away from my blog and many other online activities for 3-4 weeks now. I needed a break and though I didnt intend to stop blogging life took over and that is what happened. Looking back, Im kind of glad that is what happened. Sometimes I think my blog world takes over my thinking there is always the next blog post to write and it was good to see that it just stopped. Over the next few days or so Ill post about what has been going on in my world. It has been fairly crazy-busy!
But in the meantime, I’ve been thinking over the last year – the things we’ve done well, the things I feel we could do better on, and the things that didn’t happen at all! It is good to review before setting forth and setting new goals and plans for next year.
These are the things that come to mind that have gone well in 2009, things that have worked for us:
- Nomi and Daniel have established the ability to do daily independent work. Read Daily Diligences
- Josh and Jess have worked well with assignment sheets, I’ve used assignment sheets for Nomi and Daniel. Read about our Assignment Sheets
- Monday was a Family Workshop day – this was the day I taught those lessons that we learnt together or in various configurations – writing, creation science, speeches, money, Auslan
- My main focus this year was teaching Daniel to read and though he isn’t 100% there, there has been tremendous progress. He started to write as well, often spending an hour or so writing in his free time.
- Daniel established a habit of 1.5 hours of Individual time spent after lunch (where he doesn’t interrupt me) Read After Lunch Routine
- We scored well when I added to Nomi’s discipline studies an art project each day. She has explored various media and forms
- Joshua moved from History to Philosophy, completing Francis Schaeffer How Should we then Live DVD course
- We enjoyed Living Math stories and activities
- We began Institute of Excellence in Writing and have done several units, the kids use these tips and techniques in most of their writing.
- Jessica has done well at dress making (a Keepers project) she feels like she is ‘getting it’
- I established ‘Cooks helper‘ as a part of our daily chore roster. Consequently Josh, Jess and Nomi’s cooking skills have improved greatly.
- My Whole Life Diary has been very beneficial in balancing all my roles and responsibilities this year. Read a summary of my Whole Life Diary
- Nomi is now blogging and writing regularly
- list to be continued….
Things that I reflect on and think “we did not so well here”
- reading lists – though Josh and Jess do well at reading lists, Nomi struggled, she needed more involvement from me.
- Character I have come to realise that this is a discipleship lesson – they need an older/wiser person to discuss this aspect of personal growth with. Though Joshua studying it independently has had some success I believe doing it together will make more impact.
- Nomi isn’t as far along in her ability to research topics (though she is processing non fiction information better)
- Daniel still struggles with free time still relies on too much screen time (or his desire is for too much screen time)
- How I wish we could get into Nature journaling (Check out Melissas blog – she says it well – just what I feel like)
- Josh and Jess Bible Study (though they studied other things that was unplanned but really good I still want them to do the Wisdom unit from Heart of Wisdom)
- Activity Box for Daniel Jessica and I made an activity box on the theme of Pirates with the idea of helping Daniel use his time wisely. Unfortunately there were too many dependent activities – which was silly because the idea was for time he had to do by himself!
- List to be continued…
